As promised, here’s this week’s Friday flash fiction. It’s unusually long; about 70 words over the 1k limit. I considered trimming a few sentences but, in the spirit of the subject matter, decided “fuck it”.
The title, fact fans, is lifted from the best live/tour film you’ll ever see: Against Me!’s 2004 DVD We’re Never Going Home. It sums up most of the reasons why they were so special in the first half of the decade (for the record I think they’re still pretty special now, but they’re different people in a different band because of the success they’ve experienced – something the band spends a lot of time grappling with in the film).
I still can’t figure out what’s wrong with my del.icio.us autoposts. I thought I’d fixed it a while back but it stopped working after one post; now it won’t even manage that. Any suggestions, anyone? No doubt others have had similar problems…
In shinier news, I am determined to finish some F3 for you all. It’s been about a month since the last one, which is poor form.
here’s a lot you can say about the Gaslight Anthem, but pretty much everything you will or won’t love about this band is going to be a personal response. This is as it should be: the Gaslight Anthem are an intensely personal band, their songs a musical love affair with life.
It’s a heartfelt kick in your spiritual nards and a pat on the back and a drink in the coziest, friendliest dive bar. It’s confessing your secrets to a strangers, things you would never tell your wife or mother or brother or best friend. It’s every dark corner of your mind and every triumphant celebration of life. It’s the ringing in your ears when you’re alone with your thoughts. It’s holding on to your divorce papers 20 years after the fact and the mournful sigh when you see your dead best friend’s favorite movie in the video store.
Sorry, gentle readers. I’ll not be posting any F3 this week either. It’s been another really busy week as I’ve been gearing up to cover someone else’s job at work, and although I’ve got three stories started I’ve not had time to finish one of them. I’ll endeavour to get at least one of them finished so I can get back on track for next week.
Like every other bugger who pays attention to what’s going on in indie gaming I recently tried out Braid, the time-fucking 2D platformer by independent developer Jonathan Blow. It’s currently only available on Xbox Live (at 1200 points, which in real money is about a tenner) but a Windows version is set to follow later this year, probably on Steam.
If you’ve already played the game then you’ll know what I’m about to say; the same applies if you’ve previously read a few other boring sods carping on about it. But if you’ve not played the game, and you’re not familiar with what it is, this post is for you.
Sorry, I’ve been totally neglecting the blog of late… in my defence I’ve been having a holiday. At home. Because I’m skint. Maybe I’ll share some photos! And I’ll also actually do some writing this week.
"The fact that this contest is rooted in something as central to global capitalism as the extraction and transport of energy means that it is permament and inclined to escalate – and that ought to give us a presentiment of real horror."
"He was as famous for his colourful life as he was for his art. So why are films about Andy Warhol always so bad? Jonathan Jones on wigs, myths and freaks".
Just to prove that I really do have a band, here’s a stupid video of us being drunk and not taking that whole “musicianship” bullshit seriously at practice. By this point our bassist was steaming drunk, our drummer had broken the edge, and I’d broken all my strings. Fortunately you can’t hear what we were actually playing, because our lead guitarist / vocalist chopped up the video and laid a home recording over the audio.
This is why you can’t hear any of what’s actually being sung, which given our state at the time is something of a blessed relief.
Oh, and it’s just our lead guitarist and bassist on the home recording – we can’t record drums ourselves and I wasn’t around to do my guitar parts, so the other fella did both parts and plonked in some (actually not bad) sampled drums.
And no, we still haven’t decided on a name, although we have floated Resolutions, Pattern Interrupt, Rejection Letter and The Fran Swaine Drumming Experience with varying degrees of seriousness. In all honesty, though, We Are Drunken Idiots is the most accurate moniker I’ve heard so far.
My review of the PC port of ObsCure II, Hydravision’s 2007 horror survive-’em-up, is now online at Den of Geek. It’s replete with cheap shots, predictable “jokes” and dull analysis of stupid ideas – so quite a lot like the game itself!
This is a sequel to 2004’s ObsCure, a multi-platform survival horror game that saw a disparate band of assorted high school students – possessed of improbably unique and useful skills – fight their way through hordes of spore-infected classmates to uncover the truth behind a daaark secret. Not an uncommon survival horror premise. The game’s most unique feature was the ability to play through the game co-operatively, something its sequel also boasts. Unfortunately I’m reviewing the PC version, and found myself unable to convince anyone to play it with me. Crowding around a single keyboard isn’t quite as fun as using your own control pad, after all.
Read the full review at DoG… if you dare! Wooooooooo!
I’ve got another lengthy piece up at Den of Geek, this time taking some lumps out of the bloated, funny-smelling collective body of the mumorperger. I also recommend four in-development MMOGs that look tantalising, primarily because they’re offering something different. Well, Warhammer Online doesn’t seem to be promising anything particularly different, but fuck it. I’m British and I grew up in the 80s and 90s, therefore I love Warhammer (and will never again know the love of a woman).
Since the article mentions World of Warcraft, and I’m not very kind about MMORPGs in general, I am anticipating some abuse. I hope to be proven wrong.
