Dick Against Humanity

Moby-Dick is many things: a vivid sea adventure, an indictment of American capitalism, a Jobian argument with the cosmos, and one thing it definitely is is an 822-page (in the Rockwell Kent Random House edition) dick joke.

As my favorite book (that I have read 5x and am overdue for another) I’m always on the lookout for other media that takes on the book’s ambitious themes. The direct film adaptations to date are generally botches (though Jaws’ Quint is an ideal modern Ahab). There was a card game a year or so ago with really beautiful kit but I didn’t find it very fun (this may have been due to my poor reading of the rules). Video game-wise there’s the epic harpoon battle with a giant zombie catfish in Resident Evil 4, the mountainous, somber giants of Shadow of the Colossus and more recently the excellent ship-to-ship combat, sea chanteys and whaling missions in Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag.

But now Moby-Dick has found its perfect gaming expression through the free-associative, id-scraping mechanic of Cards Against Humanity.

Thanks to a friend for the extremely thoughtful gift of Dick! I’ve already been ordered to take my Dick off the table and to put my Dick back in the closet.

God Of Blades

God of Blades is an IOS hack and slash by White Whale Games with a beautiful art style, pounding prog-inspired musical score and an epic fantasy pedigree that includes Michael Moorcock, M.R. James and Roger Dean!

Check out the bookish trailer above and admire the inspired promotion lets you unlock special weapons if you FourSquare check in at a local library.

I don’t have an iDevice bitching enough to play this at the moment but as soon as it comes to PC I’m all over it.

Link via Venus Patrol.

Ipad Apps for the Anglophile

I was looking up a few references in Rob Chapman’s excellent Syd Barret bio A Very Irregular Head and came across these Ipad apps for the Anglophile in us all.

First off, this digital version of the classic Pollock’s Toy Theatre which lets you produce Monty Python-style, cut-out theatrical productions with authentic Victorian-era graphics.

The app is available here.

Next The Sun’s App displays their famous “Page 3” girls in full 360 glory…and I think they give you a wink and a smile.

This put’s Hot Metal‘s “Wobble-vision” to shame.

Here’s The Sun page promoting the App (not sure about U.S. availability). Ironic that the Page 3 girls are now probably the most innocent part of the Murdoch media empire.

I’m sadly padless and haven’t tried either of these, but between these and the upcoming BBC Iplayer App, I’m sorely tempted.

Classic Games as Classic Paperbacks

U.K. artist A.J. Hately has been designing covers for alternate video game manuals inspired by classic British paperbacks. It’s a stunning series. Here are a few from some of my favorite games:

Katamari Damacy:

Super Mario Land

Shadow of the Colossus

The series continues on her Tumblr site, Wilderness as a Girl, and she has prints available.

I love that most of the books take their titles from literary-sounding game locations, characters or lines (and that the Katamari book has an intro by Myth of Sisyphus author Albert Camus).

Going to keep an eye on the series and spend some time picking out a print or two.

Link via Joystiq.

Surreal + Erotic Marionettes (NWS)

Like Hans Bellmer and George Grosz drawings come to life! Not sure if these are technically marionettes, automata, or both. Damn cool though

Los Grumildos are automated puppets, miniature beings that skulk about a world somewhere between Victorian dollhouse and red light district. The brainchildren of Peruvian artist Ety Fefer…. this voyeuristic experience was inspired by the characters that inhabit the shady areas of downtown Lima, Peru. Fefer creates a kind of magical world that serves as a home for these marginal creatures that tend to be rejected and despised by society. The hyperrealist details of each plasticine puppet bring out their most intimate feelings, but the narrative is left to the viewers.

This was in New York at the beginning of August. Can’t believe I missed it. That’s what I get for letting my RSS reader grow wild.

(link via Daily Burlesque)

Eaton Awful Food Jigsaw Puzzles

I was going through my game closet the other day–trying to make some room–and I pulled out my collection of Eaton puzzles. I hadn’t looked at these in a while so I thought I’d share.

I found my first Eaton at a yard sale (“Good Morning!“). This was a jigsaw puzzle featuring fantastically bad photography of dangerously unrefrigerated food so, of course, I bought it immediately.

Putting it together I asked myself questions like “Is this part of the gristle near to that gluey milk puddle?” or “Should I sort out all of the mushy cereal pieces and work on those first?”. I have a fairly weak stomach so this was a race between my gag reflex and compulsion to finish.

After “Good Morning!” I was hooked and tracked down 9-10 more on eBay (6 of which were classics).

There’s “ethnic” food via 1980s mall food court (“Oriental Chow“, “Chili Today-Hot Tamale!“), quaintly obscene melted pastel confections (“Oh Fudge!“), venereal potatoes (“Stuffed Spuds“), and train wrecks of meat (“Deli Fare“).

(“Deli Fair” even features a handy diagram on the reverse so you can tell that the block of…what looks like the stuff they cleaned out of the wood-chipper at the end of Fargo, is actually head cheese.)

Last night Alice and I sat down with “Oh Fudge!”. We choose to do it with dinner for some reason and as always it was Eatonic. I was reminded that these are actually really well-crafted puzzles, lots of texture and color variety, thick board stock, and bizarrely-shaped pieces that break up the standard grid layout.

Anyway they’re great fall weather fun and (now that I have all I want) any jigsaw and/or kitsch fans out there should track them down.

Ping-pong

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House in Joy Court, The (Nightstand NB 1745) 1965 AUTHOR: Andrew Shaw (house pseudonym used by Lawrence Block; Donald Westlake) ARTIST: (unknown), originally uploaded by Hang Fire Books.

…and other indoor sports in the Pulp Fiction Cover Gallery.

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My Perfect Zombie Video Game

I have a long post on my ideas for the perfect zombie video game posted at Tor.com. Read it and marvel at how much of my brain has been eaten by the living dead.

On a related note, Mark Hurst of Good Experience sent me a link to a free, print ‘n play zombie solitaire game called Zombie in My Pocket.

Snipped it out and played this morning. Voodoo zombies, easy set up, intuitive rules and quick play. Spent a lot of time cowering and running from room to room with a chainsaw. Definitely worth laser printing and mounting on cardstock.

More Summer Crafts: Tossing Games

I mentioned our discovery of Cornhole on a road trip to Kentucky a few months back. Well we finally finished our own set.

Here tis:

I found the images on a Sailor Jerry Tattoo fan page. The skull was from flash art and easy to reproduce. The thug coat-of-arms was on the bicep of a sailor–faded from sun, and hard-living–so I had to guess at the coloring….also it was a fairly large bicep so I’m hoping he doesn’t mind that I borrowed it.

Each board weighs 30 pounds; there are 8 corns bags, 1 pound each; plus the obligatory bottle of bourbon, and you have game that you can’t drag out casually. Probably the reason this is a popular with tailgaters who have pickup trucks.

But biking through the park the other day, I saw people playing this:

It’s called Ladder Golf or Bolo Toss and since it only requires PVC Pipe and golf balls, is downright spritely compared to cornhole.

My next project.

Anybody have a drill press for drilling out 18 golf balls?

Wish I could explain this obsession with lawn games when I don’t have a lawn…

10-dollar words worth 10 grains of rice

FreeRice.com is hosting a vocabulary quiz that–for every word you correctly define–gives 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).

The quiz has a self-adjusting difficulty level and the money to purchase the rice is generated by ad revenue from each word reload.

Ingenious and really addictive.

I keep topping out at 47. I will hit 50 if I have to feed all of Malawi to do it.

Thanks to Book Trout for the link.