• The Old Man and the Realistically Rendered Water Volume


    I’m just arrogant enough that I tend to automatically dismiss anything presented as a list of rules or guidelines about writing. There’s obviously a ton of craft involved in writing, independent of any concerns about talent or personal style. But attempts to codify it are always either too vague to be practically useful, or too…

  • Ready… Be fought against!


    Previously on Spectre Collie, I got alarmed at what I saw as the rising sentiment against storytelling in videogames. The people on the message boards and blog comments kept saying that storytelling and interactivity are mutually exclusive, that story-based games aren’t games at all! And notable people like Will Wright were making proclamations that the…

  • Grotesk


    Helvetica is an hour and a half of people with bad hair and bad accents talking about fonts. I don’t want to discourage people from seeing it, really. It’s a very well-made documentary, doing all the things a documentary should do. It stays neutral throughout (like you’d expect from the subject matter), but a couple…

  • Literacy 2008: Book 4: Baltimore


    Book Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire by Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden Synopsis On a battlefield late in World War I, allied soldier Lord Baltimore is attacked by a strange bat-like creature. Now, the war is over, but a mysterious plague has spread through all of Europe. Three of Baltimore’s friends…

  • The Orchid


    As I mentioned, I was confused for most of last year’s ComicCon, so I missed the “Lost” panel. I wasn’t aware until reading about it on a message board just now, that during that panel they showed another Dharma Initiative orientation film, that was later repeated on ABC’s website. This one is for station 6,…

  • The Sayid Ultimatum


    This week’s “Lost” was called “The Economist,” and the series is continuing on its trajectory of pure awesomeness. I genuinely feel bad for the people who’ve given up on the show, because I feel like my patience has paid off. They’re doing exactly what I was hoping they’d do, but better than I imagined they’d…

  • Namaste


    Via the RiffTrax blog, Bill Corbett shares a relaxing meditation with us all. Learn it, memorize it, and go in peace.

  • Literacy 2008: Book 3: Jingo


    Book Jingo by Terry Pratchett In a series 21st in the series of Discworld books. Synopsis The lost island of Leshp suddenly rises in the middle of the ocean, sparking a war between the nations of Ankh-Morpork and Klatch over ownership of the new land. Sam Vimes and the rest of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch…