Diffusion of Competence

"We're with the Ace Tomato Company."

The Pomodoro method is bullshit. 

I mean, maybe it works for other people — and more power to them, if they’ve found something useful — but it's not an effective way for me to get things done. 

John Cleese has ideas about creativity that have been more helpful, especially the part where he encourages people to “keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way.” 

Taking on several projects at once lets me rest my mind against a bunch of subjects. I can bounce between them and make progress faster than if I’d been tackling any of them individually. 

My subconscious comes up with solutions to project C while I’m implementing a solution to project B, and the experience helps me get through project D faster. That way, when I’m composing the email to apologize for the delays with project A, I can remind myself that I wasn’t wasting all my time on Twitter. 

It also helps if all the projects are big, scary, and unpleasant. You end up solving a huge, unpleasant problems as a method of procrastination; you complete those projects because you can’t bear to work on bigger, more unpleasant problems that are waiting in the wings. 

Telling myself that I’m going to sit down and reconcile the March budget in 15-minute increments leaves me grinding my brain unproductively against a spreadsheet for an entire day. On the other hand, if I give myself permission to ignore time limits while updating my account details on the DMV website, I find that the budget gets reconciled, I’ve ordered replacement air filters, the electric bill has been paid, and I've beta tested an entry for IFcomp.

(This approach is vulnerable to scope creep. Observant readers may have noticed that my example did not end up with corrected DMV information — that would require an even bigger, more unpleasant project to ignore. And that would need something even more extreme once it went unfinished for a while.) 

When I’m at home, I have a list of household projects to work on, and I can safely ignore my work projects. The same thing goes for my home projects when I’m at work. 

The issue that I’m experiencing with the global-health-pandemic-shelter-crisis-lockdown-in-place is that there’s nothing stopping me from taking on too many projects. Across too many domains. 

Work, home, parenting, leisure, cooking, cleaning, and every other part of my life have all been collapsed into a single space. Time spent working on any one project means that time has been taken away from other, equally important projects. I’m spending so much time trying to figure out which project to work on that it leaves me with no time left for getting things done.

An Opportunity to Get Super Judgmental

Each year, the Annual Interactive Fiction Competition hashtagpublishes new, text-driven digital games and stories from independent creators. It relies on volunteer judges — have you got what it takes to be one?  

You totally do. Honestly, you just have to play and rate at least five games before November 15, 2019.


The competition also needs more people willing to share their thoughts in public. Right now, these sites are discussing IFcomp games: 

• Thomas Mack is updating IFComprehensive.
• Felicity Banks is publishing reviews on her blog.
• ProP's interactive fiction reviews can be found at Last Pylon.
• Alex has also started posting reviews online.
• Lynda Clark is asking: Would you like to change the difficulty setting?
• Enrique, who has researched patterns in IFcomp entries, is reviewing this year's entries.
• Felicity Drake is also reviewing IFcomp games.
• And this year, IFcomp games are featured on The Short Game podcast.

And I'm sure there are others that I missed.

Interactive Fiction Bestiary

(Language Warning: I’m not using the word “Bestiary” correctly, but this is a post about the best interactive fiction. The best interactive fiction, right? Come at me, bro.) 

If you are interested in dynamic and engaging stories, then you should be paying attention to Interactive Fiction. If you are paying attention to Interactive Fiction, then you should be following the Interactive Fiction Community Forum.

Over on the forum, Victor Gijsbers has asked for a list of the best Interactive Fiction games. I've shared my list over there, but I'm also putting it here for people who don't know about either the forum or this specific discussion.

• Trinity, by Brian Moriarty, has the #1 spot on my list. The Lost Treasures of Infocom games were a big part of the computer games I played in high school, but I'm naming Trinity as first among them. 

For the rest of my list, here are the parser games listed in alphabetical order:

• Baker of Shireton, by Hanon Ondricek, is both straightforward and absurd. What if a single-player text adventure tried to simulate an MMORPG? It’s much more entertaining than the .hack Playstation games.  
• Child's Play, by Stephen Granade, is all about emotional manipulation and cunning schemes. Because sometimes, justice demands it.  
• Curse of the Garden Isle, by Ryan Veeder, is a peaceful, low-stakes exploration game. Well, the stakes are low for you, but not so much for the island’s former visitors. 
• Diddlebucker!, by J. Michael, is a solid mashup of 80’s scavenger-hunt movies and Infocom text adventure classics. It’s very well done.  
• Future Threads, by Xavid, is not quite about time travel, but it is about predicting the future. It includes an in-game map and direct feedback about how your actions will influence the game’s outcome.  
• Holy Robot Empire, by Caleb Wilson, needs no explanation. It took me a bit to figure out that I was still supposed to be a human character, but I was determined to find the Robopope and then kiss its papal ring.  
• Hunger Daemon, by Sean M. Shore, is a Lovecraft tribute with multiple endings. More importantly, it’s a self-aware Lovecraft tribute, which saves it from overwrought, needlessly elaborate prose that can infest other iterations.  
• Kerkerkruip, by Victor Gijsbers, has the best combat system I have ever seen in a parser game. The setting manages to be familiar without existing as a stereotyped cliché.  
• Oppositely Opal, Buster Hudson, is a game about spellcraft. And about friendship. And about making your rivals pay.   
• Origin of Madame Time, by Brian Rushton, builds a detailed world full of super-heroes and super-villains. It’s fun, the puzzles are fair, and it gives you a choice of taking the easy way out or becoming a true hero.  

Here are the Twine games in alphabetical order:

• Animalia, by Ian Michael Waddell, leans hard into combinatorial explosion and ends up better for it.
• Beware the Faerie Food You Eat, by Astrid Dalmady, nails the atmosphere of a trip to the faerie realm.
• Cannery Vale, by Hanon Ondricek, is a game of stories within stories.
• and Seedship, John Ayliff is a game where you find a new home for the human race. Good luck! 

All these games are listed in the Interactive Fiction Database, which is another useful resource for finding dynamic and engaging stories.

Not Evil, but Spectacular

We should have a (spoiler-free) discussion about the song "Not Evil," from Lego Movie 2, because it is a triumph:

 

This song is an amazing success precisely because it's a ridiculous failure. Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi’s message is hopelessly broken.

1. If the queen is good, skeptics will never take her word for it — she keeps talking about evil, imprisonment, and execution. 
2. If the queen is evil, skeptics will never fall for her lies — she can't stop herself from talking about evil, imprisonment, and execution. 

In either case, her obsession with evil makes her more relatable. She's just like us!

Crafty rogues have entertained people for centuries, because being good is boring. The Book of Swindles was written during the Ming Dynasty in China. Reviewer Rob Moore wrote that “the success of the collection upon its publication in 1617 demonstrates that the author knew too well that the only thing better than alerting the reader to nefarious criminals is to let them in on the crime.”

Consider how many games let you be bad, knowing that your actions are wrong but letting you do them anyway. It can be as explicit as Grand Theft Auto, or as low key as a game like Donut County. The opening sequence of Donut County establishes that it is especially self-aware, as game designer Andrew Plotkin explained:

"it establishes right off that dropping people into holes is (a) wrong and (b) what you’re going to do all game long and (c) way fun. This is kind of brilliant." 

Back to Lego Movie 2. During the song, the queen engages in a bunch of questionable behavior that makes it impossible to tell whether she’s welcoming her guests or menacing them. (You can find similar behavior online: someone who is using the word “ally” to describe themselves hasn't made their creepy behavior any less creepy.)

Saying “This is X” is different from saying "This is not Y." What does “not evil” mean, anyway? In the classic D&D table of alignments, you’ve only ruled out three alignments, or less than half of the available options.

I know what you're asking. You're asking, "What alignment is my hamburger?" And I'm here to help. pic.twitter.com/IDgtfB5jUc

— Kyle Marquis (@Moochava) February 13, 2016

But it takes more than clever writing for the Lego sequence to work.

The conflicting messages would be a waste of time if they were delivered with less energy; it would fail if the “good” parts weren’t trying hard to be believable, or the “evil” parts weren’t appropriately suspect. Tiffany Haddish absolutely nails it at both extremes of the spectrum.

Listen to the (believably!) self-righteous way she announces “I never lie!” This is in the same song where she gives away an entire planet. Compare that tone to the way she lists off adjectives that people use to describe her. Ask yourself if someone completely innocent would have nearly as much fun reciting those words.

The whole thing is amazing.

Virals, Then and Now

From 2013:

I'd guess we have 12-18 months until the population develops herd immunity to 'viral' headlines. http://t.co/x2GLKF6K8i

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 7, 2013

The timetable was off, but the idea remains valid. A gimmick that is overused will become ineffective. From a 2019 study:

We took a nationally representative sample of 2,102 British adults, and undertook an experimental evaluation of some of marketers’ most commonly used tactics. [....]

Two thirds of the British public (65 percent) interpreted examples of scarcity and social proof claims used by hotel booking websites as sales pressure. Half said they were likely to distrust the company as a result of seeing them (49 percent). Just one in six (16 percent) said they believed the claims.

The results surprised us. We had expected there to be cynicism among a subgroup—perhaps people who booked hotels regularly, for example. The verbatim commentary from participants showed people see scarcity and social proof claims frequently online, most commonly in the travel, retail, and fashion sectors.

And this entire thread is worth reading:

Once something hits ~100 replies, you never want to look at or think about it again. Everyone something *can* say has been said. By day two of that notification tab being flooded with RTs you just feel you're being punished for having been half-clever for a moment.

— mcc (@mcclure111) June 26, 2019

Part of Twitter's problems stem from the fact that huge numbers of automated programs, and humans who act like them, are busy trying to generate social proof on behalf of their patrons. Even when the humans start seeing through it, the algorithms are still being refined to encourage it.

Is There Ever One Future?

Twitter thought that it was very important for me to see this:

What was the most interesting thing you saw SuperBowl weeekend? Mine was a glimpse at the future and it game from a video game.

Get ready for the Oasis.#Fortnite #Oasis #Future
- https://t.co/Wcagb3yTRD

— Keith Akre (@KeithAkre) February 14, 2019

So I read it. And I agree with this bit:

What made the virtual concert on Saturday afternoon so fascinating for me, was that this was the first time I really understood what some other commentators have already been saying. Fortnite is not just a game that kids play – it’s a place they go to hang out.

This article from Quartz compares the game to a skate park. Kids get home from school, log-on and hang out with their friends in a virtual world. The actual game aspect serves as the backdrop.

What I don't agree with is how the post goes on to make hyperbolic assertions that everyone will live in, and enjoy, this future. It's predicting a technological singularity for video games, snaring everyone in the same, homogeneous MMORPG. It's an investor's idea of what the future holds for gaming.

On the other hand, there's Jesse Schell, who has developed video games, written books about them, and teaches classes about new technology. He takes a more pluralistic view:

People always talk about platforms, platforms, platforms, but really it's about, "Where do you play?"

There's a reason we don't play MMOs in the living room. For like the entire history of MMOs, we've had one or two go to the living room, and they've all died. And they've all done really well at the PC desk.

So what I always say is, "houses have multiple venues." One of them is the hearth. And that's the living room. The family gathers together, and it's a group thing. And then you have the workbench. That's where usually the PC lives. It's a place you go privately, you do hard work, it's very lean-forward. Usually the PC's there.

That's from a Gamasutra interview with Schell where he discusses current applications for virtual reality. His book, The Art of Game Design, discusses these venues in greater detail, but the idea is that people have different reasons for engaging in play, and so they end up playing games in different places.

The problem with the Akre post is that it doesn't allow for that kind of diversity. It just folds everything into the Oasis from Ready Player One. And that brings its own set of issues. Vox has already tracked how attitudes have shifted since the book was published in 2011. (Some people still like it. And that's great! It's okay to like terrible things. It's less okay to declare that those terrible things will be the future for everyone.)

Overall, the tone of the post is consistent. It's a narrow view of a favorable future that is designed to appeal to people who like online games, esports, twitch streaming, Ready Player One, and the Super Bowl.

It's just weird that Twitter's algorithms thought I was one of those people.

Using Twine to Keep Score with Three Teams

The problem One of the problems with trying to learn programming outside of a formal computer science class is the amount of time I spend re-inventing wheels. 

This issue, which I spent two days struggling with, has probably been solved by other people. I bet they published solutions in academic journals, but they ended up with abstract names like graph traversal or Byzantine fault tolerance. 

I'm just trying to keep score when there are three different teams. The player can assign points to any team, in any order they choose. 

Let's call the teams Red, Yellow, and Blue. The world state should always indicate which team has the most points. 

A color wheel is going to be helpful here: 

The world state can change whenever a new point is awarded to one of the three teams. If the Red team is winning, then the world is red. If the Blue team is in the lead, then the world is blue. This helps because I can use green, purple, and orange to show when two teams are tied for points.

It seems like a network containing 7 nodes (six colors + neutral for a three-way tie), with each node connected to 3 other nodes. I need to write Twine code that 1) identifies which node was the previous world state, and 2) which node should be the new world state.

Stumbling towards an answer on my own, it looks like this:

When a RED point is added
If state is red, do nothing.
If state is orange or purple or neutral, move to red
If state is yellow, and $redPoints = $yellowPoints, move to orange
If state is blue, and $redPoints = $bluePoints, move to purple
If state is green, and $redPoints = $bluePoints, move to neutral
When a YELLOW point is added
If state is yellow, do nothing.
If state is orange or green or neutral, move to yellow
If state is blue, and $yellowPoints = $bluePoints, move to green
If state is red, and $yellowPoints = $redPoints, move to orange
If state is purple, and $yellowPoints = $redPoints, move to neutral
When a BLUE point is added
If state is blue, do nothing.
If state is purple or green or neutral, move to blue
If state is red, and $bluePoints = $redPoints, move to purple
if state is yellow, and $bluePoints = $yellowPoints, move to green
if state is orange, and $bluePoints = $yellowPoints, move to neutral

Writing out code in SugarCube, this part goes in the StoryCaption passage:

Ascore: <<print $aScore>>
Bscore: <<print $bScore>>
Cscore: <<print $cScore>>

<<if $worldState == "A">>Red
<<elseif $worldState == "B">>Blue
<<elseif $worldState == "C">>Yellow
<<elseif $worldState == "AB">>Purple
<<elseif $worldState == "CA">>Orange
<<elseif $worldState == "BC">>Green
<<else>>neutral<</if>>

It lets you see how many points have been assigned to each faction, and it shows the current world state. (I simplified the teams to be A, B, and C in the code.)

This part goes in the passage where Red gains a point:

<<set $aScore += 1>>
<<if $worldState == "AB" or $worldState == "CA" or $worldState == "N" >><<set $worldState = "A">>
<<elseif $worldState == "B" and $aScore == $bScore>><<set $worldState = "AB">>
<<elseif $worldState == "C" and $aScore == $cScore>><<set $worldState = "CA">>
<<elseif $worldState == "BC" and $aScore == $bScore>><<set $worldState = "N">>
<</if>>

This part goes in the passage where Blue gains a point:

<<set $bScore += 1>>
<<if $worldState == "AB" or $worldState == "BC" or $worldState == "N" >><<set $worldState = "B">>
<<elseif $worldState == "C" and $bScore == $cScore>><<set $worldState = "BC">>
<<elseif $worldState == "A" and $bScore == $aScore>><<set $worldState = "AB">>
<<elseif $worldState == "CA" and $bScore == $aScore>><<set $worldState = "N">>
<</if>>

And this part goes in the passage where Yellow gains a point:

<<set $cScore += 1>>
<<if $worldState == "CA" or $worldState == "BC" or $worldState == "N" >><<set $worldState = "C">>
<<elseif $worldState == "A" and $cScore == $aScore>><<set $worldState = "CA">>
<<elseif $worldState == "B" and $cScore == $bScore>><<set $worldState = "BC">>
<<elseif $worldState == "AB" and $cScore == $aScore>><<set $worldState = "N">>
<</if>>

I should probably leave this to the professionals, but I got this code to work after a lot of trial and error.

Image credit: By Jackelynelc - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Interactive Fiction: Forgotten Tavern

It's another game!

 

Discerning critics have described it as "An odd experience. A sort of mash-up of IF, a dungeon grinder, a world-building strategy game, a roguelike game and one of those games you play on your phone where you have to make burgers or hotdogs to order.

Sort of." You should give it a try!

Public or Private Development?

As a connoisseur of internet outrage, I was riveted by the momentary disturbance around Jack Conte and the discussion of his band’s 2014 tour profits. The initial surge of support, from people who felt sympathy for struggling artists, was followed by a barrage of criticism; some people thought it was a sneaky marketing ploy to hype his company, Patreon. Putting aside the drama of whether Conte can describe himself as a struggling musician, Patreon itself is an interesting look at the changing dynamics of building an audience.

Artistic pursuits — whether they involve playing in a band, writing a story, or creating a work of Interactive Fiction — are more fulfilling when they are done for an audience. At start of an ambitious project, it’s always worth asking “does anybody else want me to do this?” And in an ideal world, people who want you to do it will also pay you for it. (In a cartoon world created by Matt Groening, people sing about how you’ve got to do what you love even if it’s not a good idea.)

Crowdfunding has been a useful way to gauge audience support. Creators — when they know what they’re doing and haven’t set out to scam people — can raise money and use it to bring their ideas into the world. Crowdfunding has also seen its share of public embarrassments. Takedown: Red Sabre was funded through Kickstarter and later panned as “unfinished and broken, with playability problems everywhere you look.”

Conte’s platform offers an option that lies between collecting the money up front and hoping that people will pay you for your work at the end. It’s a way for creators to collaborate with their audiences, and when it works well, it allows them to spend more time on the parts that resonate with their fans. Ongoing feedback helps them recognize whether artistic changes are taking their work in the right direction.

The dark side of Patreon is its potential for scope creep. Developers can promise too much, forcing them to make some difficult choices. They might have to do more things in less detail to deliver all the promised features, or they may need to cut back on their original design to deliver higher quality work. These choices become more difficult when they’re made in front of an audience that has become financially and emotionally invested in the outcome.

This leaves aspiring creators with the choice to develop their work in public, in private, or something in between. Each approach has seen high-profile failures, and each one has seen unconventional successes that would not otherwise have been possible. It keeps things interesting.

Interactive Fiction: Pushing Loyal People

It's a game!



And it's a game that you can actually win, but some people don't seem to have what it takes.

Maybe it's their loss? It might also be poor design choices.

Felix Salmon takes it back

Felix Salmon has written some advice to journalists. See if you can read it without giggling: 

Indeed, the exact same forces which are good for journalism and good for owners are the forces which are bad for journalists themselves. 

Firstly, of course, there’s the explosion in the number of talented people writing online. Where by “writing” I mean the full panoply of skills in demand these days. (It’s worth singling out two skills in particular. First, the creation of moving images, be they two-second GIFs or two-hour immersive features; and second, the ability to find and deftly remix material which was originally created by somebody else.) 

It’s easy enough to understand the basic mechanics of supply and demand: as the supply of such people has risen, their price has fallen.

In that same article he says "a couple of years ago I harbored hopes that things might improve," but it was in fact just last April that he said:

Wonkery is like the diamond stores on New York’s 47th Street: Each one makes money not despite the nearby competition, but because of it. Klein and Silver and Leonhardt are constantly congratulating each others’ new hires and witty insights on Twitter, and the congratulations are real: Supply creates its own demand, which creates more supply, and so on, in a virtuous cycle.

I will never get tired of pointing out the super dense stupidity concentrated in that statement.

Peak Wonk

Remember when superstar journalists launching their own news sites were going to be a thing? And then the hype didn't quite match expectations.

Here we have the Washington Post talking about Why Internet Journalists Don't Organize:

"Web writing has become commoditized. Not only are there hordes of recent graduates who would gladly fill holes on a masthead, new media organizations don’t necessarily need large newsrooms of reporters; cheap freelancers and Web editors to repackage other articles are abundant. [....] 

'With an abundance of content, and content producers, many of whom are totally happy to give their stuff for free for the ephemeral compensation known as exposure, the whole marketplace has been upended,' says Alan Mutter, a veteran media consultant based in Silicon Valley. Accordingly, wages for reporters have grown at less than half the pace of pay in other fields."

And here we have Felix Salmon living in an alternate universe:

"Wonkery is like the diamond stores on New York’s 47th Street: Each one makes money not despite the nearby competition, but because of it. Klein and Silver and Leonhardt are constantly congratulating each others’ new hires and witty insights on Twitter, and the congratulations are real: Supply creates its own demand, which creates more supply, and so on, in a virtuous cycle. 

The Wonk Bubble is the best kind of cluster, a bit like Silicon Valley for technology, Boston for universities or Savile Row for suitmakers. As the best in the world cluster together, they up the game of all the players and help to create whole new economies."

They're helping to create whole new economies where nobody gets paid very much, I guess.

India 1, Argentina 0

In Argentina: Government: Media Caused a ‘Tampon Run’

"The Government’s tight policies on imports have come under fire from supermarkets, pharmacies and the media alike in light of the recent disaster. It doesn’t help that there is an grand total of zero tampon manufacturers in Argentina, and that the majority are therefore shipped in from Brazil and Colombia."

In India: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

"he succeeded in creating a low-cost method for the production of sanitary towels. The process involves four simple steps. First, a machine similar to a kitchen grinder breaks down the hard cellulose into fluffy material, which is packed into rectangular cakes with another machine.
The cakes are then wrapped in non-woven cloth and disinfected in an ultraviolet treatment unit. The whole process can be learned in an hour.
Muruganantham's goal was to create user-friendly technology. The mission was not just to increase the use of sanitary pads, but also to create jobs for rural women"

Looks like somebody should stop thinking about importing products, and start importing processes.

While the bosses are watching

In China: Hacked emails reveal China’s elaborate and absurd internet propaganda machine

"Shi Wenqing, an affable 60-year-old, was appointed secretary of the Ganzhou branch of the Communist Party—a position akin to mayor—in 2011. [....] Shi wants to present himself as a fresh thinker to his superiors in the party [....] During Shi’s [online] town halls, people are paid to post comments that make him and the government look as good as possible."

In the US: At Sears, Eddie Lampert's Warring Divisions Model Adds to the Troubles

"Word got around that Wexler was [Eddie] Lampert. Bosses started tracking how often employees were 'Pebbling.' One former business head says her group organized Pebble conversations about miscellaneous topics just to appear they were active users. Another group held 'Pebblejam' sessions to create the illusion they were using the network."

Believe only half of what you read, none of what you hear, and assume everyone on the internet has an ulterior motive.

The Diminishing Power of the Press

Over here, an American Journalism Review piece by Carl Sessions Stepp:

As news coverage democratizes and as producers proliferate, the fabled “power of the press” may diminish. [....] When mainstream news organizations were riding at their highest, they were tougher targets. In those days, too, even in war zones reporters were often extended at least some Red Cross-like protection by combatants.

But treating journalists as VIPs means that companies, organizations, or individuals can get away with bad behavior as long as it's in front of non-VIPs — it's okay if nobody important is watching.

Over here, we have Ken White at Popehat:

The Patrick McLaw story blowing up over the long weekend can be traced to terrible reporting by WBOC journalist Tyler Butler in a post that was linked and copied across the internet.

Ken's full post provides links to journalists who already have the respect of the public, but end up betraying it, "accept[ing] the headline-grabbing take rather than the less scandalous but more correct take."

An increase in "citizen journalists" seems less like a bug, and more like a feature.

Data Scientists Complain that No One Has Made them Obsolete Yet

In this corner, the New York Times:

"For Big-Data Scientists, ‘Janitor Work’ Is Key Hurdle to Insights"

"We really need better tools so we can spend less time on data wrangling and get to the sexy stuff,” said Michael Cavaretta, a data scientist at Ford Motor, which has used big data analysis to trim inventory levels and guide changes in car design.

And in this corner, Tyler Cowen:

"What are humans still good for? The turning point in Freestyle chess may be approaching" 

...even the most talented humans move from being very real contributors to being strictly zero marginal product.  Or negative marginal product, as the case may be.

And of course this has implications for more traditional labor markets as well.  You might train to help a computer program read medical scans, and for thirteen years add real value with your intuition and your ability to revise the computer’s mistakes or at least to get the doctor to take a closer look.  But it takes more and more time for you to improve on the computer each year.  And then one day…poof!  ZMP for you.

The data wrangling (or "janitor work") is the sexy stuff. Complaining that no one has automated 50%-80% of your job is an interesting perspective — why do you think they would stop anywhere short of 100%?

A Tale of Two Countries

Sure, America is pretty awesome.

But did you know just how awesome?

Here's the U.K. version of Cher Lloyd's "Want U Back"

It's a song about girl who is upset that her ex-boyfriend has found someone new. Designed for a U.K. audience, she spends the video moping around her apartment (flat?), remembering how things used to be.

Now, what does that video look like when they release it in the U.S.?

Same song; same girl. But this time, she starts the video by assembling her crew, they confront the new girl at work, and it wraps up at the police station where she's facing criminal charges — but it was totally worth it.

U-S-A!
U-S-A!
U-S-A!

I read all 10 books of the Mission: Earth series

That’s not meant to be boastful. I wouldn’t tell anyone else to try it, and in fact I am making this post as a cautionary statement intended to help others.^*

I found nothing objectionable with the premise. A superadvanced alien civilization has established a timetable for the conquest of the universe. A routine scouting mission has realized that Earth civilization is so insane and backwards that by the time the aliens arrive to conquer it, humans will have consumed, misused, and/or destroyed anything worth claiming (I think that this was a problem for the aliens because they needed the planet in good shape to use it as a refueling base, or something). Without alerting Earth to their presence, the aliens have to keep us alive long enough to enslave us. Oh, it also won’t be too tough for them to walk among us since we’re visually identical, thanks to some throwaway sideplot about how life on earth was actually started by rebels fleeing the alien empire.

At first, the narrative device seemed innovative. The books start off as the transcription of a confession, and the primary narrator^** is revealed to be a selfish, greedy, depraved wretch who worked for the “Coordinated Information Apparatus,” a government organization that covertly employs bribery, torture, and assassination nominally to protect the government, but actually to consolidate its own power (and its initials are CIA. Get it?). The CIA wants to maintain the status quo for their own nefarious ends, so the books are a first-person account their efforts to stop the hero who has been appointed to fix things.

From the point of view of the narrator, the graft, extortion, imprisonment, fraud, psychosis, and widespread corruption encountered in the alien society are unremarkable; it is then supposed to be funny when he is shocked to encounter extreme versions of the same on earth, as if we have let things get so bad that even an amoral psychopath thinks we’ve gone too far. Larded throughout are also grade-school crudities and efforts at toilet humor, like the two nymphomaniac circus performers named “Cun” and “Twa,” or the cross-dressing homosexual Russian “Colonel Gaylov.”

Observing the hero through the eyes of someone on the villain’s side is an interesting idea, and has been done before with positive results (see also: Black Company). The problem with the Mission Earth books is that both its narrators are completely devoid of any sympathetic characteristics, and both of them believe in relating the action by way of the “tell, don’t show” school of writing^***. Conflicts and plot points are rushed and one-sided. The work’s flaws turn out to be an inadvertent blessing as readers are forced to endure:

-A rogue alien geneticist, who is sadistic and depraved (and we know this because we are point-blank told it by the narrator) is regarded as a leading light in earth psychiatry because he preaches that sex is evil, electroshock and lobotomies should be routine medical procedures, and pregnant women are so morally corrupt that they can only be redeemed by death.

-The narrator rapes two lesbians straight (only after being driven to it because they withheld his salary, and they bound him and tortured him extensively). These ex-lesbians love straight sex so much that they keep the narrator hostage in their home, insisting that he rape all their friends.

-One of the ex-lesbians “recruits” an underage girl who propels herself headlong into full depravity, eventually traveling from earth to the alien homeworld to turn all the children of the alien nobles and government officials into bisexual catamite thralls.

-The narrator is dazzled by a mysterious concubine who remains sexually distant and insists on making love with the lights off, and who is later revealed to be a man.

Every one of these sequences was a chore to read^****. There are aliens, necrophilia, spaceships, bestiality, faster-than-light travel, sodomy, and erotic mutilation, all relayed in the most tedious fashion possible by a contrived narrator whose unconscious attempts to be funny are all too clearly conscious efforts on the author’s behalf.

While I am unable to discern the fine nuances differentiating satire and parody, I know that neither term apply to these books. I would instead describe them as a gross burlesque that thinks itself a madcap send-up of everything it perceives to be wrong with contemporary society. Big oil has a stranglehold on the planet. The wealthy have more power than governments. The public is gullible and willing to follow anyone with a slick message. When you include the book’s depiction of psychiatry as subverting the natural order of things to pursue a secret agenda, it begins to look less like a work of fiction and more like an extended soapbox rant.

Avoid this series, especially if you’re someone who can’t quit reading something until it’s finished.




<sub>*Specifically, others who need written warnings to keep them from doing things like giving the finger to a gang of bikers, selling drugs to grade schoolers, or licking electrical sockets.

**He changes to a secondary narrator for the last few books, for reasons that aren’t worth bothering to explain.

***My argument would be strengthened by actual quotes from the books, but I just can’t do it. I wouldn’t turn back through those pages for all the tea in China, black-market snack cakes in fat camp, booze at an Elks club meeting, etc.

****While it is fair to note that I have only chosen to highlight the most deviant sexual practices contained within the series, my counterpoint would be that there is little else in them that is memorable. All of the physical problems on Earth are solved by superadvanced alien techno-magic, leaving the hero and the narrator to grapple with Earth’s backwards cultural attitudes for the majority of the books.</sub>

Worst Book Misconception Ever: MAMista

PROTIP FOR PEOPLE WHO DO NOT SPEAK SPANISH: "Mamacita" and "Mamista" are two completely different terms, even though moderately filtered Google Image Search will deliver cheesecake photo results on the first page of the search results for both of them. The first is Spanish for "little mama," and the second is a shitty thriller by Len Deighton set in South America.

After misreading the title, I dug myself into a deeper hole by barely skimming the jacket copy, which mentioned Graham Greene. I always get Graham Green confused with Evelyn Waugh (don't ask), so I expected something like Scoop crossed with Our Man in Havana. The garish cover didn't help. It made me think of South American hijinks on par with a novelization of Club Paradise, where a plucky band of misfits topple a corrupt government and free a country from the yoke of big business, with wacky adventures and possible comedic subplots involving fake pregnancies, subverted gender roles, and mistaken identity.

I was very, very wrong. By the time I figured it out, it was easier just to finish the book. SPOILER ALERT Here's what happened:

The male lead? Dead.

The love interest? Dead.

The guerillas? Ultimately losing a war of attrition on two fronts against the government and the untreated afflictions of the pestilential rainforest, presumed dead.

The two Americans abducted in a guerilla raid? The civilian grinds up his eyeglasses and swallows the shards, dying a slow, agonizing death from internal bleeding. The other one, an undercover CIA agent, also ends up dead.

The idealistic college student who traveled to the country with dreams of helping the marxist revolution? Dead.

The enterprising South American who uses the student's ID to return to the states? Tracked down and killed in the hospital by mobsters because the student skipped town while owing huge debts to a loan shark.

I think the only people who don't die are the President of the United States and his aide, who are spliced into the end of the story to make some point about politics ignoring human suffering and developed nations exploiting the life-and-death struggles of the third world for their own gain.

This was, hands down, the worst comedy about sassy latinas turning society upside down in a tinpot South American dictatorship that I have ever read.

LJ: A Crystal Healer Hit Me in the Groin

Energy healers are not all tie-dye and hemp stink; some of them have elegant, professional operations rivaling high-end psychiatrists' offices. I visited one in Germany. It figures that the analytical, mechanically-adept minds behind Krupp, Braun, and the Luftwaffe would come up with a way to engineer new age mysticism for wire-rimmed glasses and expensive leather.

A friend took me to see the healer because I had a substance¹ abuse problem. Everyone should visit an energy healer at least once, especially if the consultation is in a language you don't speak. It's a lot easier to keep from giggling in the face of the more... exotic claims when you can tell yourself it's just a bad translation. This healer owned a spa shop (think "Teutonic Bath and Body Works³") and ran her practice from a private office decorated in earth tones and stainless steel.

I didn't pay attention during the boring parts and just focused on the pretty colors. Did you know that you can buy a bottle of oil and water⁴ that will attune itself to your energy field? Not only will it help you bring your elemental vibrations into balance, but once it synchs up with you it will display any health problems you're experiencing as impurities within its liquid. It's presumably cleaner and more accurate than filling a lava lamp with your own pee. As an added bonus, the crystal liquid can be drank, or rubbed into the skin, I think. (The translation wasn't too clear on those points, and I didn't press the issue.)

Another valuable diagnostic tool, I learned, is the Polaroid photograph. The visual image of you remains frozen in time, but your photographic aura keeps pace with your real-world aura, showing any changes in your condition. Why shouldn't it? It did steal a piece of your soul, after all. (Don't worry, It'll grow back.) This means that a skilled healer can diagnose your ailments (and take your money) without having you visit their office. The diagnostic accuracy of a disposable photo combined with the fees of a CAT scan means that everyone wins.

I knew that smiling during all of this would lead to uncontrollable giggling, so I just tightened up my jaw from time to time in an effort to keep a straight face. Occasionally I would add a thoughtful stroke of the chin, to take a moment to grapple with the profound universal truth that had just been revealed to me. Then we got to the diagnostic wand.

The wand is sensitive to the most minute disturbances, moving in response to aura disruptions/vital energy imbalances/gewurztraminertrinkeneffekts. Just like dowsing for gout⁵ or tapeworms instead of water or gold. Rather than a forked stick, we were going to be using a small knot of crystal girdled by a steel band the diameter of a Pepsi can, wobbling at the end of a long, narrow stalk.

Looking at the wand, I tried to appear calm, relaxed, and serious all at the same time. I sat in the diagnostic chair⁶ and braced myself for awesome.

None of us were surprised by the initial wobbling. I assumed that it was because my degenerate lifestyle had already done its damage to my energy field. As the scan progressed up my legs, the healer and I noticed a consistent pattern of disturbance, and probably both began to expect that the general level of disruption would remain constant across my entire person. That's when the business end of the wand, which packs a surprising amount of mass, whipped upwards and slammed down on my inner thigh, about half an inch shy of pulverizing my junk. I curled into the fetal position while a flurry of discussion broke out between the healer and my translator.

In a conversation between two Germans, I can't tell which one is apologizing and which one is issuing orders to invade Belgium, but I'm pretty sure that the strike was accidental. How can your clients balance their auras and tune their vibrations if you strap them into a chair and pound on their nutsack, right?

Things wrapped up pretty quickly after that. I left with a fistful of prescriptions and instructions to get the monkey off my back. I didn't really have the money to keep up with the full course of treatment over the long term, but I have gotten better at moderation⁷.



_{1. Sugar}²

<sub>2. No, seriously, I was told I drank too much soda, so we were Doing Something about it.

3. BrodelnundQuälen GmbH.

4. With crystals mixed in.

5. Caused by urine crystals in the bloodstream, I might add.

6. Not unlike a dentist's chair, but I'm sure crystals were involved somewhere.

7. I'd love to shoehorn in some kind of punchline here about a single-payer healthcare system and how socialized medicine still lets the rich buy the treatments they deserve, but frankly, I'm just too lazy.</sub>