Life in Smoke

smokers congregate where the purpose is an afterthought
generating excreta - sticking it in deeper than
any penis or finger or tongue
an orgy wrapped in foul vapours, raping all who come across it
not sparing even the children

doing it standing, sometimes perched precariously
all for that little tingle that's gone so soon
braving the heat and the dust
when it's done everyone's the same, only more putrid
not meeting anyone's eyes.

because:
the most important thing you will do
in your life
is this
you will pass the days dead-eyed until you are lit up again.

Bukowski: Style

Solitary Confinement

When you think about it, solitary confinement is an improvement in terms of cruelty dealt to the victim; where older societies would exile a transgressor, they never barred them from making a new life for themselves elsewhere. The point was that the transgressor was no longer present, and he no longer had access to his friends and family and other resources too big to carry.

My country had a similar punishment along these lines.

Solitary Confinement is Torture

On the Tim Hunt Controversy

Here's the first thing I did after reading about all that has happened to Sir Tim Hunt:  I tried to find a video of the speech. Context is everything, right?

I couldn't find a video of the relevant portion that has everyone so upset. I did find this:

All of this hate, and we can't even find one incriminating clip? 

Here's how the man himself explained it, courtesy of Wikipedia (original source of snippet can be found here):

Crucially, Hunt said, he then added the words, “now seriously” before going on to praise the role of women in science and in Korean society. “The words ‘now seriously’ make it very clear that I was making a joke, albeit a very bad one, but they were not mentioned in the first reports and I was deluged with hate mail,”...

Ok. So we have no context. This could have been everything people are saying it was; or this could instead be a British person making a dry remark that's meant to not be taken seriously but does hint at some personal misadventures that are better left unsaid.

We ran with this, didn't we? And we're such good people. And the world is better for what we did.

This is Excellent Kung Fu.

I don't feel like entering a world of assassination.

I've written before about my love for the Hitman franchise before. The only games I haven't played yet are the Sniper Challenge and Hitman GO. The latter because I don't have an iOS device, and the former for reasons I'll be talking more about below.

I was glad that they were rethinking their approach to the game so that there would be more similarity with Hitman: Blood Money. Bigger levels and more stuff happening in the levels are a great thing. The switch to a more episodic digital release was also intriguing, doubtless this was influenced by the success of Hitman GO's own model. There will also be improvements to the Instinct mechanic, which is welcome; the Hitman games have always suffered from the randomness caused by Agent 47 not having good enough feedback from the world he's interacting with.

Where the old Thief games had shadows and great sound rendering and the light gem and highlighted interactive objects:

Gameplay by Lytha, of "Lytha Way" fame

And Mark of the Ninja had vision cones and shadows and "sound bubbles":

The Hitman games never had a similar mechanism warning you if there's someone about to enter the room. The Suspicion meter was there mostly for disguises, so exploring without a disguise - i.e., using actual stealth - was always a fraught affair. Things were less about using cunning and more about tensely being on point with timing.

The thing that turns me off about all this is that by being in a spaced digital release model you have to churn out regular, quality content to keep people engaged with the game. Absolution's Contracts mode was fun but these days no one plays it - the problem is the same, you have to do something new to keep people from getting bored. 

And there are elements to the Hitman games that will bore; remember that the NPC's in any Hitman game are scripted to do the same kinds of things. Miss the timing? Just wait and the characters will do it again - doesn't matter if you get discovered, let the heat die down and things will eventually go back to normal. Blood Money addressed this with the Notoriety mechanic, but the effects weren't within a mission - it was more the next mission became harder because you were sloppy. Which means you are more likely to continue being sloppy, while careful players aren't affected.

I think what Hitman has been missing is the improvisation aspect. Sure, they say there will be many ways to take someone out, but all these ways have been pre-programmed. Just be at this place at this time with this item then click the mouse. That's basically what the Sniper Challenge is - shoot here now while the target is there and something happens.

Let's check out fighting games for a second. In a fighting game there are characters who have special moves they can do by the player pressing a button or a combination of buttons. The moves have certain properties like recovery speed or set-up time or invulnerability or unblockability that affect how they are to be used/defended against. But most crucially, the moves can also be chained together. You could argue that it's also a timing game - a very strict one at that - but the prospect of dealing huge damage with the other player not being able to do a thing makes the grind worth it. Also, a lot of these combos don't just get told to us - they have to be discovered. Often it's the players themselves who come up with them, then they share the combos online.

In this way, players make their characters truly theirs. There's nothing equivalent to that in Hitman, before or now. If I were the lead designer, at the very least I'd make the game into a huge PvP fest - players are freelance clones of 47 who compete for contracts against NPC's and each other. Maybe each player gets to develop a main specialty, like infiltration or bomb-making or sniping. Or John Woo-style parkour and double-wielding. The best-performing player could get to actually use 47 as their avatar.

In conclusion, I think to take the franchise to the next level a world of assassination isn't needed - rather, a world of assassins should have been the hook for this reboot.

King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match

I bought this game about three months ago. It joins Dead or Alive 5 Last Round, Kings of Kung Fu, and Skullgirls on my Steam library.

I have a thing for fighting games. But what started it all was King of Fighters. Everybody else was on to Street Fighter, but I stayed true to Chin Gentsai and Mai Shiranui. Then, after a few years it was K9999 and Ryuji Yamazaki; I had a brief flirtation with Oswald but by and large I've been a Chin man. Now though I find myself gravitating to Ryuji and Vanessa. Oh, and Kim Kaphwan's moves are pretty cool too...

I gave Street Fighter IV a try when it was free to play on Steam one weekend. I thought I might enjoy Hakan and Rufus - boy was I disappointed. I do believe the game is well-designed, it's just that I couldn't bring myself to care for these characters on the same level as I do DOA's Eliot and Gen Fu, or Skullgirls' Parasoul, or KOF's Chin. And when I can't care about a character, I don't bother playing since it isn't worth it to learn playing anybody in the roster well.

See? I really wanted to love Rufus.

In general, I start liking the quirky, side characters first in a fighting game. I got into Guilty Gear XX #Reload at my local arcade because of Zappa. Chin was among my first in KOF, and the only reason I got into Eliot was because he was the only fun unlocked one in the Xbox 360 version of DOA 4 that I played. I've never gotten into the main protagonists like Ryu or Kyo Kusanagi or Sol Badguy. 

After establishing my quirky main, I start looking for the tactical characters. Venom had so much versatility, I never mastered him at all; darn False Roman Cancel timing always eluded me. Yamazaki is fun too, and even up to now I'm learning all sorts of things. His Nejikomi move, for example, is nice to use while backing up or blocking. Since the keys you need to press for Nejikomi start with a Block movement, it can be buffered from a block. It's a pity I can't test it out on anyone online, everybody's into KOF XIII. Which doesn't have Ryuji or Vanessa.


I like Dead Or Alive because a lot of the characters use Chinese martial arts - not just in name, there are actually identifiable moves from the style that appear in the game. It speaks to my other hobby.

Japan

Tokyo Roar from Brandon Li on Vimeo.

On Bullying

I'm meditating on these two things:

• Bullying and the Enforcement of "Normal"
• Former "weird kids" or people who were bullied in school. What is your life like now? And how has it affected you?

I wish I could contribute something to this thread, some insight - maybe something will come up. But right now, I'm thinking...

AOA Black - ELVIS

I wish AOA Black would come out again. They were on to something quite unique in the world of Kpop, now that the dance subgroup is doing well maybe FNC can experiment more, have more band-centered releases.

Henry Armstrong on Jack Slack's Trick Punches Series

 I get a lot of inspiration from seeing these videos - they really showcase the depth and rich history of boxing.

This breakdown is of particular interest to me because of how the style I've been taught likes to be close, at infighting range. I would also add that by leaning the left shoulder into the body Mr. Henry Armstrong ensured his opponent never got to target his centerline while his left arm was in prime position to go full-power with the uppercuts.