I thought it was going to be different. It turned out to be(,) just the same.

BLOT: (15 Jun 2011 - 01:01:21 PM)

I thought it was going to be different. It turned out to be(,) just the same.

The title of this one comes from a little book by Edward Gorey called "L'heure bleue". A French phrase, meaning the blue hour. Which actually refers to twilight (and morning's equivalent) and seems to have a semi-positive connotation as a time of rest. Later, in England, it picked up a little bit of a meaning as a time of laziness. In this booklet, Gorey combines both of those along with the American assumption (as in, the depressing hour). Each panel features two dogs (?) that are mostly white with a black stripe and each wears a sweater with the letter "T" on front. In many of the panels, the dogs are near mirror images of one another: with only minor differences in arm placement, stance, or things held in hand. There are panels with captions like, "It seems to me a fate worse that sinking. But there isn't any other kind." The very first caption has the letters, "_ove one another__". The dogs stand below with the letters "R, O, Z, D, E, M" in hand. Meaning they can spell "...one another", but I suppose at best they can make it say "Move..." and not "Love..." and that seems to be kind of sublime and sad at the same time.

The next to the last panel has them playing badminton on a surreal background and the title is the caption. Just FYI, the whole thing is call and response so that the first line is meant to be one dog's, and the other line is meant to be the other. In this case, Gorey pulls a post-mod and makes the response ambiguous but also meaningless. Either the comma makes it all different, just the same, or it makes it all the same. And that is a good enough summation of the motif, I think.

Speaking of things a little less melancholy, Kerry and Alicia came over Saturday. Hung out, played games, relaxed. Kerry was just spending the night. Alicia was here through Tuesday. It was good to seem them both. Alicia will be heading overseas for a good chunk of the summer, doing a Euro-visit for her class (and, well, for the fun of it). We don't get to see much of her anymore and if she hadn't been able to come up this week it probably would have been the Fall or near before schedules permitted. As for Kerry, she doesn't live super far away but we are busy enough nowadays that it is usually a month or two between visits. So, good times all around.

As for the character of those good times, we started out playing Munchkin Zombies which is ok. The jokes are funny enough, and the game play is well tested. However, I don't know. Difficulty-wise, it comes across as a lot like The Good, The Bad, and the Munchkin. A game that makes it a tad easier to get started and get swinging. The original Munchkin, and Cthulhu Munchkin, both have elements of real danger right off. It can take several rounds before someone starts to get a leg up. The difference is game play is that these later products mean in a few minutes you have people level 5 and +11 in items and they can beat most of the monsters. One thing I did appreciate is that it has a few cards that do things like give the people who help you the levels for beating the adventure. While some cards actually give bonuses for accepting help and stuff, so that it while seems like it is trying to make it more cooperative with the twist that only one can win; you toss in those "trap" cards and suddenly someone more powerful than you might just be taking your levels. It is the one shining moment of gameplay in the pack, I think.

Besides showing them Return of the Living Dead, which was a stand-in for the intended [REC] 2, to explain where the "Brraaaaainnnns" thing comes from; also watched Black Swan. This was Sunday night, after Kerry left. Sarah and I have wanted to see that since before it was in theaters and we finally got around to it. I liked it. I think I would have liked it more had it came before Requiem for a Dream though. What it needed was a slight sparseness of effect and it indulged a little. It also, like many movies nowadays, padded more length in that it should have. I get it needed a slow burn, but I am sure you could cut half an hour out by substituting little cut shots for some of the scenes. At any rate, it was a messy-in-places, beautiful movie that is worth watching.

Mostly, though, I played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Which makes me a bad host. I also made lard-based popcorn though (by the way, one of the greatest drinking foods ever). Which makes me a...great...host? I suppose the whole weekend was a wash as far as hosting ability goes. Ah well, at least I had a good time.

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: June 2011