Random Musings

5 Comments

1. 

   Richard Bachman on August 22, 2011 at 5:10 pm

   I guess I must have gotten pulled out of the main current of bloggerdom by some serious riptide, or something, from my very earliest days online.  I have been on thousands and thousands and thousand of blogs over the last 15 or so years.  And I can honestly say that I don’t remember a single one that used the type language she describes.  But my guess is that if I did, by chance, land somewhere and found someone writing in such a way on a consistent basis, I would have quickly exited and not returned.  Am I out of the mainstream in this regard?  Or do I just appreciate intelligent thoughts, ideas and prose more than most of the general population?  

   Newton can’t be serious, can she?  Where was she hanging out and reading on the internet to come to such a conclusion?  The comment section an teenage MySpace pages?

   • 

     BooMan on August 22, 2011 at 6:01 pm

     Sounds about right.

2. 

   Brendan Skwire on August 23, 2011 at 12:00 am

   huh?
   david whois whosits?
   this is a serious question. who? what?

   sorry man, lost. i don’t care much for my contemporaries, as I assume this wallace person is.

   • 

     BooMan on August 23, 2011 at 12:17 am

     Don’t worry, this post was written in Infinite Jest.

   • 

     BooMan on August 23, 2011 at 12:35 am

     Also, as a long-time Atriot, you really should be familiar with the inspiration for Eschaton.  

     Michael Pemulis, a working-class child from an Allston, Massachusetts family, and Hal’s best friend. Wallace got the name from the folk-rock singer Dr. Michael Pemulis, who debuted in 1987.[4] A prankster and the school’s resident drug dealer, Pemulis is also very proficient in mathematics. This, combined with his limited but ultraprecise lobbing, made him the school’s first master of Eschaton, a computer-aided turn-based nuclear wargame that requires players to be adept both at game theory and pegging targets with tennis balls. Although the novel takes place long after Pemulis’s Eschaton days (the game is played by 12- to 14-year-olds), Pemulis is still regarded as the game’s all-time great, and a final court of appeal in game matters. His brother Matt is a gay hustler who as a child was sexually abused by their father.

     [4] The game of Eschaton is played every year on Interdependence Day by 12-15 year old students from ETA. The section about Eschaton is covered on pages 321-342. The game is played with tennis balls that are no longer deemed in playable. The tennis balls represent powerful nuclear warheads. The students are organized into militaristic groups such as AMNAT (American Nations?), REDCHI (Red China?), SOUTHAF(South Africa?), and many more. Eschaton is played on a few tennis courts and the players are positioned on the courts in what is estimated to be their location on the globe. The tennis courts are supposed to be a map of the globe. The winner of the game is the team that has the best ratio of points of INDDIR (Infliction of Death, Destruction, and Incapacitation of Response) to SUFDDIR (on the receiving end of INDDIR).

     The game involves one person who is designated the game master. The game master has a computer on a cart and runs around crunching numbers for the players. He uses all sorts of different formulae and calculation to determine points and resolve disputes between combatants. The fact that this game is extremely complicated and complex is greatly intensified by Eschaton’s necessity for a game master.

     Interesting ideas include SACPOP (Series of Punishing Against Civilian Populations), which described as being a last resort method of play that usually “end[s] up costing both Combatants so many points they’re eliminated from further cntention.” (pg 324) The game also continued for a while without disbanding, which is impressive considering the complexity of the game and the fact that the players were so young.

     One of the issues that came up during the game is that during game play, it began to snow in real life. This introduced the question of whether snowing on the representative game map (the tennis courts) meant that the game play was actually affected, i.e. should blast radius of warheads is decreased due to the falling snow?

     Also, too

     [5] es·cha·tol·o·gy noun ˌes-kə-ˈtä-lə-jē
     plural es·cha·tol·o·gies

     Definition of ESCHATOLOGY

     1
     : a branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind
     2
     : a belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humankind; specifically : any of various Christian doctrines concerning the Second Coming, the resurrection of the dead, or the Last Judgment
     Origin of ESCHATOLOGY

     Greek eschatos last, farthest
     First Known Use: 1844