Opting Out

Politics

Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It’s about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become. If there is such a thing as going on strike from one’s own culture, this is it.

Matt Taibbi has a moving article in Rolling Stone detailing his slow understanding that the Occupy movement, more than anything else, reflects a desire to opt out…or “drop out,” if you look back to older forebears.

Left to Rot

Comics

LifeHealthPro has a heartbreaking story about comics writer Bill Mantlo. Mantlo, who’s probably best known for his off-the-wall scripts on Micronauts and Rom: Spaceknight, was run down by a hit-and-run driver in 1992 and left with traumatic brain injury. Long story short, rehabilitation efforts were basically dropped by his insurer, and he’s now warehoused in a facility in Queens. What a waste.

On a sidenote, the article is written by Bill Coffin, whose name I recognized from old bylines for the Palladium roleplaying line. Much of my teenage paper route money was blown on their products. And Marvel’s as well.

Get Into Classical

Music

Just wanted to share a great resource for beginning to listen to classical music. Get Into Classical offers an easy start for the non-initiate. There are some some gentle introductions to the genre, recommendations for pieces to start with and then profiles of classical eras and composers. The text is fun and light without pandering to the reader. I worked my way through the whole site and found a lot of music I enjoyed (and some I didn’t—sorry Shostakovich!).

Game Review: Skinny

Games

For a relatively short browser-based pack, Skinny packs in plenty of atmosphere. Created by Thomas Brush of Atmos Games, this platformer had you lead a robot through five levels of a battered post-apocalyptic landscape. Your goal is to collect batteries to repower stranded fellow bots. To do you, you leap across gaps, launch from spring-loaded platforms and crush obstacles with an extendo-arm.

The physics of movement are satisfying. Your robot’s arms and legs pinwheel through the air as it flies, adding some cheerful animation to the repeated jumps. Your character can’t die, but it can fail repeatedly, leading to backtracking and even some frustration as you try to leap through an opening before an electronic gate closes again. In the end, the mechanics are a little gidgy, but still fair, although a small playing window can make it difficult to deploy your hook without clicking on a bordering ad from time to time.

The story feels a little emo. The dialogue of your stranded peers indicates they’ve survived a nuclear winter, or perhaps perished in it. Giving them their batteries restores them back to being clichéd little consumers. Some supporting characters fixed in each level question whether your surroundings are real or just engineered by a world-creating “Mother.” With all this build-up, there’s no real ending.

But the story is just window dressing anyway. The fun lies in exploring the levels, making your way from one end to another. The puzzles along the way are intuitive, but challenging, making this a game worth exploring.