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(-) News Releases
Regime Change in the Middle East Is a False Promise, Writes Philip Gordon in New CFR Book
"The iron rule of regime change in the Middle East seems to be that its costs will be higher than expected, unintended consequences will emerge, and results will leave much to be desired." So warns P…
In New Book, Max Boot Argues One CIA Operative Could Have Changed the Course of the Vietnam War
January 9, 2018—The Vietnam War "might have taken a very different course—one that was less costly and potentially more successful—if the counsel of this CIA operative and Air Force officer had b…
Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" Wins 2015 CFR Arthur Ross Book Award
French economist Thomas Piketty has won the fourteenth annual Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Arthur Ross Book Award for Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Belknap Press) and will receive $15,00…
CFR Task Force Calls on the U.S. to Preserve an Open and Secure Internet
The number of "state-backed operations continues to rise, and future attacks will become more sophisticated and disruptive," argues the new Task Force report, Defending an Open, Global, Secure, and…
The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future
"Everything we once knew about American energy seems to be changing," writes Michael A. Levi, CFR senior fellow and director of the program on energy security and climate change, in The Power Surge: …
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to Join CFR as Distinguished Fellow
Timothy F. Geithner, the 75th Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, will join the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as a distinguished fellow. Geithner, who was previously a senior fello…
U.S. Defense Should Follow "All-in or Stay Out" Policy, Writes Richard Betts in New Book on American Force
This collection of essays by Richard K. Betts, a leading international politics scholar, investigates the use of American force since the end of the Cold War, suggesting guidelines for making it more…
Nonproliferation, Arms Control, and Disarmament
CFR Task Force Report: U.S. Must Act to Reduce Nuclear Force Levels and Dangers of Proliferation and Use
Washington, DC--In his April 5 Prague speech, President Obama called for the United States to lead international efforts toward a world free of nuclear weapons. A new Council on Foreign Relation…
CFR Task Force Calls for Overhaul of U.S. Climate Change Strategy
Against the backdrop of increasing attention to energy and climate change in the presidential campaigns, the recent failure of the Senate to advance the Lieberman-Warner climate bill, and preparation…
Council Scholar Michael Levi Dissects Nuclear Plots and Proposes New Defensive Strategies in New Book
With the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, Michael A. Levi's new book, On Nuclear Terrorism, reminds us that we need to broadly rethink our strategy when faced with nuclear terrorism. He ta…


I liked it but wondered how difficult it would be to finish. Would the teachers and I be able to do it? I decided to try to finish it myself to see how hard it would be. I was very pleased with the first draft and realized that I had probably written a book in about an hour.
'I thought you were preparing a workshop,' he said.
As if fish had fingers! Also the 'time for bed' and 'time to sleep' lines were haphazard so I made the first half of the book 'time for bed' and the second half 'time to sleep'. In the end, frankly, I was inordinately thrilled with the hypnotic dreamy rhythm of it. So was my editor. Neither she nor I could believe I'd written it so fast. The book was accepted immediately and I was incredibly fortunate that the well-known American illustrator Jane Dyer had a window of time right then. She went to work straight away and produced the most perfect, endearing pictures for it. The rest is history.
Time for Bed has gone on to become my best selling book in the USA—it was on the bestseller lists in New York for over a year when it first came out in 1993 and has to date (2013) sold over 1.5 million copies.


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(4) expresses its appreciation to those engaged in support of Middle East peacemaking and the recent cessation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel, and calls on the international community to aggressively pursue efforts that facilitate a just and lasting resolution of these conflicts.
The resolution has the active support of the Arab American Institute, Churches For Middle East Peace, Israel Policy Forum, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, Americans For Peace Now, Religious Action Center For Reform Judaism, and J Street.
Please support the leadership of Congressmember Delahunt, as well as our other candidates, through the grassroot ActBlue fundraising page, A Dream Of Peace:Justice And Equality For The People Of Israel And Palestine.


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Shopify compass home
Goal Setting with Daymond John
Example | SunStaches
Course content (14 lessons)
Introduction to the Course3:39
3 Benefits of Goal Setting for Small Business Owners3:21
Why Goal Setting Fails4:29
Example | SunStaches4:13
Download the Course Workbook0:10
01 |Goal Setting Framework
The Power of Why5:37
3 Things to Stop Saying to Yourself if You Want to Succeed2:34
Visualize Your Success2:26
How to Set Goals10:06
02 |The Follow-Through Formula
3 Steps to Develop Your Influence2:55
3 Ways to Negotiate for What You Want3:23
03 |Reflect and Reassess
What to Do When You Hit (or Miss) Your Goal5:23
Teach Your Team to Set Goals1:00
Daymond's Final Words of Advice2:56
As an investor and mentor to small businesses, Daymond helps companies think big and get creative when goal-setting.
✅ Watch to consider how to approach goal setting by learning from the SunStaches story.
[MUSIC PLAYING] So let me give you an example of a company I worked with who had a goal in mind, but they didn't necessarily know how to go about this goal. It is a company I invested in call Sun Stashes from "Shark Tank." Now we've all seen the back in the days, the Groucho Marx glasses, where it has the nose on and a little mustache. They took this to a whole other level where they had sunglasses with really-- it could be a Santa Claus hat on it.
It can do anything and really characteristic driven brand. But. They didn't have any licenses but as soon as you put these glasses on, you are going to put them on Instagram. They're Instagrammable. When they came in from "Shark Tank," we worked out a deal. And we said, let's come up with a roadmap on how to set goals. If you want to do licenses, you want to get some more recognizable faces.
Why don't we go after Marvel, because Marvel and Disney and ABC are all affiliated. And because you're in a category that's not heavily licensed out like sunglasses for kids and funny looking sunglasses, it probably would be easy to get a license from Marvel. So once we did that, we realized that if we get a license from Marvel, they're the gold standard. And it's easy to walk into Warner Brothers, Nintendo, and everybody else.
They get licenses because you already set up the gold standard. Now Sun Stashes is in every store all over the country and even all over the world with all these licensed brands, because they had a set goal and a strategy on how to get there. Now I know there are many of you do not necessarily have a Daymond John on your team to get a big license like Marvel.
But the point of the matter is please try to break it down into actionable steps. Let's talk about 30 years ago when I first came out with FUBU and tried to conquer the world and distribute to everybody. I just distributed to a couple of stores in Queens, because I wanted to understand what were triggering the people to buy the clothes. Would they pay $25 for this, $35 for this? Do they like black, red, green? And I started to understand my path to success, because when I would put 10 colors of shirts in the store, 60% of them would sell.
And it was black. So then I started to refine my strategy and that helped me accomplish my goal. Maybe you have inventory right now when you wanted to have huge influencers work with your brand. But start off with small influencers that you can get on the phone, talk to. Make sure that they get their affiliate marketing money. People who have 1,000 followers. And especially if you have inventory, maybe you should give it to them on consignment, because you already have the inventory.
Start setting your small goals and your influences will grow and grow and grow and grow. I didn't just get LL Cool J and Method Man day 1. I knew it was hard to get to them, because everybody's paying them. Huge corporations are paying them. So what did I do? I took around 50 shirts at about size 5x and 6x. Here's what I was thinking. The big guys, the bodyguards, and the security guys, and the people in front of the clubs are big.
A lot of the times, they don't have a lot of fashionable options. They go to Rochester Big and Tall. And they get a white shirt or a black shirt. Or they have to pay a lot of money to make something custom. Meanwhile, the cool fashionable kids are only going to wear things once. So what did I do? I made 50 FUBU shirts to give to just the big guys, because they would wear it 10 times a month, 15 times a month.
And guess where they were? They were always in front of the red rope when you try to get to a club. They were all in front of a artist or a superstar, moving people all the way. And they were always in front of the stage. So they were huge billboards. Before you know it, the artists were seeing the brand every day. And they came to me and said, hey, what am I, chopped liver? I was like, no. You're too cool for me. And then they wanted it even more.
I started off with somebody who was influential that nobody else would necessarily know. But everybody saw. Now you know the importance of setting big goals. Join me in the next lesson to learn the power of why. [MUSIC PLAYING]
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Tim and I both think it's beneficial that people are talking about these controversial subjects. It's tragic that shootings are what it takes to bring this about, but at least people are discussing things.
My stance on gun control: I really don't want guns in my house. But I absolutely defend, with both fists, your right to own a gun. Please don't use it to hurt anyone unless you're defending your life. Then, aim carefully, please.
My stance on gay marriage: I really don't want to marry a woman. But, again, I absolutely defend your right to marry a person of your choosing. Please don't be greedy and try to marry more than one person at a time. And make sure you're both adults. And human. Then, be nice to each other, for pete's sake!
Do stop by Bird Sings, say hello to Tim and his staff, and see their downstairs gallery. They have a huge wooden star down there that I just love!


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Private bill to introduce further charges to patients for healthcare services is due for second reading today
Christopher Chope, a Barrister and the Conservative MP for Christchurch, has proposed a private bill that would make provision for co-funding, and to extend the use of 'co-payment' – charges – throughout the National Health Service (NHS); and for "connected purposes."
Though there are already some charges for health services such dental treatments, eye tests and prescriptions already, experts have warned that if the bill gains assent, it would open the floodgates to charging for a range of other services including GPs appointments and minor operations.
The National Health Service (Co-Funding and CoPayment) Bill would "make provision for co-funding and for the extension of co-payment for NHS services in England" and this will be the second reading of the bill.
MPs are set to debate the proposed bill today.
Recent changes to NHS prescribing guidelines has shown that the co-payment system is far from perfect. Controversial limits to the kind of conditions for which GPs can prescribe medication. Instead, patients will be given advice on what medications to buy from the pharmacy.
Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England, said: "Across the NHS our aim is to: 'Think like a patient, act like a taxpayer'. The NHS is probably the most efficient health service in the world, but we're determined to keep pushing further. Every pound we save from cutting waste is another pound we can then invest in better A&E care, new cancer treatments and much better mental health services."
John O'Connell, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance approved the changes, adding that "It's great news that NHS England will save a vast amount of taxpayers' money by curbing prescriptions for basic items that are much cheaper to buy in the supermarket than they are to prescribe. Taxpayers should not be footing the bill for items like anti dandruff shampoo or athlete's foot powder, so cutting out wasteful spending like this will mean that precious resources can be focused on frontline services. Patients too must remember that these items are not "free" – the money comes out of taxpayers' pockets, so NHS England should be applauded for this move."
However, someone should remind Stevens and O'Connell that everyone pays tax and national insurance. This kind of rationing is a steep and slippery slope to a health service that is no longer free at the point of delivery.
However, NHS has always been free at the point of delivery – that's one of the founding principles on which it was created. Millions of ordinary people rely on this principle. Under no circumstances must we permit the government to take us back to the time when had to sell their household belongings to see their doctor. Citizens in a civilised and democratic society should not be penalised financially for being ill and needing NHS services.
Justin Madders MP, Labour's Shadow Health Minister, said: "Once again we see the Tories' true colours.
"At a time when the NHS is going through the biggest funding squeeze in its history and more than four million people are waiting for treatment, Tory MPs are proposing a two-tier system where those who can afford it get treated first.
"Labour's first priority will be to give the NHS the funding it needs to protect an NHS free at the point of use for everyone who needs it."
Chope has previously tabled a range of other controversial bills.
He was appointed as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Peter Brooke, the Minister of State at the Treasury in 1986, before being promoted by Margaret Thatcher to serve in her government as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for the Environment later in the same year, where he was responsible for steering through the immensely unpopular "Community Charge" (best known as the Poll tax) legislation.
In June 2013 Chope was one of four MPs who camped outside Parliament in a move to facilitate parliamentary debate on what they called an "Alternative Queen's Speech" – an attempt to show what a future Conservative government might deliver. 42 policies were listed including reintroduction of the death penalty and conscription, privatising the BBC, banning the burka in public places and preparation to leave the European Union.
Chope helped to lead backbench support for the motion calling for a European Referendum. He has also been heavily involved in the use of private member's bills to achieve this aim. Chope came under fire in January 2013 for referring to some staff in the House of Commons as "servants". Parallels were drawn between this opinion and his views on the minimum wage – which he has called to be abolished.
On 28 November 2014 Chope, a private landlord, filibustered a Liberal Democrat bill with cross party support intended to make revenge evictions an offence.
In 2014 Chope along with six other Conservative Party MPs voted against the Equal Pay (Transparency) Bill which would require all companies with more than 250 employees to declare the gap in pay between the average male and average female salaries.
He came under criticism in late 2014 for repeatedly blocking a bill that would ban the use of wild animals in circus performances, justifying his actions by saying "The EU Membership Costs and Benefits bill should have been called by the clerk before the circuses bill, so I raised a point of order".
You can read Chope's latest controversial and draconian bill: The National Health Service (Co-Funding and Co-Payment) Bill here.
GP and NHS campaigner, Bob Gill, says:
"Ever wondered why Government wanted to spend a fortune on the charging infrastructure for collecting relatively insignificant sums from illegal immigrants using the NHS?
Well that was the cover story. Reality is that charging was always intended to apply to everyone.
Here is the Bill to extend charging to all."
Please tell your MPs to attend the debate and to argue and vote against it, whatever party they are.
Here is how to contact your MP.
Template emails are downloadable from the 999 Call for the NHS website.
Let's not let the Conservatives get away with privatising our NHS by stealth.
The bill did not get through the second reading, as it ran out of time. However, the Conservatives have rescheduled the bill for another attempt, on Friday 15 June.
Rogue company Unum's profiteering hand in the government's work, health and disability green paper: work as a "health outcome".
May 11, 2018 May 21, 2018 · Posted in Conservatives, Neoliberalism, NHS, Uncategorized · Tagged #NHS, #privatisation, Christopher Chope ·
9 thoughts on "Private bill to introduce further charges to patients for healthcare services is due for second reading today"
"Mr Chope also used his additional costs allowance (ACA) to fund the £10,377 repair of the roof of the 200-year-old London house that he jointly owns with his wife. He kitted out the property with a bathroom costing more than £2,600 to buy and install – again on the taxpayer."
the telegraph.
never mind though, he's jsut the rump end of the tory party and will soon, along with the rest of them, be dead. the NHS however, will survive and then thrive. Hope not Chope.
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buddyhell says:
Reblogged this on Guy Debord's Cat and commented:
Kitty S Jones on Christopher Chope's Private Member's Bill to introduce charges for healthcare. Whenever a bill is introduced to hammer the less well-off (in other words, those people who aren't members of his social class), you'll always find Chope and the usual suspects not too far behind.
Pingback: Private bill to introduce further charges to patients for healthcare services is due for second reading today – paulh121
clouty says:
Chope does sound like a charmer… not.
It seems the second reading of this bill is now scheduled for Friday 15th June. Lots of time to use the template letters and email our MPs…
7 National Health Service (Co-Funding and Co-Payment) Bill: Second Reading
Order read, That the National Health Service (Co-Funding and Co-Payment) Bill be now read a second time.
Objection taken (Standing Order No. 11(2)).
Bill to be read a second time on Friday 15 June.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmvote/180511v01.html
Disabled people facing government hostility in the UK – Mo Stewart


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text:
rybread celsius
There are 14 posts tagged rybread celsius (this is page 1 of 2).
Phantom: caverns of the killer by Brandon Coker [Comp05]
IFDB page: Phantom: Caverns of the Killer
Final placement: 31st place (of 36) in the 2005 Interactive Fiction Competition
Right up front this game starts sending out the red flags. There's the fact that its title isn't in title case. There's the fact that the debugging verbs are left on. (Not that I remember how to use them decades later.) And then there are the opening sentences:
Legends speak, of a great egyption warrior. Who rose in the military ranks faster that any other.
So, whew, just very rough right away. I dialed my expectations down, way down, and kept playing. Here is an advantage to playing the comp games outside the comp period — it had been about 6 months since I played Dreary Lands. Consequently, my patience account had built back up, enabling me to battle through the terrible writing and nonsensical milieu, looking for some things to appreciate.
The impression I got was of a very, very young author (or at least one who hadn't done a lot of writing or received a lot of feedback), more attuned to the programming part of IF than the writing part. This is a demanding medium, in that it requires authors to be skilled in two traditionally separate areas — prose storytelling and coherent code. Phantom has its problems with the latter (though much less so than, say, Dreary Lands), but falls down very badly on the former.
The result is a game that tries to horrify, but keeps stumbling into unintentional comedy. Horror in particular is a tough genre for an author lacking basic skills, though it's apparently an attractive one for such authors as well — see Exhibit A, Rybread Celsius. In order for a reader to be scared or creeped out by a fictional world, she's got to be able to suspend disbelief about that world, and under an avalanche of prose errors, it's pretty difficult to suspend disbelief.
Another obstacle to believing in Phantom's world lies in the weird numbers that occasionally pepper the text. For example:
>open black box
The box opens but a hand comes out grabs your face and squeezes the blood from your veins.1
"1"? I mean, the death message is a little comical as it is, what with the way a hand to the face somehow causes circulation problems, but the "1" afterwards is clearly just a mistake, or maybe a debugging leftover. Given that there's a "2" that appears after the winning ending, I'm guessing this has to do with the game setting Inform's death message flag, and maybe printing it out either by mistake or as a way of making sure the right message prints, or something.
Then again, it's not just death messages — there's also this:
You can see a Large emerald here.
>x 1
(the Large emerald)
A very large finely cut emerald.
Really not sure what's going on here, but it did give me a good chuckle.
In any case, Phantom seems like a well-intentioned attempt by someone who does not have control of his tools. I'd prescribe some intense focus on learning basic English mechanics, hopefully with instructional support, and a lot of beta-testing to root out weird code behavior, in order to produce a much improved next game. Or at least, that's what I would have prescribed 17 years ago — I guess now I'll just call it general advice.
Once and Future by G. Kevin Wilson [IF-Review]
[I originally reviewed this game for Mark Musante's site IF-Review, in 2002.]
IFDB Page: Once and Future
Swords and Sledgehammers
Note: This review contains minor spoilers.
If we wanted to make a short list of the people who had a major impact on the course of 1990's interactive fiction, who would we include? Graham Nelson, Mike Roberts, and Kent Tessman would have to be in, for creating the major development systems (and, in Nelson's case, a couple of major games) of the decade. Adam Cadre and Andrew Plotkin would make the list, for contributing some of the most important games of that period and, in Plotkin's case, for crucial technical innovations as well. We can't forget Volker Blasius, Dave Baggett, and David Kinder for founding and maintaining the IF Archive. And there's one more name we couldn't leave off: Gerry Kevin "Whizzard" Wilson.
Kevin contributed lots of things, all of which have their roots in his boundless, unstoppable enthusiasm for IF. He founded SPAG, the IF review webzine that I now edit. He organized and ran the first IF competition, and shepherded it through its first few years, as it became one of the most dominant forces in amateur IF, as well as one of the engines powering the IF Renaissance we currently enjoy. He labored to make Activision realize the value of the Infocom properties they own, and as a result brought some fascinating internal Infocom documents into public view, and brought paychecks and publication to the winners of the first IF Comp. He gave us one of our legends, too. I refer, of course, to Avalon. Avalon was the game that Kevin announced in 1993, estimating it'd take a month or two to finish. Two months turned into six, into a year, into many many years. The game seemed to be Kevin's bête noire, the place where his enthusiasm was an anchor instead of a sail. That enthusiasm led him to keep expanding the game, perfecting it, adding more and more, while at the same time hyping it relentlessly in his every Usenet post, of which there were quite a few indeed. "Avalon" became synonymous with "overhyped vaporware."
Then, in 1998, it happened. Avalon was released, albeit retitled Once And Future (OAF), since the name "Avalon" was already trademarked by another game. The trademark mattered, because the game was released commercially, the first pure text adventure to claim that distinction since the Infocom era. The company behind this venture was Cascade Mountain Publishing (CMP), run by Mike Berlyn, former Infocom Implementor. OAF was CMP's flagship product, a thirty-dollar game touted as the return of "quality interactive fiction." The story from here gets short and sad, for CMP founders rather quickly and tanks quietly, in the process apparently torpedoing the release of the Inform Designer's Manual (4th ed.) for a good long time. While sales figures for OAF have never been released, it clearly never took off. Finally, on April 1st of 2001 (with no apparent irony), OAF is released as freeware.
I was one of the people who bought the original, thirty-dollar package. In fact, due to a CMP blunder, I actually received two copies, the second of which I gave away as a prize in last year's comp. But for whatever reason, I never quite got around to playing it until now. When I finally did play the game, the weight of its history and its hype couldn't help but burden the experience. It's impossible to say how I would have viewed OAF had it been released humbly, for free, by an unknown author, but I think my reaction would have been quite a bit different. As it is, I find it difficult not to make this review a laundry list of faults. This game, upon which so much hope was riding, about which we heard so much and for which we waited so long, is far from perfect. In addition, as a commercial product it begs comparison not only to its contemporaries, the graphical adventures of the late Nineties, but also to its Infocom predecessors. Whether these are fair comparisons I don't know, but OAF suffers by them. In the light of these considerations, I hope to make my criticisms as constructive as possible, and to remember the invaluable contributions of its author, the obstacles that stood in the way of its creation, and the gaming era from which it originated.
In that spirit, I want to focus on some of the things I loved about Once And Future. First of all, that's a great title, far better than "Avalon." OAF, for those of you new enough not to already know, is the story of Frank Leandro. Frank is a young soldier in Vietnam who, after sacrificing his life to save his friends, finds himself entrusted by King Arthur to journey through the fairy-tale realm of Avalon, collecting mythically resonant items like Excalibur and the Holy Grail and, finally, traveling through time to prevent a Great American Tragedy. In other words, he travels to the land of Once Upon a Time, at the behest of the man T.H. White dubbed the Once And Future King, in order to obtain One chance to save the Future. Where "Avalon" was a flat description of the landscape, "Once And Future" evokes the game's genre, its themes, and its literary ambitions.
Those ambitions are important too. Kevin started this game in 1993, a time when serious themes and literary content were the exception rather than the rule in text adventures. He used a heavily characterized PC in the face of rather overwhelming IF tradition to the contrary, and injected that PC's own distinctive voice into NPC interactions well before Varicella and its ilk. Come to that, he used a gimmick in the very first few moves of the game that feels fresh to us even now, at least according to Shrapnel and No Time To Squeal. I'm not the first to observe that this game would have been considered quite revolutionary indeed had it been released in 1994 (as originally planned). Still, the point bears attention. I suppose it's the IF writer's curse that because we most often work solo and our work is so demanding and detailed, there is a tremendous gap between conceiving an idea and realizing it in its finished form, and during that gap any number of things may come along to steal our thunder. It's no wonder that some IF authors hate to see concepts blithely discussed; I'm of the mind that execution is just as important as concept, but it's got to sting to see your game's ideas called old hat, when in fact they may have been stunningly original at the time you first began work.
The best part about OAF, though, is this: it's fun. The game is genuinely fun for long stretches at a time. It's a rollicking text adventure of the old school, offering wonderfully open-ended design and puzzles that challenge the mind and care little for how arbitrary they ultimately are. Once And Future's love for the Infocom tradition shines through continuously and, at times, the game's sheer scope and its cleverness manage to hit the same high notes as its predecessors. As literary as it may aspire to be, OAF is a game first and foremost, and, although plenty of critical attention has been lavished on its story and writing, to me the real star of the show is the puzzles. [I'll be naming several of these by way of example for those who have already played the game, but I don't think it'll spoil anything for those of you who haven't.] There are lots and lots of them, and most of them quite enjoyable. Of course, many of them are rather easy as well, which for me coincides neatly with enjoyability. Freeing Merlin, obtaining Excalibur, and helping the old man are all examples of that pleasant sort of IF puzzle in which there's an action that makes sense, I try it, it works, and I am made happy. Even some of the tougher ones provided me with time well-spent, like the diamond puzzle and the earlier parts of the Mountain King puzzle.
When the puzzles did go wrong, it often wasn't because they were too difficult, but rather because the series of steps necessary to execute the solution was long and tedious. A perfect example here is the braziers — the concept is straightforward enough, and a helpful mnemonic is even provided (a very nice touch), but actually carrying out this concept entails a great deal of tedious tromping back and forth and mucking about with fiddly liquid commands. The problem here is that the fun part of puzzle-solving is the actual figuring out — the rest is just follow-through, and if made sufficiently involved, becomes drudgery. The lesson for designers is to keep the emphasis on the former, and make the latter fairly streamlined, or at the very least entertaining in its own right. The worst offender in this category was the business with the blue paste — there isn't even any figuring out involved, just a lot of mind-numbing inspection of nearly-identical objects.
Another area where the puzzles run into difficulty is bugginess. I suppose that in the technical sense there aren't any game-stopping bugs in OAF, but having the game actually fail to respond to a command its documentation specifically recommends (ASK MERLIN ABOUT SPIRITS) comes close enough in my book. In addition, the game isn't free from guess-the-verb problems. In fact, the particular final puzzle I encountered (there are a variety of them, depending on the character's inventory in the final scene) had me so stumped that I actually went onto ifMUD, found somebody who had a hint book, and determined that I had in fact figured out the right action (an action which was rather nonsensical in itself), but the game hadn't recognized any of the several commands I'd used to get it across. Once provided with the right verb, I was finally able to reach the game's ending. It's just the sort of problem that's bound to plague a large game, but that doesn't make it any more excusable.
Okay, clearly I've gotten to the part where I discuss OAF's flaws, so let me cut straight to its biggest one: the writing. Now, let me be clear about this. It's not that OAF is poorly written in the way that a Rybread Celsius game is poorly written, or in the way that the games that occupy the bottom third of the comp standings tend to be poorly written. On the contrary, most of OAF's prose is clean, error-free and basically serviceable. However, it is punctuated with serious problems nonetheless, not the least of which is its plethora of overwhelmingly maudlin, trite moments. Here's a sample, from a scene in which Frank sees a Vietnam buddy vegetating in a hospital bed:
>X MARK
"Is this Mark?" you think, as you look into the vacant, staring eyes. His mouth hangs slack, and there are no signs of intelligence. Gone is the sparkle from his young brown eyes. He lies there, wasted and immobile, a monument to man's folly.
Lines like "a monument to man's folly" and "gone is the sparkle from his young brown eyes" are, I'm guessing, supposed to evoke goosebumps and a solemn nod, but all they elicit from me are groans. I don't think it's that I'm so jaded and hardbitten — rather, the lines take a redundant, sentimental shortcut around genuine emotion. I've already been told that Mark's eyes are "vacant" and "staring" — does the point that they're not sparkling really need to be made? Similarly, making stentorian statements like "a monument to man's folly" short-circuits any possibility of my reaching that sort of conclusion on my own, and inclines me instead to see the narrative voice as irritatingly grandiose. [By the way, I've no doubt that this sort of thing has shown up in my own writing from time to time, and I groan when I see it there, too.]
When the writing isn't being overdramatic, it frequently strays into cutesiness. In fact, one of the very first things a player is likely to see (because it's in Frank's initial inventory) is a candy bar object called "Mr. Mediocrebar." In case you're not familiar with American candy, this is a jokey reference to a Hershey product called "Mr. Goodbar." The problem with this isn't whether the candy bar ever serves a purpose — even useless objects have their place in IF. The problem is with the name. Calling the candy "Mr. Mediocrebar", a name that no actual candy would ever have, immediately undercuts mimesis. It's as if the author is playfully nudging us in the ribs and saying, "Hey there, this is all for fun, just a game. None of it's real, and you certainly don't need to take it seriously." This sort of approach might work in a light farce, but it jars horribly against the somber Vietnam setting and the Big Themes to come. Furthermore, because the candy bar may well remain in the player's inventory for the entirety of the game, its name has this deleterious effect over and over again. Not to mention the fact that it makes players think of the word "mediocre" throughout the game, which is hardly desirable.
Worst of all, though, is what I call the Sledgehammer Writing. Here's an example: the player is in the throne room of a mysterious ruler called The Straw Man. This ruler sits silently and impassively on his throne. While in the room, Frank hears someone approaching, and hides. It's a woman who tells the Straw Man her problem; he doesn't respond, and by talking it out, she solves it on her own, and leaves. Then this happens again. Then it happens yet again, and this time, as she cries on his lap,
out of the corner of your eye, you notice the first sign of movement from the Straw Man that you've seen. His arm slips from the armrest of the throne, coming to rest on her shoulder. Reaching up to grasp his arm, she continues to cry for a little while before regaining control of her emotions.
Okay, so we probably know what's coming, right? Sure we do:
But when the Straw Man's arm slipped from the armrest, you noticed something. The Straw Man is just a plain old scarecrow.
Dum dum DAAA! But wait, there's more:
Kind of funny, really, that the best ruler, the wisest person that you've ever seen, turns out to be a dummy.
Okay, I get the point. But still more awaits:
But maybe it says something too. People don't always want or need advice, sometimes they just want someone to listen to them, and hold them.
WHAM WHAM WHAM! HERE IS THE MESSAGE I AM GIVING YOU! It's as if the game has so little trust in its readers that after making its point subtly, then blatantly, it feels that it still must spell the whole thing out in painfully obvious terms, just to make sure we get it. This sort of thing isn't just cringeworthy, it's insulting; OAF would have been so much stronger had a little restraint been shown in scenes like this.
Finally, sometimes the writing just suffers from a simple lack of clarity. For instance, at a point in the game when Frank has been transformed into a mouse, reading a magical scroll gives this response:
Your head begins to spin as you read the scroll. Your hands start to glow red and twist into a more human shape. You briefly ponder what would happen if you were to become a full-sized human inside this mouse hole. It's not a pretty thought. The scroll quietly dissolves to ash.
When I read this, I thought: Uh-oh, I'm about to die. I'd better UNDO, then get out of this mousehole before I read the scroll. Problem was, I couldn't leave the mousehole without dying. In frustration, I sought a hint from Google and finally realized that I had been misled — the above message wasn't presaging that I was about to be crushed, but rather that a several-turns-long growing process was beginning and that I needed to exit the mousehole before the process completed.
Speaking of that mousehole, it's a good instance of one of OAF's primary qualities: its expansiveness. This quality is both a strength and a weakness, in my view. Certainly in terms of the game as a whole, it's a strength — one of the best things about OAF is how big it is. Unlike the bite-sized IF that dominates current output, this game is a five-course meal. Then again, there are times when the "more is better" approach is a bit more dubious. For instance, hanging on the wall of the initial location is a paper listing "Murphy's Laws of Combat", a list that's twenty-five items long. This little touch adds a bit of authenticity and characterization, but it also presents the player with a large, somewhat jokey wodge of text to read at the beginning of the game (following immediately upon the game's long and somewhat non-sequitur-ish opening text), slowing down the pace of a scene that otherwise moves very quickly. Then there's the geographical expansiveness, of which the mousehole is such a perfect example. According to my maps (I made them in GUEMap and have uploaded them to the IF Archive), the underground area of OAF comprises no less than twenty-seven rooms. The only purpose of this area is to provide a couple of puzzles that lead to an item that (along with a different item from another area) lets you solve another puzzle that ultimately yields one of the main necessary items for your final goal. The great majority of these twenty-seven rooms serve no purpose for obtaining that item. They're just there for… scenery, I guess, or perhaps to make the world feel larger. A couple of them support items that comprise one of the game's several dangling plot threads, but that's about it.
I don't think this approach to IF map design is optimal. A few non-essential rooms here and there can be a good thing, fleshing out the landscape and making the world feel a bit more whole. On the other hand, when the majority of the map seems to be made of non-essential rooms, something is a little out of balance. This happened to me on my first game — I had a puzzle planned out that would require a sandy beach, and it made sense to have several beach locations. In the end I cut the puzzle, but couldn't quite bear to cut all the locations. Not only had I toiled to produce them, I thought they gave the landscape a greater sense of completeness. Of course, the game was rightly criticized for having a lot of filler rooms, and I learned my first lesson in the importance of pruning. (And judging from the length of this review, I still have quite a few lessons to go in that particular curriculum.) If I were writing that game today, I'd let my descriptions and transitions do a bit more of the space-establishing work, and I'd be less afraid to get rid of things that didn't really serve the game except as decoration. I can't help but feel that such an approach would have benefited OAF greatly as well.
Another strangeness about the maps is how gridlike they feel. The game contains several large landscapes, and in most of them, only movement in the cardinal directions is allowed, even though there are no logical barriers to diagonal movement. The locations are apparently evenly spaced from one another, despite the fact that they may represent radical shifts in landscape, so that a beautiful forest might nestle up against a blasted heath, with no apparent transition between the two. The result is that the setting has a very mechanical, unnatural feel, a feel that repeatedly reminds us that we are playing a game rather than traversing a real landscape. Again, whether this works is a matter of context — the grid layout might be great for a science-fiction game where the landscape is supposed to seem rigid and mechanical, but it doesn't do justice to OAF's more natural, outdoorsy setting. There are a few areas in which the map is laid out in a fun, clever way, but these are almost always in the service of a puzzle.
Aside from its maps, OAF has a number of design successes. The game is fairly open-ended, so that a variety of puzzles are usually available at one time. It combines a Zorkish "wide landscape" with lots of Trinity-esque "little areas" by having lots of separate wide landscapes, which gives the game a chaptered feeling without needing formal divisions. The bottlenecks between these areas tend to work pretty smoothly, though I was hugely frustrated at one point — I failed to obtain an item from one area to solve a puzzle in another one, and wasn't given another chance to do so, forcing me to restore from quite a ways back. Still, that was the only time that the game closed itself off for me, and given the era from which it originated, that's not too bad.
The design of the story wasn't quite so elegant. I mentioned dangling plotlines, and there are quite a few of them. I got to the end of the game, and instead of feeling resolution, I said, "That's it?" For one thing, that ending inserts a sudden romantic subplot that was utterly unbelievable because it hadn't been developed at all in any of the rest of the game. Moreover, the conclusion left so many questions unanswered about things that happened elsewhere in the game, it felt quite unsatisfying. For example, at one point you have a friendly kitty accompanying you on your travels. Then, in the process of solving a puzzle, that cat becomes lost, and possibly hurt. And you never find out what's happened to it, or if it's OK. Designers, don't DO this! If your story puts an animal or companion in jeopardy, establish its final status before ending the game! The cat is just one example — there's also stuff down in the mousehole that seems to imply a story, but the story goes nowhere. Instead, that stuff is just sort of there. The line between subplot and background color is a fine one, and OAF crosses it more than once, I think without realizing it's done so. Subplots need to be resolved by the time the game ends, or else players end up feeling like I did: cheated.
The other problem I had with the story is more philosophical, and I suppose more idiosyncratic. The final quest of the game involves traveling in time to prevent a historical event. It's an event that actually happened, but according to the game's version of King Arthur, the world will be doomed if it isn't changed. To me, this sort of story is wrongheaded. The pieces of our history, both good and bad, are what comprise our current reality, and living in that reality now, I found it hard to swallow King Arthur's assertion that my world is doomed. In fact, I found it a lot more persuasive to think that Frank was being misled by a demon in holy guise, and was nonplussed [Ed. note: based on the length of this review, I think not!] to see that the game wasn't going in that direction. The abstract question of whether the world might be better had certain parts of history been changed is an interesting one, to be sure, but I wasn't at ease getting a protagonist to do something that in all likelihood would have prevented my own birth.
On a technical note, the game hangs together fairly well, especially for a work of such grand scope. It's only natural that despite the five-year gestation period, this game would have more rough edges than smaller pieces of IF, and indeed it does. There are several times at which OAF gives default responses that don't make sense. These details probably should have been seen to, but oversights like that are forgivable. Similarly, there were a number of bugs here and there, but nothing overly catastrophic or distracting. I have to admit, though, that I was disappointed by the NPCs. After all, this is the game that won the 1998 XYZZY award for Best NPCs, but they all seemed rather thin to me. Mordred, in particular, in spite of being a crucial part of Arthurian iconography, has almost nothing to say, nothing to do, and spends the majority of the game, in Michael Gentry's words, "just sort of irritably standing around as though waiting for a bus." Even some of the supposedly more fleshed-out characters, such as Merlin, suffer from serious lacunae in their knowledge. I've already mentioned that ASK MERLIN ABOUT SPIRITS doesn't work, despite the documentation's promise to the contrary. There are also exchanges like this one, which took place in Stonehenge after Frank had seen some strange blue stones:
>ask merlin about stones
Merlin says, "There are a lot of stones here. Which one do you mean?"
>ask merlin about blue stones
>blue
There's no verb in that sentence!
>ask merlin about blue
Merlin says, "Frank, I'm rather busy right now, can't that wait?"
>ask merlin about bluish stones
>merlin, the blue ones, like I JUST $^%$ING SAID
I don't know the word "ones".
Or, similarly, when Frank has an unusual carved blue stone in his inventory.
>show stone to merlin
Which stone do you mean, the carved blue stone, or the flat stone?
>carved
Merlin isn't impressed.
>ask merlin about carved blue stone
Thanks a lot Merlin, you're a big help. There were lots and lots of gaps like that, and to make matters worse, Merlin's default "I don't know" message was "Merlin pretends not to hear you." And you can't even KILL MERLIN WITH EXCALIBUR.
I spent several weeks playing through Once And Future, and I'm not sorry I did. For one thing, it's an important part of recent IF history, and for another thing, as I said before, it's fun. Still, it was a bit of a letdown. I suppose that after the hype, buildup, and fanfare it got, it couldn't help but be a letdown, at least a little bit. On top of that, it was no doubt to the game's disadvantage that I played it in 2002. However unfair it might be to judge what's essentially a 1994 game by 2002 standards, it's impossible not to, because, well, it is 2002. Styles have changed, and parts of OAF haven't aged well. The bottom line is that it feels like the work of a beginning writer, one who has promise and may have matured through the process, but whose novice mistakes remain. That doesn't mean it's not worth playing — it most certainly is — but don't believe the hype.
in IF-Review | 4,559 Words | Comment
Dreary Lands by Paul Lee [Comp05]
IFDB page: Dreary Lands
There are lots of different ways to write a bad comp game. There's the Rybread special — terrible spelling and coding in a bizarre world. There's the dreaded bad homebrew. There's the obnoxious bad "joke" game where the joke is on you for playing. There's the promising but badly unfinished (or broken) game. There's the "here's my apartment" (or house, or school, or aero club) game. There's the simpleminded bad religious evangelism game. There's the "first game" that seems intent on making a bad first impression. There's the game with puzzles so broken they can't be solved without a walkthrough. There's the exasperating "I've never heard of spellcheck and can't write in English" game. And of course, there are the games that check more than one of these boxes. I've played all the flavors, many times over, but sometimes I get fooled as to which is which. Dreary Lands, for example, looks at first like it's going to be a surreal Rybread whirlwind, but turns out to be a first game not only broken in English and puzzles but also seemingly attempting some clumsy evangelism as well.
Sure, the writing is bad, and I mean awful. Here's a sampler, in response to the command "CLIMB TREE":
You lock your legs about the wet distusting trunk; but it is far to slippery to get a hold on, and you fall backwards into the marsh, getting soked in the vile mire a bit more than you'd have thought acceptable.
When I first started playing this game, I was noting all the blatant writing errors — in this case "distusting", "to slippery", and "soked". I had to stop almost immediately because those errors are constant. Even where we get past spelling/typo issues, there are questions like, "exactly how much 'soking' in the vile mire would I have found acceptable?" Some games with terrible writing feel like they're produced by someone for whom English is a second (or later) language. Dreary Lands didn't really feel like that to me — it has more of a "very young writer who has a lot to learn about proofreading" vibe, combined with a generous helping of "can't really express myself articulately yet."
The coding errors aren't quite so constant, but when they happen, oh boy are there some doozies. Here's my favorite:
You can also see (which is currently burning., (which is currently burning., (which is currently burning., (which is currently burning., (which is currently burning. and (which is currently burning. here.
I have no idea what is supposed to be happening here, nor what went wrong to turn it into what it has become, but wow. I know I just used a "literally" joke in my last review, but it is hard to avoid thinking of this as the flaming wreckage of some poor attempt at Inform code. What's definitely true about it, though, is that it presents a puzzle that's pretty much unsolvable without the walkthrough, concealing as it does an object crucial to that solution.
I used the walkthrough to get out of that jam, and then tried to continue on my own but almost immediately became ensnared in other illogical object behaviors, so between the writing and the coding I decided to just type straight from the walkthrough the rest of the way. Even then, I had to restore from an earlier point because somehow I'd gotten the game into an untenable state. With the help of the walkthrough, though, I was able to finish the game, which is how I figured out it was trying to be sneaky evangelism.
Mind you, I understand that all games evangelize something, consciously or not, and usually a whole raft of things. This game, for instance, argues against the value of comprehensible writing, promotes D&D-style medieval cliches like walking around with a sword, shield, and bow, and makes the case that games should be entered in the comp whether they work or not. But alongside all that, it starts to introduce religious imagery that by the end shows a clear proselytization agenda. When it turns out you're fighting a fallen angel (rebelling against both Satan and God) and that your sword-strike against it gets a little boost, "Footprints in the Sand"-style, by "two more hands, large and mighty, cupped around your own", it seems pretty clear that the game is arguing for the Christian beliefs.
And just like Jarod on his Journey, its alignment with those beliefs lets it feel super-smug towards the rest of the world, so that the PC can wander out into traffic and then shake his head at "the poor frenzied soul driving the pickup" that nearly ran him down. Tsk tsk mister driver, can't you see I'm elevated? But this game to me was more like that pickup driver, "a big middle finger… shoved toward you," and after its absolutely dismal presentation its smugness is deeply, deeply misplaced.
A Light's Tale by Zach Flynn as "vbnz" [Comp04]
IFDB page: A Light's Tale
Final placement: 32nd place (of 36) in the 2004 Interactive Fiction Competition
Well. This one has many problems. Many serious problems. Let's start with the writing. I'm guessing that this game is the work of a non-native English speaker. Something like "your mind… flys far, far away" could just be a typo, but when the game describes a dump as "full of unnumbered amounts of trash," I begin to get the strong feeling that the translating dictionary has come calling. The prose is just littered with writing errors, many of which are too simple to be blamed on translation. For instance, a death message:
The guard calls out: "What are you doing there?" He runs over and sticks a bullet in your side you die.
Maybe the bizarre diction "sticks a bullet in your side" could be explained by translation, but there's no such excuse for failing to provide either a conjunction or a full stop before "you die." Also, the game is just littered with redundancy. Whether it's describing the dump as "[an] extremely dirty, messed-up dump," or calling the PC "a rather overweight chubby character" or naming an NPC "the big, large rather muscular mouse," Light's Tale hates to say once what it could say twice instead.
However, as problematic as the writing is, the coding is worse. Take that big, large mouse, for instance. He's got one of the most ungainly short names I've ever seen in an IF object:
>give mirror to george
The big, large rather muscular mouse who looks to be a pretty good mechanic, for the right price rejects the offer.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure his short name is "the big, large rather muscular mouse who looks to be a pretty good mechanic, for the right price." Implementing an object in this way demonstrates a basic lack of understanding of how an IF engine works. Sometimes there are even full stops embedded in object names. Here's another problem: the game completely chokes on any attempt to show anything to anyone. The command always results in "[TADS-1014: 'abort' statement executed]". Another pervasive issue is the game's recurring failure to mark dialogue with quotation marks, resulting in exchanges like this:
>ask bruno about bar
Why would I want to talk to you?
Well, because you're the parser. You've been talking to me the whole game. Oh, unless that's Bruno talking, in which case there really ought to be some quotation marks. Sorry, but that's just plain careless. Even the hints are buggy; they keep referring to somebody named "Robert", when nobody of that name resides within the game. Thank goodness for the walkthrough, or I'd have gotten absolutely nowhere with A Light's Tale.
Which, saving the worst for last, brings us to the design. Over and over, I found myself resorting to the walkthrough, a refugee from the game's bizarre assumptions. Light's Tale is certainly one of those games that assumes you're going to traverse it in the same order that the walkthrough does. Routinely, the game would refer to objects I didn't have, or kill me immediately after rewarding me for solving a puzzle. There are far too many "read the author's mind" puzzles, including a real doozy at the end.
The game starts out as science fiction (the intro mentions a starship, anyway) for no apparent reason — it would play out exactly the same way if the setting were an airplane, or a steamship, or just about anywhere, really. There are talking animals throughout the game (unless the animal descriptions were meant as metaphor, but I don't think they were), including in scenes advertised as "the real world at last." The parser keeps referring to itself as "I" and "me", and then suddenly becomes a character in the game, personifying itself as some kind of freaky supervillain.
Let me tell you, it's a weird, wild ride. Some parts approach Rybread-level peculiarity. There were parts that I enjoyed, and there were many more parts that had me cursing heartily. It may be worth a trip through with the walkthrough close at hand, but not if you care about strong writing or strong coding, and even if you don't, you shouldn't really expect to understand it too well.
About the Infocom >RESTART Reviews
>INVENTORY started as a pandemic project. I'd known for a long time that I wanted to get my many comp reviews, and various others, off of my student website, but it wasn't until the spring of 2020 that I found myself with the time and motivation to get this site started. My son Dante was 14 at the time, and all these new reviews, brought into the light, piqued his interest.
So he started reading, and learning about the 1990s IF cast of characters — Graham, Zarf, Rybread, and so forth. He also learned about IF history as it stood up to that point, and in particular how Infocom loomed large for all of us at that time. We'd talked about Infocom before — in fact, when he was five we played Zork together for about 45 minutes, resulting in much cuteness.
Meanwhile, revisiting those old reviews started to give me a hankering to spend some time in the Infocom worlds again. So I decided to replay some Infocom games, and Dante decided he'd like to join in. Because we (and a whole lot of IF-ers) started with Zork, I thought that's where we could restart. I listed out what I think of as the 9 Zorkian Infocom games:
Zork I
Zork II
Zork III
Beyond Zork
Zork Zero
Enchanter
Wishbringer
Then, to make it a nice even list of 10 games, I added Moonmist, more or less at random. It was a game I'd never finished, it seemed like it was going to be on the easier side, and it had a little historical significance, apparently, for being one of the first games featuring a lesbian character. Dante is an LGBTQ+ activist, so I liked that connection, though as it turns out the depiction is very slight indeed.
Even before I embarked on this replay project, Dante had been exploring newer corners of the IF world — Lock & Key, Counterfeit Monkey, Steph Cherrywell's games, and some others. So he was familiar with the basic idiom and mechanisms of these games. Essentially, he was right about where I was at his age in 1984, except that his primary text game experiences had been with 21st-century interactive fiction. Plus, he'd been playing video games of all sorts pretty much since he could talk, as opposed to me whose only other video gaming came at the pizza parlor, skating rink, or occasional arcade. Oh, and those friends' houses lucky enough to contain an Atari 2600.
So our Infocom odyssey was a combination of me revisiting childhood memories, with dim recollections of puzzles and landscapes, and him seeing these vintage games through fresh eyes, his expectations shaped by a far more evolved version of text games and computer games in general. I'm still the faster typist between us, so I sat at the keyboard and read aloud, while he directed the action. We transcripted all our interactions, so that I could remember how they went when I wrote the reviews. We also used the invaluable Trizbort to map our progress, generally starting out with the automapping and then inevitably abandonding that when some mazy thing confused its relatively simple algorithm.
If I remembered a puzzle's solution, I'd try to keep my trap shut and give him the pleasure of solving it for himself, though sometimes if we crossed the line between fun flailing and ragequit flailing, I might drop a subtle hint. More often than not, I didn't remember the puzzle either, so we could genuinely collaborate on solving it. When we got really stymied we'd turn to the invaluable .z5 Invisiclues at the Infocom Documentation Project, but that wasn't terribly often.
So as I write about these games, I'm writing about that experience. I'm not trying to write the definitive history of an Infocom game — for my money Jimmy Maher has got that territory 100% nailed down. Instead, I'm presenting an idiosyncratic and personal account of how Dante and I experienced those games — how I felt upon returning to those oft-trod trails and how Dante's insights illuminated them for me like a trusty brass lantern.
We started Zork I on August 5, 2020, and finished Moonmist on December 20. Given sufficient time and interest, there may be more to come! Note that all of these reviews will be spoiler-laden — they aren't written to promote a game but rather to analyze an experience, so I won't shy away from getting specific.
in Infocom >RESTART, Meta | 734 Words | 1 Comment
The Newcomer by Jason Love [Comp01]
IFDB page: The Newcomer
This is a joke game, right? Please say it's a joke game. I mean, just add a few misspellings, subtract the setting, shake well, and you've got Comp00ter Game. I'm not kidding. Look, here's one of the room descriptions: "$$$". Or how about this dazzling piece of interaction:
>s
You can't, since the iron door is in the way.
>x iron door
You can't see any such thing.
I think that was in Comp00ter Game.
Oh, but the game isn't unwinnable. As I found out from the newsgroup, there's a Rybread-style solution available if one performs actions that make pretty much no sense in the context of what story there is.
The sad thing is, I don't think it's a joke. Or if it is a joke, it's subtler and even less funny than Comp00ter Game and Asendent. But if it's not a joke, how could anybody think this game is ready to be played? No, it has to be a joke. A lame, unfunny joke, but a joke nonetheless. It is a joke. Isn't it?
Asendent by Nate Cull and Doug Jones as Sourdoh Farenheit and Kelvin Flatbred [Comp00]
IFDB page: Asendent
It's the little things in life that help me keep my sense of irony. Like this: right after I finish a game that pays tribute to Graham Nelson, I get this game, which is apparently a tribute to Rybread Celsius. A tribute to Rybread Celsius. The world never ceases to baffle me. As I've written before about Rybread, he seems to have a devoted cult of followers, but I'll never be one of them. I guess I'm just old fashioned enough to like my games with error-free prose and code, and I also sort of like them to, y'know, make some kind of sense. Asendent is, if anything, actually worse than anything Rybread ever produced. Certainly the spelling is worse, especially compared to the later Rybread (see L.U.D.I.T.E.) The code is also quite horribly buggy, though it thankfully leaves the debug verbs available, so players can be sure they're not missing anything.
As with Comp00ter Game, Asendent looks like it might have some point to make, but just like Comp00ter Game, that point was lost on me. To me, it just seemed like a really horrible game. What's the point of producing such a thing, especially on purpose? The intro seems to suggest it's hallucinatory, and Rybread games certainly are that, though they don't tend to trumpet the fact themselves. But it's not the terrible spelling that makes them hallucinatory. It's the imagery. Asendent can't compare to a real Rybread game when it comes to startling images, and its imitation seems pale indeed. The purpose of its imitation is a mystery. A tribute to Rybread Celsius. People are so odd.
Asendent took me about 10 minutes, at the end of which I shook my head and got ready for the next entry. Hey, just like a real Rybread game!
Lurk. Unite. Die. Invent. Think. Expire. by Ryan Stevens as Rybread Celsius [Comp99]
IFDB page: Lurk. Unite. Die. Invent. Think. Expire.
Nobody has entered the IF competition every year for all five years of its existence. Only one person has entered every year for the last four years. That's right: Rybread Celsius. When he entered with two games in 1996, he was a mere 15 years old. Now, three years later, you'd expect his work to have grown along with him. In a way, it has. Last year's Acid Whiplash was much more fun than anything he'd released before, though I suspected at the time that much of the difference was due to the presence of Cody Sandifer as co-author. L.U.D.I.T.E. confirms that suspicion. I don't mean to suggest that there haven't been some signs of improvement. This most recent game is free of misspelled words, which is quite a milestone. Actually, I should be more clear: it's free of words that don't exist. Rybread still has some trouble with homophones, as in the following sample phrase: "The room's loan feature is a big door on the eastern wall…" I tried "BORROW DOOR", but it didn't work, so I can only assume that the door is really the room's lone feature. Perhaps I should ascribe this problem to the "Ten Thousand Monkeys on Typewriters" to whom he credits the text, but after playing Pass The Banana I feel like giving the monkeys a rest.
So yeah, things are spelled right. And probably there will be some people who love this game. But me, I just don't get it. None of it really makes much sense to me, and its hallucinatory qualities only hold my interest for a few minutes. I thought at first I was just stuck on the door puzzle, and I was going to present L.U.D.I.T.E. as Exhibit B for the argument in favor of including walkthroughs or hints with comp games. Then I noticed that Rybread had left the debug feature on, so I just looked at the game's object tree to see if I was missing anything. Turns out I wasn't. I tried jumping to a couple of other objects that looked like they might be rooms, but those objects lacked description properties. So what you see is, more or less, what you get. And what you get is not much, and what there is of it is really weird.
So hats off to Rybread for his persistence. I admire that. A game like this probably doesn't take long to put together, but at least he's still out there trying, and experience has shown that he does have a fan base. As usual, I'm not part of it. Oh well — there's always next year.
Acid Whiplash by Anonymous (a.k.a. Rybread Celsius Can't Find A Dictionary by Rybread Celsius and Cody Sandifer) [Comp98]
IFDB page: Acid Whiplash
Final placement: 23rd place (of 27) in the 1998 Interactive Fiction Competition
"This is terribly, terribly unfair. I'm really sorry. But I just started laughing hysterically, and it's not what the author intended. In the middle of an intense ending sequence, I read the line:
'My blood pumper is wronged!'
I just lost it. It's a very 'Eye of Argon' sort of line."
— Andrew Plotkin, reviewing "Symetry", 1/1/98
"It takes guts to do *anything* wearing a silver jumpsuit.
My point:
I bet Rybread wears *two* silver jumpsuits while he writes IF."
— Brad O'Donnell, 1/6/98
I hope my title line isn't too big a spoiler. I guess I can't feel too guilty about giving away something that's revealed in the first 3 seconds of the game. Anyway, it would be impossible to talk about this game without talking about Rybread Celsius. Yes, Rybread Celsius. The man, the myth, the legend. There are those who have called him "A BONA FIDE CERTIFIED GENIUS" [1]. There are those who have called him "the worst writer in interactive fiction today" [2]. There are even those who have called him "an adaptive-learning AI" [3]. Whatever the truth behind the smokescreen, opinion is clearly divided on the Celsius oeuvre. He appears to have an enthusiastic cult following who look at his works and see the stamp of genius, paralleled by another group who look at those selfsame works and see only barely coherent English and buggy code. I have always counted myself among the latter. Works like Symetry and Punkirita Quest set my English-major teeth on edge. I have never met a Rybread game that I've liked, or even halfway understood. But Acid Whiplash is different.
First of all, I need to say that I'm going to call it Acid Whiplash, for several reasons:
I'm not sure what the game's real name is supposed to be.
The other name, while it may be (is!) perfectly true, is just too long to write out.
Acid Whiplash is just such a perfect name for this game.
I've never dropped acid myself, but I'm guessing that this game is about the closest text game equivalent I will ever play, at least until my next Rybread game. The world spins crazily about, featuring (among other settings) a room shaped like a burning credit card (???), nightmarish recastings of Curses and Jigsaw, and your own transformation into a car dashboard. Scene changes happen with absolutely no warning, and any sense of emerging narrative is dashed and jolted about, hard enough and abruptly enough to, well, to give you a severe case of mental whiplash. Sounds like a typical Celsius game so far, right? But here's the best part: stumbling through these hallucinogenic sequences leads you through a multi-part interview between Cody Sandifer and Celsius himself, an interview which had me laughing out loud over and over. Sandifer is hilarious, striking the pose of the intensely sincere reviewer, taking each deranged Celsius word as gospel, and in the process manages actually to illuminate some of the interesting corners of his subject, and subject matter. And Rybread is… Rybread, no more or less than ever. Perhaps being changed into a dashboard while listening makes the whole thing funnier — I'm not sure.
As usual, my regular categories don't apply. Plot, puzzles, writing — forget about it. Acid Whiplash has no real interaction or story in any meaningful sense. (There is, however, one very funny scene where we learn that Rybread is in fact the evil twin of a well-known IF author). If you're looking for a plot, or even something vaguely coherent, you ought to know that you're looking in the wrong place. But if you aren't familiar with the Way of the Rybread, or even if you are, I recommend giving Acid Whiplash a look. It might shed some light on what all these crazy people are talking about… but don't expect to understand the next Celsius game.
[1] Brock Kevin Nambo
[2] Me. (Nothing personal.)
[3] Adam Thornton
Rating: 5.2 (This is by far the highest rating I've ever given to Rybread. In fact, I think it beats his past 3 ratings from me put together!)


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Tag Archives: Russian Threat
Paul Craig Roberts: Without Truth, Government Becomes Totalitarian
September 24, 2018 Financial Markets, U.S. Economyfake news, Paul Craig Roberts, propaganda, Russian Threat, stock bubbleadmin
"THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." – Edward Bernays, the Godfather of Propaganda
It's stunning to me the number of highly educated people I know who are blinded by the Orwellian fog that now engulfs the United States. Even if the Russian election meddling accusations were true, and there's not been one shred of court-admissible evidence produced yet, so what? The U.S. interferes in elections and governments all over the world, including Russia. Thus is the power of propaganda. It's difficult to know what's real and what's fiction because the accepted purveyors of "truth" and "news" have been captured by the political and corporate elitists, who use the traditional media outlets to advance their political and economic objectives.
"Today in America no member of the print and TV media or NPR dares to get within a hundred miles of the truth. It would be a career-ending event. Without a media dedicated to truth, there can be no control over government." – Paul Craig Roberts. The following essay is a must-read from Paul Craig Roberts
On September 17, I posted my column, "Evidence is no longer a Western value." I used as an example the blame that has been put on Russia for the shot down Malaysian airliner. No evidence whatsoever exists for the accusation, and massive evidence has been presented that the airliner was shot down by the neonazis that seized power as a result of the Washington-organized coup in Ukraine.
Blame was fixed on Russia not by any evidence but by continuous evidence-free accusations that began the moment the airliner was shot down. Anyone who asked for evidence was treated as a "Putin apologist." This took evidence out of the picture.
Wherever we look in these times, we see evidence-free accusations established as absolute facts: Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," "Iranian nukes," "Russian invasion of Ukraine," the Trump/Putin conspiracy that stole the 2016 US presidential election, Syrian use of poison gas. Not a scrap of evidence exists for any of these accusations, but the truth of the accusations is established in many minds worldwide.
Science gave the world the principle of evidence-based fact, which did away with the burning of witches and political decisions based in superstitution. Truth became a force.
But truth can get in the way of agendas, and as elites recovered their power from the social, political, and economic reforms of a previous era, truth was divided into categories and cut so fine that it disappeared. For the elite truth became identical to their economic interests, and Identity Politics stripped truth of its universal meaning and reduced truth to self-pleading race and gender truth.
The result is that today truth is established not by evidence but by repetition of accusations and falsehoods.
This made it easy to destroy people and countries by lies alone. Who remembers Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund and at the time the likely future president of France? Strauss-Kahn was out of step with Washington which wanted its puppet Sarkozy reelected. Strauss-Kahn came to New York and was accused by a hotel maid of sexual assault. He was arrested and jailed. The New York district attorney and media whores pronounced him guillty. Simultaneously, on cue, a French woman made the same claim. Case closed. No evidence. Just claims. Then it emerged that the hotel maid had just had very large sums of money far above her income level deposited to her bank account. Even more damning, it was revealed that Sarkozy knew of Strauss-Kahn's arrest before the police announced it. The case fell apart, and the New York district attorney publicly apologized. But Strauss-Kahn had been forced to resign as Director of the IMF and was out of the French presidential election. So Washington won.
Today it is a common, routine tactic for both US political parties to produce a woman to bring accusations of sexual harassment, abuse, or assault against any heterosexual male appointee or nominee that either party regards to be out of step with its agenda. It happens so regularly that no sentinent person can possibly believe the woman. Sexual assault has been reduced to one of the dirty tricks of politics.
As hard as false accusations can be on individuals, they destroy entire countries. Just consider the destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, currently Yemen, and Washington has not given up on the same fate for Syria and Iran. Based on nothing but Washington's endlessly repeated false accusations, millions of peoples have been murdered, maimed, orphened, widowed, displaced, and sent as refugees overrunning Europe.
There is not a scrap of evidence anywhere that justifies Washington's enormous crimes against humanity. Yet, these crimes that in a truth-conscious world would have resulted in several entire governments of the United States standing accused in the International Criminal Court, or the War Crimes Court, or whichever court, and perhaps in all of them, are ignored, because accusation alone against the destroyed countries and peoples sufficed to justify Washington's war crimes against humanity.
What I have described is a truth-free world. There is no place for truth in the world that the West has created. The Western hostility to truth is overwhelming. As I write truth-tellers are being banned from Facebook, Twitter, and PayPal. Google makes their sites almost impossible to find. Throughout the Western World truth has been redefined as "Conspiracy Theory."
Elites such as George Soros and innumerable tax-financed government agencies, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, spend taxpayers' money discrediting those who tell the truth. Many in governments want truth-tellers locked up as enemies of the state, by which they mean "enemies of the self-interests of the ruling elites."
You don't need to believe me. Here are four books written by honorable persons, meticulously documented, full of evidence that make it clear that American elites have no respect whatsoever for truth. Truth is something that is in their way.
One of the books is Charlie Savage's Takeover. Savage shows how Dick Cheney used the George W. Bush regime and 9/11 to destroy the separation of powers and the civil liberties in the US Constitution. When you read Savage's book you will discover that the America that you think is here is not here. In its place is a dictatorship available to any president clever enough to use it. Savage's book is one of the best pieces of investigative reporting that I have read.
The Roman system of government never recovered from Caesar crossing the Rubicon. I doubt that the US Constitution will ever recover from Dick Cheney.
Two of the books are by David Ray Griffin, one of the last and most determined of American protagonists for truth. In his book, Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World, Griffin makes, a decade after Savage, the same case against Dick Cheney. When two independently minded researchers reach the same conclusion, you can bet it is on the money. If the world survives Washington's orchestrated conflict with Russia, Cheney will go down in history as the person who destroyed American constitutional government.
In this same book, Griffin also examines the official 9/11 story and exposes it as a total fabrication with no connection to any truth whatsoever. He takes up this case in his current, just released book with Elizabeth Woodworth, 9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation.
Anyone who is still brainwashed by the official 9/11 story can immediately free themselves from their deception by reading this book. There is no longer any doubt that 9/11 was an inside orchestrated event for the purpose of unleashing two decades, with more to come, of American aggression in the Middle East.
Griffin does not leave a single official statement about 9/11 standing as not a single official claim is based on any factual evidence whatsoever.
For seventeen years the world has been fed a pack of total lies based on nothing but accusations and in the face of massive evidence produced not by some collection of political hacks sitting as a 9/11 Commission, but by thousands of experts. Yet for seventeen years false accusations prevailed over heavily documented facts presented by disinterested experts called "conspiracy theorists" by those intent on covering up their crimes.
The fourth book is Mary Mapes' Truth and Duty. Mary Mapes is the CBS producer whose team carefully prepared for Dan Rather the 60 Minutes report on George W. Bush's failure to perform his Texas Air National Guard duty. Her story was absolutely correct, but she and Rather were destroyed by accusation alone. The Republicans set in attack mode the right-wing bloggers, and soon the official media joined in for the purpose of elevating their ratings at CBS's expense.
CBS was vulnerable, because it was no longer independent but a part of Viacom's empire. Mapes was already in trouble, because she had broken the Abu Ghraib torture story just at the moment that Bush and Cheney declared: "America doesn't torture." As the Cheney/Bush regime put pressure on Viacom, a corporate executive told Mapes: "You don't have any idea how many millions of dollars Viacom is spending on lobbying in Wasington, and nothing you've done in the past year has helped."
There you have it. The Viacom executives had no interest whatsoever in the truth, only in what advanced their lobbying interests in Washington. Mapes, a truth-teller had to go, and she did. And so did Dan Rather.
Ask yourselves where you can read articles like this. If you do not support the remaining portals of truth, you will find yourselves bound, like the Elven-kings, Dwarf-lords and Mortal Men in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, "in the darkness" by the elites ability to control the explanations that comprise your reality.
The "Russia Threat" Tragicomedy
February 23, 2018 Financial Markets, Gold, Housing Market, Market Manipulation, U.S. EconomyClinton Foundation, dystopia, Mueller, Russian Threat, UraniumOneadmin
I'm still trying to understand how this nation became so deeply embroiled in this idiotic investigation into "he said, she said" about the Russians interfering in U.S. politics. I can tie it back to the presidential election campaign when Hillary Clinton asserted, during one of the debates, that the Russians hacked her email. LOL. As it turns out, we know that is false.
The only real connection to corruption, bribes and Russia is Hillary and her husband. The connection between millions in donations from a Russian company to Clinton "charitable funds" which paved the way for uranium sales to Russia is definitive. Where's the investigation into that?
The Russia situation, like the "war on terror," is nothing more than a State-sponsored propaganda prop crafted to distract the public's attention from the massive theft of public wealth. The elitists are robbing the country blind and the citizens are blinded by fraudulent news reporting. Every major "respected" news organization, print and television, has been forced to withdraw fabricated stories. And yet, allegedly educated and "enlightened" people continue patronizing these same news sources.
My good friend, John Titus of Best Evidence video productions, and I were exchanging text messages earlier this week on the insanity that has gripped the U.S. I wanted to share some quotes from him because they are too insightfully entertaining to keep to myself.
"The slaves [i.e. the public] will debate the merits of the red puppet and the blue puppet all the way to the gas chambers" [Republicans vs. Dems]. Note: to anyone really paying attention, there's no difference between Repubs and Dems – they are both controlled only by money and answer only to those who pay for their elections. Anyone who believes that voting makes a difference is severely mentally challenged.
In reference to Russiagate: "That story is actually so f–king dumb that I think it's a national IQ test to see how much broad-daylight theft the criminals can get away with. 'Can we,' the criminals must be asking themselves, 'drain every cent out of people's bank accounts, 401k plans and pension funds and, in the morning, have CNN blame it on malicious gun-slinging right-wing hacker hobgoblins and still get away with it.' The answer is most certainly 'yes.'"
Of course, to that he added: "Well, to be fair (and balanced), Fox News would undoubtedly fire back with a rash of its own 'experts' blaming the crisis on Black Lives Matter and lesbian abortionists for gun control."
The Deep State's Plan To Take Over The Oval Office
May 18, 2017 Financial Markets, Market Manipulation, U.S. EconomyDeep State, MAGA, Mike Pence, Russian Threat, Trump impeachmentadmin
IRD believes that the Deep State's plan all along was to use the election of Trump as a stalking horse to "back door" their obedient foot soldier, Mike Pence, into the Oval Office. Too be sure, HRC was a Deep State emissary but she also had her own power base and political/financial agenda. Forcing Pence onto Trump as his running mate (who ever heard of Pence, who reminds me of Lawrence Olivier's dentist in "Marathon Man," before the election?) and then destroying the Trump presidency gives the Deep State complete control the Executive Branch (it owns Congress and controls the SCOTUS – see the Citizens United decision).
This post by my friend and colleague, Paul Craig Roberts, explains the methodology used by the Deep State to accomplish its goal:
We are witnessing an assault by the national security state and its liberal media on a President of the United States that is unprecedented…What we are witnessing is the determination of the national security state to keep their prized "Russian Threat" in its assigned role as the Number One Threat to the US. The liberal media, owned by the CIA since the 1950s is in accord with this goal. The American media is so accustomed to its enslavement by the national security state that it does not think of the consequences.
You can read the rest of this here: The Assault On Trump
As an aside, isn't it amazing the way the Deep State has taken an accusation that has not proof of validity – absolutely no proof – and turned it into a national fear agenda that is endorsed by the mainstream media and accepted by status quo as real? George Orwell could not have scripted this more perfectly.
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Франческо Антоніолі (;  14 вересня 1969, Монца) — італійський футболіст, що грав на позиції воротаря. Згодом — футбольний тренер.

Насамперед відомий виступами за клуби «Болонья», «Рома» та «Сампдорія».

Триразовий чемпіон Італії. Дворазовий володар Суперкубка Італії з футболу. Дворазовий переможець Ліги чемпіонів УЄФА. Володар Міжконтинентального кубка. Володар Кубка Інтертото.

Клубна кар'єра

У дорослому футболі дебютував 1986 року виступами за команду клубу «Монца», в якій провів два сезони, взявши участь у 23 матчах чемпіонату.

Згодом з 1988 по 1999 рік грав у складі команд клубів «Чезена», «Модена», «Мілан», «Піза», «Реджяна» та «Болонья». Протягом виступів за «Мілан», де був резервним воротварем, виборював титул чемпіона Італії, ставав володарем Суперкубка Італії з футболу, переможцем Ліги чемпіонів УЄФА (двічі), володарем Міжконтинентального кубка, володарем Кубка Інтертото.

Своєю грою за «Болонью» привернув увагу представників тренерського штабу клубу «Рома», до складу якого приєднався 1999 року. Відіграв за «вовків» наступні чотири сезони своєї ігрової кар'єри. Більшість часу, проведеного у складі «Роми», був основним голкіпером команди. За цей час додав до переліку своїх трофеїв ще один титул чемпіона Італії, знову ставав володарем Суперкубка Італії з футболу.

Протягом 2003—2009 років захищав кольори клубів «Сампдорія» та «Болонья».

З 2009 року протягом трьох сезонів захищав ворота команди клубу «Чезена», в якій досвідчений гравець був основним голкіпером. Завершивши виступи на полі у 42-річному віці, залишився у «Чезені», де до 2018 року видповідав у тренерському штабі за підготовку воротарів.

Виступи за збірні
Протягом 1989—1992 років залучався до складу молодіжної збірної Італії. На молодіжному рівні зіграв у 23 офіційних матчах.

1992 року захищав кольори олімпійської збірної Італії. У складі цієї команди провів 6 матчів. У складі збірної був учасником футбольного турніру на Олімпійських іграх 1992 року у Барселоні.

2000 року викликався до лав національної збірної Італії, потрапив до заявки команди на чемпіонат Європи 2000 року у Бельгії та Нідерландах. На турнірі, на якому італійці вибороли «срібло», був другим резервним воротарем (після Крістіана Абб'яті та Франческо Тольдо) і на поле не виходив.

Титули і досягнення
  Чемпіон Італії (3):
 «Мілан»: 1991–92, 1992–93
 «Рома»: 2000–01
  Володар Суперкубка Італії з футболу (2):
 «Мілан»: 1992
 «Рома»: 2001
  Переможець Ліги чемпіонів УЄФА (2):
 «Мілан»: 1988–89, 1989–90
 Володар Міжконтинентального кубка (1):
 «Мілан»: 1989
 Володар Кубка Інтертото (1):
 «Болонья»: 1998
 Чемпіон Європи (U-21): 1992
 Віце-чемпіон Європи: 2000

Примітки

Джерела
 Статистика на сайті www.tuttocalciatori.net
 Статистика виступів за збірну на сайті Федерації футболу Італії.

італійські футболісти
італійські футбольні тренери
Футбольні воротарі
Гравці молодіжної збірної Італії з футболу
Футболісти «Монци»
Футболісти «Мілана»
Футболісти «Чезени»
Футболісти «Модени»
Футболісти «Пізи»
Футболісти «Реджяни»
Футболісти «Болоньї»
Футболісти «Роми»
Футболісти «Сампдорії»

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia