A Zombie Christmas and Eden, Ian Curtis and Joe Strummer, Asian Politics

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As with most people on our economically advanced states, late December comes with its degree of festivities. Last Friday eve was a end of year function at the Fiztroy Gardens Pavillion, leaving me unable to attend trayce's function the following day. On Christmas day visited Brendan E. for drinks and zombie flicks (the excellent 1950s-styled comedy Fido, and a good 'realist' news broadcast short film - whose name I can't remember) and then onto severina_242's for food and another zombie flick (Resident Evil: Extinction, which had some good action scenes but that's about all). For new year's caseopaya and I (and Rogue) are heading to Eden. a delightful coastal town in southern New South Wales.

Last night went to the Astor to see an excellent double of Control, the Ian Curtis story and The Future is Unwritten, the same for Joe Strummer. The former, being derived from Deborah Curtis's memoir "Touching from a Distance", had a stronger narrative sense with excellent casting and sense of the times. The latter was like a combination of home movie (yes, this is a negative comment about the direction) and comprehensive documentary with significant input from a range of people close to Strummer (one especially great line "Strummer's lyrics were like an atlas to the world"). Both films managed to show the significant flaws and genius of these two great poet-musicians.

Politics is very hot in Asia at the moment. The liberal-socialist, and front-runner for the Pakistani Presidential election Benazir Bhutto has just been assasinated. In Thailand, a coalition supporting the exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is being formed, which may have the monarchy a little annoyed. Not as annoyed as the Nepalese monarchy who have been abolished by their parliament (the Nepalese parliament is led by the democratic-socialist Nepali Congress Party (with 133 seats), the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (84 seats) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Lenninist) (83 seats). Eight other parties have a total of 30 seats).

In other news, my review of RuneQuest (1st and 2nd edition) has been published on RPG.net. drjon provides an excellent review of the upgrade from Vista (to Windows XP) which is comic in its presentation but serious in its content (and links). On a very closely related topic reddragdiva notes that Microsoft admit that editing pictures, Quicken or Quickbook files with Vista may corrupt them.

Comments

[trayce.livejournal.com]

No problems that you couldn't make it along :) It was a quiet one anyway with just Dom & B and a couple of my friends sitting about eating and chatting :)

[phasmaphobic.livejournal.com]

The vista "upgrade" link is not working, and this saddens me =(

[zhenzhi.livejournal.com]

mmmmm, eden! i spent a lot of time around there in summer holidays when i was a kid :-)

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

One day, I'm sure we'll have a Tony Wilson and Friends Film Festival, starting with 24 Hour Party People and involving the Curtis flick you just mentioned among others.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I think you were a bit too kind to RuneQuest. You praise the clarity of how it clearly tells you the game is about 'questing for runes' without mentioning that it never, at any point, gives you a clear explanation of what this means in either rules or narrative terms, for example. And the game is essentially unplayable as a Gloranthan game without Cults of Prax, yet many aspects of the setting mentioned in the rulesbook are never mentioned again, in CoP or anywhere else (the guilds in the skills chapter, for example). Its also apparent now that RuneQuests gritty, realist feel, while very influential and innovative at the time, was actually a pretty poor fit for its very high fantasy setting.

RuneQuest was a great achievement, but a very flawed one even for the time. And I say this as someone who loved it like crazy, and has had a lot to do with the community over the years.

[reddragdiva]

It isn't editing with Vista, it's editing with Vista then saving to Windows Home Server.

[ser-pounce.livejournal.com]

Quick question: Are you & Erica free on Thurs 24th Jan after work?