These were just sitting on a window ledge in the Library. I should note that no one uses the Library anymore. There are books, but, well, they're books. Like anyone has time to dig through those. There's microfilm, but the entirety of the paper is online now. There is a wall of magazines but the subscriptions stopped a long time ago. A few Bankers-Boxes of correspondence from long-departed writers, old government reports whose production occupied a month or two of a dedicated staff (harried project manager, competent underling, well-meaning but less competent team member, sarcastic logistics manager who couldn't care less what it was all about, and had her eye on the clock and the calendar) and were read by no one. They'll sit there for a year or five before someone pitchforks them into the binn.
The entire history of the paper was once stored in the basement. The Morgue.
It was someone's job to clip and label and file absolutely everything that had been printed.
I'm pretty sure it was all tossed.
Digital does not degrade! Except when the links don't work anymore for some reason. Digital is much more searchable. True! Digital does not lie! Okay ha ha ha, right no one says that. It would take a lot of work to alter the information in these packets. Of course, one could just toss them. There'd possibly be a copy somewhere, but it would be hard to find.
The problem with the old newspapers is their brittleness. After a certain period of time, reading them is an act of destruction. Open them up and they flake and break. But you can hold them, and touch something directly from the day itself, and there's no other medium that gives you that. Is that important? It probably isn't, in the long grand scheme. But it's still startling to see those old newspapers with the big headlines, like a mouth open in a silent shout.
The other shortcoming, which didn't seem a big problem at the time: It's the measure of the entire day up until a certain point. That Star subhead is odd: Eagle climbs toward mother-ship rendezvous. Well? Did they make it? Did the Star absolutely have to go to press before the Eagle docked?
At 1:54 p.m. EDT - The Eagle departs from the moon to rendezvous with Columbia. - 5:35 p.m. EDT - The Eagle docks with Columbia.
The Star was an afternoon paper, and they had to get it on the trucks. If anything happened between spinning up the plates and dinner, you'd get it from Walt or Chet or John.
Maybe it's just me, but the older I get the less I need to know everything now about everything.
Well, there was more to the day, of course. I woke too early, had my standard one-egg omelette - but a jumbo egg! The ones that make the hens grab the handicapbar in the stall - with pepper jack, jalapenos, and onions. A piece of sausage adorned with the latest hot sauce to come in the subscription. It has a lemon aspect. Delicious. After lunch I wanted to sleep for an hour, so . . . gym. Did everything, which had the effect of waking me up. Walked back to the car hunched against the cold and the rain, listening to a song I'd never heard by a band I knew. And that alone made the day distinct.
Our weekly recap of a Wikipedia peregrination. Expect no conclusion or revelations, but if you've been with us since this started last year, you know . . . sometimes we learn interesting things.
So! How do we get from here . . .
. . . to there?
Not much of a journey.
I was thinking about Dark Forces the other day, and how impressive it was when it came out. How the sequel was even better. Looking back at screenshots is a reminder of how far we’ve come.
This was totally immersive.
No, really. It was.
We had Doom, Dark Forces, and Duke Nukem. The last one was absolutely high 90s, with its wisecracking hero doing action-hero tropes. You want to play it again, and wonder how long it would take to be bored - or whether it’s still fun. It also made me think of Daikatana, the heavily-hyped game by a Doom co-creator, and how it came out late, was bad, and sold poorly. Researching that took me to a Wikipedia page about the worst video games of all time, and one was . . .
Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties
What?
Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is an adult-oriented "romantic comedy" visual novel/dating sim. The game stars Edward J. Foster and Jeanne Basone as John and Jane, respectively; two people who are being pressured by their respective parents to go out and find a spouse. The player's task is to get John and Jane together.
Plumbers Don't Wear Ties received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics for its lackluster production value, nonsensical storyline, poor acting and humor, and for primarily being presented as a slideshow despite being advertised as a full motion video game.
The art on the box was also criticized.
Criminey.
Of course, now it’s being re-released.
Once upon a time things this bad would just cease to exist, but now we have to revive everything. Because being a Good Pop Culture Consumer now means being slightly smug about knowing the existence of the bad Plumbers game.
The list of worst video games, or at least the ones that had the most negative reception, does not include Duke Nukem’s final iteration, a game of such sniggering sophomoric inanity it killed the franchise for good. A perfect case of people with too many resources and no deadline faffing and fapping and fiddlefarting around until there were no resources and an imminent deadline. The Wikipedia entry notes that the criticism was, shall we say, broad-spectrum:
Duke Nukem Forever was released on June 14, 2011, and received mostly unfavorable reviews, with criticism for its graphics, dated humor and story, simplistic mechanics, and unpolished performance and design.
Destructoid wrote: "Duke does not come across as cool, witty or likeable in the least. He comes across as a vile, callous, thoroughly detestable psychopath.
Yep.There’s a project in the works to restore the original old-style DNF. They also have a Twitter account in which Duke supports Trans Rights, because the modern computer developer is incapable of imagining that their pop-culture icons aren’t completely consumed by the same issues as they are, and precisely aligned on the side of virtue.
I bought an old game the other day for $3.99. It was, at the time, state of the first-person-shooter genre. I hadn't played it for oh, twenty years or more. Looks simple and crude now.
I'm having a blast.
We saw the paper yesterday. Let’s see where it was made.
Hard to tell.
Could have been here, where there isn’t anything anymore.
Blockton hasn’t been anything for a very long time.
Big glass for a small main street! These were important stores.
I don’t think it would be wise to have a medical emergency in town these days.
Some other old wreck behind it.
The suggestions of prosperity are many. This one might not have had windows in the original. It's not inconsistent with an old movie theater.
Looks as if the door could be easily pried open . . . but why would anyone want to go inside? It’s unnerving.
Oh, that old sign. Been a long time since anyone sold a radio out of that place.
The building had two lives:
Columns to indicate financial probity! Your money is safe in a place with columns.
As I said: suggestions of bygone prosperity. That’s a substantial structure for a small town, a statement of pride and faith in the future.
Alas.
The contents are what you’d expect: stuff left a long time ago, forgotten, never disturbed.
I suspect a cornice shaving.
The local team, I assume.
I wonder if they ever take this down.
Empty name block. Never filled in, or taken down?
Half of the structures stand alone, because the neighbors have fallen or burned.
Again, it looks as if you could push in the door. The whole front, for that matter.
Market? Bar? Cafe?
No clues on the internet. The building took its secrets to the grave.
