The Crew that Never Rests: Crowdsourced Absurdity

In a word, their pleasures were showy, but totally unsubstantial—their activity unceasing, but fruitless and unavailing—and their condemnation appears to have consisted in the necessity of maintaining the appearance of constant industry or enjoyment, though their toil was fruitless and their pleasures shadowy and unsubstantial. Hence poets have designed them as “the crew that never rest.” Besides the unceasing and useless bustle in which these spirits seemed to live, they had propensities unfavourable and distressing to mortals.

— Sir Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology

 

games without frontiers

Twitch Plays Pokemon via The Wisdom of Crowds (Metafilter). I think that Sisyphus is happy, and his name is Legion.

I am a consumer whore…

…and how! I have Space Invaders Shoes now. They are invading your space. Please note the sole, which imprints an invader and “One Point” as I walk.

I found these after my original quest for the limited edition Space Invaders Vans shoes ended in failure; they were apparently a Japan only very limited thing.

Space Invader Shoes: Sole

Space Invader Shoes.

what

nrrd: Wow, best name for a video game evar: ” Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka 2: Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupal Holiday”
nrrd: And nothing says “mainstream success” like “based on a Nikolai Gogol novel”
ignatz: I never beat the end guy in “Dead Souls”
nrrd: You have to use the magic cloak

Blowing Stuff Up With Mr. Science

If you’re about my age, you grew up with an endless series of school science movies, narrated by soporific baritones, with muzak/porn 70s soundtracks, introduced by professorial types in their studies. Disney did them, everyone else did.

In a wonderful homage to this, Sega has made an ad site for their game “Full Auto” called Sega Labs.

They have the whole thing down, even the slightly out of sync sound and bad cuts. Plus, explosions. What’s not to like?