Noiseless Chatter Archive

  Good gosh! The hero has arrived. Last month, a game called Retro City Rampage was released for download on the Wii. By this point, the Wii is already dead, its place in the console market usurped by the WiiU. This was a too-late release for the system in another way as well: other versions of the game on competing systems were released in 2012. The game itself was announced in 2010…and development began all the way back in 2002. That’s an extremely long journey for anything on its way to a dead platform. I remember the announcement well, because I decided more or less immediately that I didn’t want it. It seemed like a nice idea — retro-style games such as Mega Man 9 , the Bit.Trip series and VVVVVV had a pretty high success rate as far as I was concerned, and I’d take a simplistic, difficult romp over a modern-day talky slog every time — but early screen shots, and then the eventual trailer, were enormously disappointing. Or, rather, there was one specif...

So it’s been quiet around here lately, and there’s absolutely nothing noteworthy about that fact. But I did want to pop in to let you know that, unlike every other time, I haven’t been totally unproductive. In fact, I’m writing a book. It’s a project that I started for National Novel Writing Month a few years back. For those of you who aren’t familiar, the idea is that you are supposed to write an entire novel between November 1 and November 30. I’ve participated a few times now, and I’ve nearly always succeeded, but it’s very much worth noting that they define “a novel” as “50,000 words.” So you can very easily hit that number without bringing your story to a close, or even getting anywhere near an ending. For many it’s just a writing exercise, which is great, but for me…I’ve always tried to do something more. 50,000 words of anything is a useful workout for a writer, but I feel a little let down at the end if I don’t have something I can share. Rework, rewrite, e...

FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for review. No money changed hands and all opinions presented here are my own. When we discussed A Soul’s Calling we talked a bit about the fact that not everything that happens is automatically a story. It takes a certain artistry on the part of an author to make something a story*…it doesn’t simply become a story because we would like it to be one. Lawrence Fisher, author of Kill Me Now!: A Middle Aged Man’s Maneuvers Through the Frontline of the Dating Battlefield understands this much. Frustratingly, however, he settles for minor interjections, irrelevant detours and repeated attempts at coining a catch phrase. The end result feels much less like a middle-aged dating handbook than it does like an awkward performance at an open-mic comedy club. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The book itself is structured as a journal, running for seven months’ time. It starts in December and ends in July, though we...

So this is what I was originally planning for Valentine’s Day…only I planned for it around five months in advance and then forgot to do it. It’s a collection of love songs from Thomas Pynchon’s novels. I’m a huge Pynchon fan (DID YOU KNOW THAT??) and the little original ditties he embeds in his text are like charming, reliable life-rafts amid the glorious, chaotic sprawl. And I’ll be honest…every time I’ve picked up a new Pynchon book I’ve looked forward to the songs the most. They range from silly to clever to genius, and, in some way, I love them all. When I used to run a different (much more personal) blog, I posted The Love Songs of Thomas Pynchon for Valentine’s Day, and it very surprisingly became the most popular post on my site. I have no idea why, but it was certainly a great feeling, and with that site long gone I thought I’d post it again. This time I’m including a few songs I left out of the first post — no real reason, I just wasn’t as big a fan of them...

A (relatively) short and quiet entry this time around, as our segment here picks up exactly where the last one left off. Jane Winslett-Richardson has been shown to her room, Klaus has been meaninglessly cautioned against trying to sleep with her, and Steve entrusts tonight’s footage of the rubber tide to Vikram, who knows from past experience that he is to “print everything.” From there, our male Zissous split and pair off: old-hand Steve with his wife, and newcomer Ned with even-newer-comer Jane. First we follow Steve and Eleanor through a conversation that only lasts about a minute, but manages to be both tense and desperate at the same time. In a gorgeous piece of blocking — though it’s easy to miss this in favor of listening to what’s being said — the two of them stare off at the docked Belafonte , which is lit beautifully…but ultimately needlessly. None of Team Zissou is aboard the ship, and there are no plans for it to go anywhere. It is illuminated for the sa...