The Republic of Thoronia

Every once and a while I spot something strange in Denver. I rarely take a picture of it, and even more rarely share it with anyone who isn’t with me. However, these two things I had to spread the word on…

It’s been snot-wipingly busy here in Thoronia, as the sole provider of funds has been busy fundraising and attending the university. Of course, the university is being attended in order to expand the histories of Thoronia, but for now we’ll just name drop a few interesting things we’ve spotted about the web or on the shelves.

• *If you don’t already know, David Foster Wallace took his own life last week. He was an amazingly astute and unbelievably talented writer — one whom unwittingly contributed to the Thoronian histories in more ways than one. Although much of his work is amazing, my personal favorite is “Host,” a non-fiction article published in the Atlantic three years ago. The online version does it no justice, but I can’t give you all a copy of it in print.

• *Speaking of snot-wiping, a member of Thoronia has started working on an article looking at Super Mario Bros. 3, and I don’t mean just looking — it’s deep analysis of Super Mario Bros. 3 using Freud, uncanny and Oedipus Rex.

• *Speaking of absurdness, curious as to what is being read in Thoronia right now? Here’s the what hit the chopping block pre-August 25th:

Sarah Vowell — The Partly Cloudy Patriot

David Foster Wallace — The Broom of the System

David Mitchell — Ghostwritten

Haruki Murakami — What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

• *And here is what I got slammed with post August 25th:

Meredith Brosnan — Mr. Dynamite

Renee Gladman — Juice

Patrik Ourednik — Europena

Adolfo Casares — Invention of Moral

Anchor Book of New American Short Stories

Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism

Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives

• *On a completely unrelated note, NHL 09 is by far the best sports game ever to grace a console system — better than 94, better than Tecmo Bowl, better than Mutant League.

• *If you’ve ever played Portal, the highly addictive, interesting, amazing, talked about, awesome, sweet ass, puzzle 3D game, than you’ll likely appreciate this video, which sets the amazing end credits song to some typographical fun.

Portal – Still Alive typography from Trickster on Vimeo.

• *I’ve been trying my best to give the most talked about game of the last 5 years a real play through, but Spore seems to me like a remarkably ambitious, creative effort that went bad. It’s one of the most boring games I’ve ever played — web browser flash games have more depth. However, the actual game, what it does, what it accomplishes, and what happens when you stick with it is remarkable — I mean, if you’re into that whole creationist evolution theory (we here in Thoronia know that the Good King Thor created all). I’ll probably hit it up again come my next three day weekend, but for now, I’ll sit awkwardly in disappointment, thinking that perhaps I just didn’t “get it.”

• *Speaking of King Thor, the Republic of Thoronia Band just got a date to play a show. Mark November 7th on your calenders, take the night off work and come on down for some Friday Night Fun at the hi-dive with The Republic of Thoronia Band, Franklin’s Mint and Sunburned Hand of Man. Show starts at 9:00 sharp kids (if you haven’t been to a show at the hi-dive recently, let me tell you, they’ve whipped it into shape, when it says the show starts at 9:00, the show starts at 9:00), and the RoTB will be kicking it off and getting it started!

• *In case anyone was wondering, here are my picks for holiday games of the year: Dead Space, Far Cry 2, Fallout 3, Prince of Persia and Little Big Planet.

• *That’s all I got.

Wow, what an uneventful day. It seems like Denver prepared us all ten-fold for the DNC, but only three folds worth of protesters showed up, and nobody is downtown. Today Denver metro looked more like the day after Thanksgiving than being in the midst of the biggest convention this town has ever seen. So, where are all the protesters? Scared? Unlikely. In jail? Only a 100 or so so far. Oh, right, they’re all incredibly unorganized! Of course! I’ve been bashing protesters here all week, so forgive me for another, it’s not that I don’t believe in the rights of free speech, or being liberal with idea’s, but when you are going to protest something, combine your forces. Too many different agenda’s have come to Denver and none of them are getting their point across.

There is also the matter of lying. Someone in Denver is lying. 9 News? NPR? The protesters? Whose getting tear gassed, pepper-sprayed and beaten seems to be getting lost in the shuffle. There is one report of an officer hitting a girl from Make Love Not War, confirmed. The rest (the tear gassing at least) seems to be getting confused. Was there tear gas on Monday night? Protesters say yes, cops say yes, media says maybe and the medics say no… and some of them say yes. Have you ever been tear gassed? I have (albeit when the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup, so, not cool like I was at the WTO protests or something) and its not really a confusing matter. You know when it happens, and although it doesn’t really hurt, it confuses you enough that it ought to stand out in your memory.

So, we don’t really know whats going on unless we’re there. I am not there, I don’t want to be there, I don’t care. I have too much to do. But with all the cop bashing and security threats I feel like I have to weigh in on a detail that might get me thrown out of whatever protester circles I might be known in. I feel sorry for the officers. I really do. These men and women are working long hours, in blazing heat, wearing all black uniforms that look as though they weigh 20-30 pounds. That doesn’t sound like fun, and if they get a little pissy at the end of their 16 hour day and lose a bit of their edge, I can’t blame them. Certainly they need to exercise a bit of self-control, but when some pink clad anarchist mumbo-jumbo is spitting in your face and calling you a pig, throwing bottles and cans, it’s inevitable that eventually there is going to be chaos. Of course, that might just be what everyone wants, chaos and the loss of control. Protester’s win, because they can go home and tell a story, whine about it on myspace, and complain about court fees. Cops win because they can make use of some really sweet new gear they got for this event. It’s a win-win.

Personally, I’ll be at home doing homework and playing video games.

We’ve been a bit behind in our hyperlink colletions and thoughts of ridiculousness lately, and for that I apologize — who would have thought that the seemingly simple task of collecting stupid things and linking to them would be such a difficult task? Anyway, I’ve been thinking about many many things as of late, you know, because I’m fucking smart and that’s what I do — think.

• TUAW Back to School Addition – Tuaw.com has collected a slew of applications to help those of us that are in school — although they seem to be mistaken by the uncanny fact that NOT ONE FUCKING RESPECTABLE UNIVERSITY WOULD LET YOU USE WIKIPEDIA AS A SOURCE IN A MILLION YEARS. So yeah, use at your own risk dipshits, and enjoy that plagarism site gag of a F on your acedemic record.
• Brainy Gamer on narrative — The Brainy Gamer has compiled a number of different looks at what exactly defines narrative within a video game world — it’s interesting, especially since rarely do games succeed. The question of course still lies in whether or not people want to be completely immersed into a story or not, I for one, am all for it, and almost miss the days of playing games for story alone, hours at a time (and have my fingers crossed that Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 will do just that), but with games like Rock Band and Wii Sports selling the most copies, it seems that the majority of folks aren’t really looking for immersion, but rather escape.
• Freelance DNC reporter? — Sounds normal enought right? Get some young kid out there who wants to make a name for themself and get into political journalism… but how do journalistic integrity and A QUESTION MARK SUIT go together? I hope this is a fucking joke.
• Gizmodo explaines the touchscreen – It’s one of those strange and magical devices that, when packed with pixie juice and fairy dust, respond to the touch of a finger. Whoa.
• Radiolab is bad-ass get with it – For the uninitiated, Radiolab is a sort of This American Life for science-ophiles. Yeah, that might sound sort of stupid or heady, and it is (heady that is), but the presentation is abnormally outstanding and worthy of a listen. In honor of the 5th Season beginning soon, I figured I’d toss you links to my five favorites from the last four.

“Emergence” — Takes a look at the theory of Emergence. Partially dealing with Steven Johnson’s mediocre book of the same name (mediocre in the way that it starts strong, gets super boring, unrelated and repetative and then ends on “meh” note. It’s great that the Wired writer makes it easy to read, but at the same time it ends up being simplified too much, and would have worked better as a feature article. But the parts about Simcity are pretty sweet). Um, I lost my train of thought… anyway, Emergence deals with the intelligence of groups, something that if you went to college in the 20th century you’ve already been taught not to belive in (“group think” exercise about the Cuban Missile Crisis anyone?). Nevermind, just listen to it.

“Pop Music” — This episode deals with figuring out how and why song’s get stuck in your head. Seems simple enough, right? That is, until you get to musical hallucinations and Elvis songs from Afghanistan.

“Time” — A number of different takes and looks at how we deal with and analyze time, this episode seems to go hand in hand with “Beyond Time” and coupled together they will blow your mind and likely send you to the fetal position as you try to wrap your brain around the concepts here.

“Musical Language” — Musical language hops from pyschology professor’s to “Rite of Spring” to perfect pitch in an all inclusive pass to figuring out what it is that makes human’s like music.

“War of the Worlds” — This episode examine’s the media’s uncanny ability to create panic–it’s actually remarkably frightening.

George Orwell is publishing his diary from beyond the grave. The blog is setup to update in “real-time” in honor of… well, I guess in honor of it being 70 years since he wrote them. Good enough for me. RSS, link to, check out and enjoy.

Isaac Hayes died yesterday due to unknown complications. It’s too bad, as he was a soulful man (much moreso than I). Here is a song.

Bernie Mac died on Saturday due to complications with pneummonia. Which is too bad, because despite his stupid Fox show, he had many great moments of absolute hilarity.

Don Helms died today, many don’t recognize the name, but he created and played all of the signature lap steel tunes on nearly 100 of Hank Williams songs. Here is one of them.

There you go, happy fun death news.