Planes, trains, and killitrons

I just read Jason Shiga's Meanwhile today (so did my brother, so I had some warning), and it put me in one fuck of a Mood.

Don't get me wrong, it's amazing and a very very worthy read. At first glance, it resembles an old Choose Your Own Adventure book, but it uses the narrative strategies and stripped-down aesthetic of modern competition-grade interactive fiction* like Shade and Everybody Dies, which is not a thing I've seen in print before and which lines up beautifully with Shiga's natural economy of visual style and flair for absurdism. (Actually, when you get down to it, it is a piece of modern IF implemented on glossy paper; "You two are talking about this the way you talk about video games," said Katie, which, yes. We even found ourselves modeling its state machine in our heads [anyone else find the one big state-dropping glitch?], and the kick of satisfaction when you finally isolate the main stable loop and get your bearings for the next stage of the campaign is a heck of a thing.)

But orthogonal to all those virtues: it goes to a place that made me very desperate to get the hell out of the house and think about something else; if you've read it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. (Incidentally, I'm a little gobsmacked by the online reviews from people who got the book for their kids. Really? I know kids generally handle the macabre well, but that's some pretty stiff existential revulsion waiting for you at the "good" ending.)

So anyway, then I called a friend and we went down to the Laurelhurst to watch Unstoppable, which was precisely as fun as Mike says it is. Denzel Washington and New Kirk are ON A TRAIN, BITCH, is pretty much all you need to know on that one. Precise and economical plotting! Action scenes that aren't bullshit! Occasional lulz! ("Some shots were fired," plus anything involving Ned.)

And then somewhere in there I lost my phone, so I'll see if I can find that tomorrow.

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* i.e. what we used to call "text adventures." After they went obsolete, lone enthusiasts picked up the slack and they kept evolving; they don't tend to act much like Zork anymore.