Negativeland Updates.
Epilogue: Talking To Self.
Er... accidentally overwrote this post, so - er - yes. The End!
Kieron - 10/30/2004 11:07:00 PM
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10/29/2004
"The world's biggest specialised Massively-Multiplayer Online games finally comes to Europe. Part of your mind can't help but ask... well... who cares?"
Over at Eurogamer, I give the PRs of NCSoft a bit of a heart-attack before going on to cover the NCSoft Europe launch.
Kieron - 10/29/2004 05:30:00 PM
I thought of precicely two vaguely intelligent things today.
i) Pea-souper group.
ii) Fuck it. I'll just make him a Werewolf.
Meanwhile: Hundreds Of Thousands Of People Die Senselessly.
Kieron - 10/29/2004 01:44:00 AM
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10/27/2004
"And sometimes I''m just in the mood for fucking.
And in those sometimes, I'm in the mood for the Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster.
I don't care if it's wrong. I don't care. That's kinda the point."
New Noise updates and I review the Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster's second album, with an inevitable piece of sex-related nonsense. I also re-use a hymen-related line from my Reading review last year, because I believe in enviromentally-sound sustainable writing.
Kieron - 10/27/2004 10:35:00 AM
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10/26/2004
So: More John Peel.
Walker's birthday tonight, so all manner of nonsense conversation. Particularly, we wander back to Peel's death. We start swapping stories - future pop songs beamed into our minds through the government-paid speakers which change our lives forever. I end up telling a story about myself linked to Peel.
You see, I've never deliberately listened to Teenage Kicks since I turned 20. I decided that indulging in something as eternally perfect as Teenage kicks post-20s was a complete betrayl of what I got from the track. Sure, I'd dance to it if it came on to a club, but I had to sacrifice it to whatever Gods I possessed because it was greater and better than I was.
And I did it. Never listened to it since. That's just shy of a decade. That's several pop life-times.
Pete and Jim raise eyebrows. Jim tells me that he's never taken Teenage Kicks in that naive way - that it's clearly about needing something in a teenage way rather than a literal teenage lust. In that someone who makes you feel an over-powering craving that you just can't shake rather than anything more obvious... and I think "Actually, yeah."
Suddenly it clicks, and I feel stupid for being incapable of making the leap myself. I gain the ability to process Teenage Kicks in a manner other than my teenage guilt penance, and my heart flips over in my chest.
Hence, as I'm writing this, I find myself writing Teenage Kicks on repeat. And it's glorious.
Other minor peel story: I was in a club, slagging off John Peel. I was arguing he removed any genuinely radical sting from any new music by contexualising it in a 30-year old pocket. So, in other words, was essentially evil.
A girl turns around from the row in front of me, and tells me I'm full of shit.
And that was Jane.
Thanks John.
Kieron - 10/26/2004 11:24:00 PM
I want to listen to my copy of this in tribute:
But its gone missing. Its acapella version of Come Out 2nite would have been perfect.
Bastard Record Collection.
Kieron - 10/26/2004 03:49:00 PM
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10/25/2004
First and most important things now, I think. That is, your money into our pockets.
Commercial Suicide V2.0 is now available to purchase, either direct from the creators (For UK and mainland Europe) or from Lulu.com. Prices are a fiver for the UK folk or eight dollars from the US, plus postage. For those of you who live nearish to me, I've got copies you can have for just the money, minus postage.
Now, that's a 102 page over-sized comic anthology with a real spine and we're clearly self-mutilating on the profit margin. It's a desperate call for help, so don't ignore us.
Picked up some press from Rich Johnston, the world's premier comics gossip columnist and - er - CS2.0 contributor. Shush!
"One of the con's highlights in that regard was the debut of "Commercial Suicide," a professionally produced square bound oversized anthology book featuring material so amusing that Gosh! Comics in London even refused to stock it. They sold all 100 copies they brought at £5 ($10) each."
For the record, the bits which GOSH pointed out they were worried about were the Anal insertion of a hangun in DUCK WITH GUN 2: NEITZCHE AND SCRATCHY and the Bishop/Nun-fucking in THE NEW TESTAMENT. But - y'know - they could have probably picked any two pages if they were going to play the obscenity card.
Alex and I spent pretty much the whole day on the splendid Just One Page table shouting ramblings at passersbys. We very much took the hard sell verbal-kung-fu approach, with the clinching factor usually being that if you buy a copy, we'll shut the fuck up and leave you alone. I literally lost my voice by bed-time with all the shouting and post-selling hanging around in smokey bars.
As an object, I'm pleased. Inside our remit - strong-stomached comedy - we've wandered to pretty much all the extremes. Some stuff is relatively light and playful. Other stuff is debased beyond all measure. All genres are mocked equally. In terms of art style, we've got everyone from strong realists to the diseased scribblings of men-mentals to Manga influences to cartoon-minimalism to genuinely unique indie-warpness...
Anyway: Buy it. And, as my final piece of pitch normally went when my voice was going, read the first two pages if you need any more persuasion. It's THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SIGMUND FREUD.
WEF-flashback: Make with the clicky.
Random factlet: Total takings for the table was £666.
So there you go then.
Kieron - 10/25/2004 10:25:00 AM
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10/24/2004
Back from my week of random oddball jobs feeling suitably mauled by life, which is the best way. Extremes were courted, it being a week where I went from sleeping in a four-star hotel on one night to on a dog-haired sofa with my coat for sheets the next. I'll try and split it across several posts, I think, as I move through the week.
Start with something relatively unconnected. When wandering around Camden with Kitten McKelvie, picked up the latest Queen And Country trade, Operation Dandelion. This is the onew which features some scenes set in Bath which I provided photo-ref for. You can admire the coffee shop Walker tends to go and buy stuff from, the street opposite where DJ Jim used to live and the off-licence which provides me chewing gum and booze on a nearly daily basis.
It's also ace, so buy it already, will'ya.
(Assuming you're following Q&C. If not, start at the beginning, as it's simply the finest Spy comic existence. And if you require more convincing, I wrote this about it for Panelbleed.)
Kieron - 10/24/2004 11:46:00 PM
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10/19/2004
http://members.aol.com/comicsalmanack/flier.doc
The flyer for the Glorious Combine table where Commercial Suicide is being sold this weekend. That is, at the London Comic fest. Go read and consider turning up.
Ultra-friends of the revolution will consider printing out the bastard and distributing it at their local comic shop. Though probably not much use unless you live in the South West. Still - Antarctic readers who wish to bemuse their friends and family, feel free.
I'm off doing "things" until then too (The things being being one of those brought in experts at a school, hanging out with the City of Heroes Guys and helping in the last desperate carting of comic objects prior to the event). I'll be trying to check my hotmail account - same address as my MSN name, natch - so if anyone needs me before then, use that.
Or - y'know - my mobile.
Kieron - 10/19/2004 11:15:00 AM
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10/15/2004
Haven't written much, if anything, about Dylan publically. Dylan's one of those people I presume have been mauled on the critical rack so much by college professors to be entirely useless to anyone who gives a damn about pop music as a living thing. More so in fact - I've barely ever deliberately listened to Dylan at all, with most of my experience of the man being purely in the public conciousness.
Like tonight.
Sitting in Flann O'Brien's, terrible chain irish pub named after the genius comedic modernist writer, due to Williams dragging the early formative particle of the drinking party there in the ancient history of the evening. That is, around six. I didn't head out until 9, when it was well encroached, in a room where - inevitably - the Pogues will play and men will sing.
Still - drink is drunk and words are swapped and our communal humanity is reinforced, until there's a moment. On this pub jukebox of pub jukeboxes, "Like a Rolling Stone" by Dylan strikes up. The most obvious of his moments. And, for me, his most joyous. His voice all desperate and gasping, falling around this rootsy wall of sound, full of all the confision and full-house of emotions that personify all the best pop. Great joy and great sadness in the same heartbeat and... it's a huge song, a sweeping thing, with the tiny hollow thing of Dylan's voice fumbling over it.
But I'm wandeirng into trad Dyland bollocks. What's important isn't the song here.
I'm leaning up against the window, talking to Jim's beautiful girlfriend Amanda about our origins, and what makes us up and what makes us tick. And it's there which "Like a Rolling Stone" strikes, and I lean back and listen to Amanda - and she has my full attention throughout - as to this moment Walker heads across the bar, hands full of a round of booze. At which point, down the other end, Williams is chatting to Jim. She leans her head forward at the exact moment Rossignol's bottle is being passed her, causing a collision. Everyone leans back, momentary embarassed, before the booze resumes its route to Jim's hand for a brief stopover before heading gulletward. And "HOW DOES IT FEEL" and I smile as to "ON YOUR OWN" everything seems to "NO DIRECTION HOME" click in a way "LIKE A COMPLETE UNKNOWN" that's easier "LIKE A ROLLING STONE" than breathing, as old imitation oak and imitation irish melds and... I could just die.
So I go to the toilet to piss and think, collecting these prior thoughts. And Meer wanders in, laughing to himself self depreciating.
And He says, "Two guys have just asked me for my autograph".
And I huh, non-committely, being trying to transform myself into words.
"They thought I was David Baddiel".
And, stepping away from the urinal, I double-over, punched in the gut by laughter.
I can't stop.
And that's why, occasionally, I can't help but love Dylan.
Kieron - 10/15/2004 10:51:00 PM
Negativeland Updates. Episode 24: We, Robot.
And there you go then. Next episode is the epilogue, which features none of the characters you'll have become familiar with.
I'd imagine it'll be worth putting a spoiler warning here, as any comments may be pretty full of 'em.
Oh - yes, I planned this ending from before I even created the first panel. I just didn't know how I was going to get there.
Kieron - 10/15/2004 05:48:00 PM
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10/14/2004
Blame McKelvie.
"I'll be around - anywhere. Any place you want me."
He asks me what Client are like and I tell him my recent experience of a live gig, and how absolutely embarassing it was. Like bumping into your auntie at a S&M party, its appropriation of electroclash boiled down to a few kneejerk Miss-Kittinisms and felt like a cringe. I did say I liked her wrist length plastic gloves though, because you have to at least pretend to be objective.
And then McKelvie notes that he always liked her voice and I concur. Because - y'know - I did.
"Is it asking too much to be given time to know these songs and to sing them?"
Dubstar always walked an oddball boundary between straight electro-pop and the folk tradition - Sarah's vowels and the melodies she chose a mile away from the synths that surrounded her. Awkward, and distracting. At their worst, listening to a whole Dubstar piece was embarassment - deliberate lyrics over deliberate arrangements deliberately thoughtful undeliberately incompetent.
Trying too hard and not hard enough.
"It's all right, I'm just a girl, she said. Talk down to me, and take me to bed"
Like a fair chunk of my thinking about minor bands of the period when I was learning to think, I find myself gravitating to someone else's description of their failings. Specifically, Simon Price's analysis of them in a live review which went something like "It's like when she sings "I'm a person with thoughts; I'm a person who thinks. But you think I'll forget if you ply me with drinks". And I think "Well, buy your own fucking drinks then".
Self-serving, smug and needlessly preachy.
But still...
"And the doorbell strangely rang..."
....I'm awake at just gone 3, telling all of Cassandra's pulpy little secrets (My net collapses as I'm about to say "I do regret not doing the rest of the first mission of Cass, if only because it leaves the sex-harassment plot hanging. With the real ending, I don't think anyone could have read it as a sexist statement". And I give you that quote out of context, as it amuses me) to Paul Black and listening to them on repeat.
For that, at least, they deserve some kind of salute. I guess this is it.
Kieron - 10/14/2004 01:48:00 AM
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10/13/2004
"Oh yeah, gender transgression, junkies, fetish parties, yadiyadiyah. You've seen this kind of thing before. Let's point and laugh at the freaks. Let's rubberneck at the trainwreck of their lives. Wow, they're fucked up. Isn't that kind of cool. And, you know, loathsome.
Except it's not, though. It's not that kind of book."
The ever-articulate Janet Harvey takes on How Loathsome for Artbomb. I've been meaning to write something about it ever since actually reading it, but never got around to it. Until I gain the required infinite time for collating my desired critical pieces, I'll let Janet speak for me.
I recommended this book to someone recently. If they're reading this, this is my reminder for you to investigate it.
Kieron - 10/13/2004 01:17:00 AM
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10/11/2004
Of all the sensations I experience semi-regularly, the one I'm least sure of is what you feel like awake at gone 4 and writing a review.
Part of me loves it. Debasement has always been my things, and pushing yourself to do something that isn't particularly sensible has a strange and addictive joy. Why do the work in a sensible time, when you can be the only person in Bath awake hammering out your take on the future, one word at a time.
Part of me hates it. I'm past the point where I'm able to actually work out whether a piece is working or not, or is even in functional English. Normally it's not a problem - I've made a career of writing extensively in the early morning and drunk out of my tiny mind (er... not that I'm drunk tonight), but I normally have time to look at something through less delirious eyes in the morning. This gig, I don't, since it has to be at the printers tomorrow. Hell - I probably won't even be awake when the magazine need it by.
The latter is a professionality thing, really. Writing at the last minute and doing what I'm doing is clearly an unprofessional thing. Generally. In videogame reviews, it can be a sign of a *professionality* thing, that you just had to play the game a little more, just to be a little more sure.
What's annoying in this case is that I've got the nagging feeling that my review would have been about as good and virtually astute if I'd written it after an hour.
I don't really mean that either.
Anyway, I write an e-mail to someone else where I name a price and vaguely hope they don't agree to it as then they'll be another sliver of my soul gone, and head to bed.
Talking about deadlines, it's Commercial Suicide Art one today.
Nice to know that I'm in good company.
Kieron - 10/11/2004 03:13:00 AM
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10/10/2004
Saturday night music time. Not even going to try and start on what I've been ranting at everyone within ear's reach for the last 24 hours. Instead, a big-big love only a few hours old.
The Go! Team.
One of their websites describes them as Sonic Youth versus the Jackson 5, which sounds about right, if you filter that through a more ramshackle version of the Avalanches sample delerium. Something childlike and immediate about their constructions - and that I wrote "Childlike" rather than "Childish" is very important.
Especially well timed as I woke up this morning with a terrible urge implanted by re-reading the KLF's The Manual and listenining to Sean Paul pop-dancehall singles to try and do something pop-music related, and The Go! Team are close enough to what I was thinking to make me decide to not to bother.
Some music on the site linked upthread. Some more here, which is probably where you should go first. "The Power Is On" should be your first stop.
Oh yes - and Stu Egan's New Noise piece on them can be found somewhere around here.
Kieron - 10/10/2004 01:28:00 AM
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10/08/2004
"Honestly: one thing just led to another.
If you want to blame it on anything, blame it on insecurity. I'd decided I was too thin. A 34-year old hero, hailed throughout the realm of Albion and I still had the lithe figure of a boy, since my sporadic snacking hadn't done anything to fill me out. Something a little more determined was needed, I thought, as I cleared the shopkeeper out of meat and sat, gorging myself on thirty or so portions.
I went too far. I was morbidly obese. Oh dear.
So I decided to start my own personal fat-club, and proceeded to run everywhere. It did the trick, at the expense of making me visibly stink. However terminal BO wasn't enough to prevent the romantic adventure I was tumbling towards. You see, if I wasn't running, I'd have never had ended up jogging through the class-room, welcomed by the welcoming waves of cheers from the kids and the instantly smitten glance of the teacher. The male teacher."
Taking on Big Blue Box/Lionhead's Fable for Eurogamer. And a little bit of NGJ as the over extended intro, now I think about it.
Now to go and read EG's comments to see if I've offended anyone.
Kieron - 10/08/2004 09:44:00 AM
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10/06/2004
"Now here's an interesting example of the cross-Atlantic divide. When bobbing merrily along as a digital castaway on the gaming info-Sargasso it's possible to forget that flesh-space concerns as "nationality" still exist, but it doesn't make them any less real. So while Kohan II's imminent arrival has been causing outbreaks of disco-boogie in the colonies, in the heart of Empire we're very much still much playing wall-flower at this fantasy RTS party. It's no great change - in its previous iterations Kohan received strategy game of the year awards a plenty over there while over here it got... well... got forgotten."
My Kohan II: Kings of War review for Eurogamer. My - what a busy reviewing bee I am.
Kieron - 10/06/2004 11:00:00 AM
>Commercial Suicide V2.0's cover, by Brian Frey.
Kieron - 10/06/2004 01:30:00 AM
"I was a little bit unsure of what the seminar was supposed to be, other than the title, “Managing a Mod Project”. It still seems a bit presumptious of me to take that mantle on, as mentioned elsewhere on this site my 'management' role of the single mod I've worked on consisted of overseeing the last deperate attempts to finish the first part of the first episode of The Cassandra Project. On the other hand when it comes to cataloguing mistakes to be learned from, I decided I probably had enough experience to do that well enough. And as I said, I was due an adventure."
Always Black presents his never-presented presentation on Cassandra.
Kieron - 10/06/2004 01:23:00 AM
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10/04/2004
A group of schoolkids in the South East were presented with a couple of interviews of mine to study today.
There was, apparently, a small riot about whether Deus Ex was any good or not.
Heh.
EDIT: Just a vague journalistic heads-up. I wrote a feature on Text in games in this month's Edge magazine. It includes a splash of my thinking with relation to all the Interactive Fiction, as well as some lovely quotes from Emily Short. Also features Chris Avellone, lead Designer of Planescape Torment, and Sheldon Pacotti, Writer on Deus Ex. It's probably worth a scan in the shops at least.
Kieron - 10/04/2004 07:06:00 PM
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10/02/2004
I may, when I get a chance, expand this post considerably, but I wanted to lob something up here in case I don't have time:
29th birthday is one thing, which barely spooked me at all. Today's a far more disturbing anniversary: It's ten years, to the day, since I left Stafford to move to Bath.
I really don't know where to start.
Kieron - 10/02/2004 11:40:00 AM
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10/01/2004
Negativeland Updates. Episode 23: Deus Ex Machina
I don't know if anyone out there has a tendency to do so, but I'd suggest for this one definitely reading the webcomic before turning your eyes to the comments thread. That is, of course, if you're following Negativeland or have any desire to ever read it in the future.
Kieron - 10/01/2004 02:51:00 PM
"So: nine or a Ten? What a dilemma.
Tens are precious, and it takes more than merely being extremely good to get them. Perfection is no guarantee. In fact, perfection just implies you were setting your sights too low. To have your fingers brush the firmament, you have to risk an Icarus-like fall to earth on internet-forum-flaming wings. To get a ten you need scale. You need to be more than just a game.
When compared to all the standards above, Rome is a Ten. It didn't have a design doc; it had an act of hubris."
A jerk-off special over the spectacular Rome: Total at Eurogamer.
