Not what you'd expect, Old Sport

Great Gatsby the Nintendo Game?! Yes. Indeed.

Apparently sometime circa to 1990 AD someone came up with and produced a video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) based (very VERY loosely) on Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. When I say loosely, I'm mean TOTALLY loosely.

You've got 8-bit cinematics based on scenes from the novel and Nick Caraway shooting, what I can only imagine is his hat at butlers, flappers, gangsters, drunks, hobos, and apparently the Flying Dutchman. The bosses, make no sense. I'm assuming one of them is a mob boss sending baseball players at you and another is a giant pair of glasses, which I assume is the intense eyes of Dr. Eckleburg.

The closing cinematic is partnered with the last few lines from the novel.

What the hell?! I mean, I love the Great Gatsby... but wow. This was odd.

Try it out for yourself! http://greatgatsbygame.com/

Planning an Adventure

PCH, originally uploaded by Above All Pictures.

So this winter's adventure did not work out as planned. Between snow and holidays and prior commitments I didn't make my roadtrip to DC.

Not to worry though, there is more chance on the horizon.

I was just notified that my conference proposal was accepted for my professional organization (NAFSA) was just accepted so I'll be participating in the poster session in Vancouver, Canada. Lovely!

The conference also just happens to fall on my 30th birthday!

As a gift to myself, I think I'm going to rent a car and spend a few days driving the Pacific Coast Highway (PHC) from Vancouver to San Francisco, which I'm told is among the most beautiful stretches of highway in America (see the amazing picture from Above All Pictures above).

I'll get to visit some friends in Seattle on the way as well as see some picturesque vistas. It'll be a bit lonely, driving alone for a week, but I think it will provide some much needed reflection and inventory as I move along into my 30s.

Maybe, this trip is what will allow me to develop my super powers, eh?

A Precarious Place

A Precarious Place, originally uploaded by Rene10.

Railroad crossing, watch out for cars. Can you spell that, without any Rs?

The Prince

The Prince

Niccolo Machiavelli

There were moments of the Prince that felt like I was trudging through molasses with iron boots on and a dirty sock stuffed in my mouth—while I can appreciate what would have been the originality of these ideas for his time, especially set forth so directly, I found the work overall tedious and was constantly counting the pages to see how much more I had left.

A lot of what he talks about is essentially common sense, but maybe that’s just it. It seem like common sense now, because his ideas has so permeated our views of geo-political issues that the entire work feels a bit like some drunk relation cornering you at a wedding to tell you their opinion on what your doing with your life for the one-billionth time.

Some of the historical facts and used as examples made it easier, if only to allow me to visualize people locked in combat or feed into my love of ancient history. Still, it essentially took me longer to get through this particularly text because I didn’t find myself enraptured by it—then again, this isn’t a story or a narrative, it’s a manual, so why should I be surprised that it reads like one.

Machiavelli does have a keen wit and, when rereading passages with a grain of salt, I could appreciate some of his sarcasm. Especially since he supposedly hated the Medici family and that who he was writing too…

While I’ve read countless texts no doubt inspired, at least in part, by the ideas in the Prince during my “tenure” as a grad student in political science, I’m glad I read the original text—if only to appreciate house for better knowing the foundation.