I will grudgingly admit that today is holiday, but if I’m going to celebrate some unnecessary Saint’s day I’d prefer to do St. Patties…again, but before. This other holiday people celebrate is a damn stupid thing, but comes with an interesting roman background. Romantic stuff, eh? Where can I buy a Valentine’s Day card with a picture of the Lupercal Cave on it… Guess I’ll have to stick to my usual 2/14 decoration.
I must have played Sim City 2000 for five years straight. I made a thousand cities, some small farmer villages other suburban burgs lined with trees and schools. I made epic metropolises that covered the ground like moss and rose into the sky, well beyond the long lost streets. The later simcity games were even more visceral. Simcity 4 was practically a city planning guide and my cities, all interconnected and interdependent, were amorphous and uncontrollable. They ate away at the land and leveled entire mountains, expanding without any particular guide or reason. Some cities I let flounder, others I forced higher and wider, hungry organisms intent on becoming organisms of their own.
While the later games, simcity 3000 and simcity 4, were visually stunning and phenomenal games, they lacked part of what made simcity 2000 special and not the least of that was the extended manual that came with the special edition (or perhaps commemorative edition, I don’t remember anymore.) It was a standard game manual (back when games actually came with those. Allow me a moment to weep over my long lost Baldur’s Gate manual, a dusty tome with faded pages and gold ink. That was a masterpiece.) The simcity 2000 manual came with a dozen essays and a similar number of images written about cities. They described cities as homes of people and their lives and similarly as mindless corporate jails where the inhabitants are little more than guests. They applauded the glorious gentrification of a decaying, forgotten neighborhood and bemoaned the crime infested grime of the city center.
Simple as that manual was, those writers are really what gave me an interest in ‘the city’ as something more than a crowded nuisance, a place to live while hoping to live elsewhere. The photos found at . A ghostly Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower looming over a darkened city, bright streets dizzying with activity, all cities as lived in and inevitably forgotten as Rome. It is history, like a textbook, but it is current history and so it is very alien and tells a story without ignoring the details.
Does this mean I’m getting some article reviewers and wordpress designers on staff soon?
When…did this happen? I knew about the handful of recent Lego computer games, which have gone a loooong way since the old (and pretty terrible) lego computer game I had, but an MMO? That could be…interesting and the trailer is amazing.
I took this recipe and modified it. I couldn’t find any sliced Gouda (and the gouda for sale was in triangular wedges) so I got Munster instead. Munster is usually sliced thicker so I only used 1 or 2 slices per roll. I also didn’t have a panini maker, but a simple pan fry with plenty of butter worked out just fine. I thought the mustard + honey combination might be have turned out badly, but it’s excellent. For the future I’d probably make more honey and do the insides of both halves. Also, I found the roasted tomato a bit distracting so I pulled that off the sandwich and at it later. The whole thing would go well with some kettle chips or potato salad. Excellent recipe.
(Also thanks for the Christmas gift cookbook. That’s where I originally found the recipe. It was used in Top Chef a few seasons ago)
Someone sent me these: mash-ups of Star Wars and 80s Television Show Intros.
That’s the picture that hangs above my laptop. I stare into it as a I write. I am not quite sure what made me decide to write about it, but I suppose it’s only natural. I’ve had it for maybe six months now. Most people know of Gérôme (if they know of Gérôme) from his depiction of gladiators, which is most famous for the thumbs down symbol.
I actually came to learn of Gérôme from some random bit of historical reading I was doing at the time. Gérôme did a depiction of the Grand Conde, who was a famous French general during the Thirty-Years war (and one of the great generals in history.)
Sometime later I searched out the artist and found Gerome. His historical works are my favorite, but history seems to have preferred his orientalist undertakings. In researching this article I found this gallery, which is rather extensive. Or this one, which has everything (but with more annoying pagination). Enjoy!
Lions. (Just a great article I found.)
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