"By what right do games suddenly demand the status of great art? If Chess and Go, arguably the two greatest games in history, have never been regarded as works of art, why should Missile Command?"

I did not read all of what I think is the longest blog post ever - sorry, i'm a lazy jerk. But, to that particular question, which was quoted @ Sullivan...

Chess and go are rules. You can play the games with any set of pieces you can muster which allow you to implement those rules. The pieces in a chess board can be simply functional - ugly plastic, rocks, pieces of paper - or they can works of art in their own right. Either way, they can still be used to play the game. The rules are separate from what you use to implement the rules.

In video games, what you use to implement the rules and the rules themselves are bound together. The video game creator creates the pieces and the game, and they are nearly inseparable. And the implementation - the images, stories, sounds - can be every bit as artistic as a handcrafted chess set. The immersion in today's video games is as good as any interactive art installation in any museum, the voice actors are as good as most animated films, the sound effects are as realistic as most big budget movies, etc.. With video games, you get the whole thing: the rules, the boundaries, and the hand-crafted artifice which turns the rules (which are far more complex than chess or go) into a truly immersive experience.

With chess, you can have art, or you can have cheap plastic. With modern video games, the art is baked right in.

“It’s every band’s right, you shouldn’t have to do f---ing 'Glee,'” Grohl told THR following the premiere of "Foo Fighters: Back and Forth," the new Foo Fighters documentary which just made its South By Southwest debut. “And then the guy who created 'Glee' is so offended that we’re not, like, begging to be on his f---ing show ... f--- that guy for thinking anybody and everybody should want to do 'Glee.'”
...
Recounting anti-"Glee" comments made by Slash earlier this year and subsequent retorts by Murphy, reported by THR, Grohl explained to drummer Taylor Hawkins: “The 'Glee' guy, what a f---ing jerk. Slash was the first one. He wanted to do Guns ‘n’ Roses and Slash is like, ‘I hate f---ing musicals. It’s worse than 'Grease.'’ Then [Murphy's] like, ‘Well, of course he’d say that, he’s a washed up ol’ rock star, that’s what they f---ing do.’ And then Kings of Leon say, ‘No, we don’t want to be on your show.’ And then he’s like, ‘Snotty little assholes ... ’ And it’s just like, Dude, maybe not everyone loves 'Glee.' Me included.”

Said Hawkins: “Yeah, f--- that s---.”

He Crashed Into Earth, Crying In Rage

150,000+ hits for "no looting in japan", most of them to articles comparing Japan to New Orleans after Katrina or the aftermath of Haiti.

Sadly for those who seem eager to have an indirect way to piss on the black folk, it's a myth. There actually is looting, and fraud, and assorted crime in going on in the areas affected by the disasters.

But, the reason that it seems like there is no looting in Japan is that we're just not hearing about it. Japanese media is reporting it, but western media isn't.

Update: more here.

I'll have a new Name That Tune up in the next few days. Prepare your ears!

When protesters showed up to march outside the house of union-busting WI State Senator Randy Hopper (R-Fond du Lac), the Senator's wife came out to tell them that Hopper no longer lived there. Instead, he's divorced her, left his family, and is now living it up (outside of the district he supposedly represents) in the state capitol Madison. With his shiny new 25 year old mistress, who happens to be a Senate staffer (I bet!). And then the maid signed the protesters' petition to recall him.

Astroturfing Videogame Reviews

CNBC anchor Larry Kudlow made a startling statement about the earthquake in Japan on Friday.

Kudlow was listening to a report about the global stock markets doing well in the wake of the quake. "All in all, the market taking this in stride," his co-host said to him.

"The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we can be grateful for that," Kudlow responded. "And the human toll is a tragedy, we know that."

href, huffpo

The Blaze compares the video O'Keefe released to the raw footage and finds some rather amazing differences - chief among them, is that when Schiller insulted the teabaggers he was quoting someone else, two Republicans, in fact. And that's just a single example of the many distortions in the version O'Keefe released.

This is some bullshit.

NPR's a fucking waste.

Peak Coffee?