yakalskovich: The Nazgul and I in nun costumes at Kaltenberg posing with a bloke dressed as Jack Sparrow (Jack Sparrow makes nuns happy!)
Maru ([personal profile] yakalskovich) wrote2011-06-25 08:02 pm

What makes me uneasy about FarmVille

What makes me uneasy about FarmVille is not that it's eaten the Nazgul's brain at the moment; worse brain-eatages have occurred, for example when I first discovered the old Discworld RPG back in 2004. The crack that is RPing (in contrast to the more sedate and ponderous nose-powder that is fanfic) so totally took me in for a while, I even did set alarms for it, and that seems to be an alarm sign.

It's not that Zynga, the company that makes it, is probably quite evil, and Facebook definitely is.

It's that there are no seasons!

You can plant whatever whenever you want to. There is no lambing season, no sowing in spring, no asparagus that stops on June 24th latest, no cabbage for winter, no St. Martin's geese, no blackberries belonging to the devil after October 31st...

Okay, making people wait for a result for a year would be counter-productive. But why not set random shorter season? Why not allow sheep tupping only on a Friday, and the sowing of certain crops only during the first week of the month, and so on? What makes real farming in real life what it is is seasons, and FarmVille totally eliminated that.

We first world people are used to having strawberries and tomatoes in the supermarket all the time, to mushrooms all year round, to green beans flown in from Egypt in winter, and to fresh flowers from Nigeria at Christmas. The globalised world is ignoring the seasons, so why should FarmVille reintroduce them? FarmVille farmers don't really want to keep up all night in the lambing shed at the dead of winter; they don't want to harvest a surfeit of cherries that they don't know what to do with, or do nothing between waking and sleeping but pluck apples and make cider in autumn. They don't want to race a thunderstorm for the wheat harvest, or pull a calf out by the feet. It's sanitised agriculture with purple cows.

There would be nothing wrong with it -- it is a game! -- except that it suggests to million of city dwellers that farming is a sanitary, fun business that brings forth bounty without season, without dirt, without suffering.

And that's demeaning to everything mankind did since the neolithic revolution.-

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/ 2011-06-25 09:24 pm (UTC)(link)
yakalskovich is just demonstrating the principle of "brilliant out-there show-runners and demanding, emotionally invested fen actually call forth and inspire each other," rewriting the end of the last Bond both realistically and happily (thereby erasing all the future ie. older Bond films?) ;=

[identity profile] idylchild.livejournal.com 2011-06-25 09:30 pm (UTC)(link)
:D


Hmmmmm, a return to happy James Bond.

I can't even imagine it.

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/ 2011-06-25 09:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Nope. That was the good thing, or one of the good things, about the new pilot. Happy Bond would have to be "Die Zwei".

[identity profile] idylchild.livejournal.com 2011-06-25 09:34 pm (UTC)(link)
I just want Daniel Craig and Judi Dench forever.

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/ 2011-06-25 09:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah. I loved that pilot so very much ... after the secodn I worried and still worry if they won't keep it up. There was a Craigwithgun cover on my ex-magazine but it didn't look Bondy.

[identity profile] idylchild.livejournal.com 2011-06-25 09:41 pm (UTC)(link)
I love Daniel Craig in anything he does (he's going to be in the English "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and may I just say I already love it!).

I even swooned in Golden Compass.

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/ 2011-06-25 09:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I always did. So far his "potatoe face" seems to have survived the fame - he's been liased with every pretty young actress before then already, although paired with my dearest Rachel Weisz, that is one dream team - hate that these film couples always fail. Also tumblr can turn me off any actor with its "OMG HE S SO PERFECT -> I LOVE HIM"

That was a great movie, so of course everyone else thought it was shit. I had seen it in the theatre first, most impressive. I so wished for sequels - as with A Series of U. E. - see, doomed, if I like it, individually, it's not enough against the masses ;P

[identity profile] idylchild.livejournal.com 2011-06-25 09:52 pm (UTC)(link)
I wondered how come they didn't make the other films. I even asked someone about that the other day.

I have not seen the Series of UE films (is there more than one?) but I loved the books! That held me every year while I was waiting for the next HP to come out.

NOTHING could turn me off of Daniel Craig. He won my heart in "Defiance" and then again in "Munich" (I'm Jewish) and nothing can make me find him anything short of yummy. When he made James Bond, I was beside myself. Favorite spy plus favorite actor = UNF!!!

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/ 2011-06-25 10:37 pm (UTC)(link)
*finally realised -i- wasn't talking with yakal anymore headdesk g*

I just read they even consider Rachel as the next Bond "girl", which might be tricky for her relationship or career - or wise, since he hooks up with whomever he films (inkl. the German Heike).
But if the film is good, it'd be fantastic, I never have movies where I like both partners (anymore).

No, there is only the first, which was the first three books combined and had Jim Carey as the baddie and Jude Law as a shadow/author voice. But that didn't matter - the children were so wonderful, and the look of the film! So good :(
I didn't like the first three books - should never have been compared with HP! - then finally got into them when the formula varied, became a real fan in the carnival and by the penultimate peril I loved it fiercely - the final one could never be as good as that one.

Yeah, those two I haven't seen, stopped going to the cinema a decade ago, but I saw him in - stuff BEFORE The Ice House, only I can't find it on imdb *frownworry* and of course Love is the Devil and everything up to Sylvia (I loathe Gw.) where his voice was incredible, though some of the DVDs I haven't watched yet. I think I'd like to listen to Sylvia.

Yeah, I couldn't believe one of my favourites got the part. And then I hated most of the comments, even though I knew they'd all change their tune - which they did, fickle superficial peoples ;=

[identity profile] idylchild.livejournal.com 2011-06-25 11:09 pm (UTC)(link)
This entire week has been that way for me. *giant face palm*

I don't compare the books to HP(as far as I am concerned, there is nothing comparable to HP! JKR is a genius); I just thoroughly enjoy them (I train young athletes -- very young -- and have mandatory reading hour during camp so that they can relax with something other than DSI or whatever those things are called. Not a technophile).

The best way to survive a fandom is to steer clear! I have absolutely nothing to do with the Supernatural or HP fandoms as I am quite certain they would make me hate them. LOL

But nothing could make me feel anything short of worshipful lust for Daniel Craig. :)

[identity profile] idylchild.livejournal.com 2011-06-25 11:22 pm (UTC)(link)
This entire week has been that way for me. *giant face palm*

I don't compare the books to HP(as far as I am concerned, there is nothing comparable to HP! JKR is a genius); I just thoroughly enjoyed them (explanation: I train young athletes and have mandatory reading hour during camp so that they can relax with something other than DSI or whatever those things are called -- not a technophile -- so I read a lot of children's stories).

And the best way to survive any fandom is to steer clear. I have absolutely nothing to do with the Supernatural or HP comm as I am quite certain they would make me hate them. LOL

But nothing could make me feel anything short of worshipful lust for Daniel Craig since "Defiance". :)

What's Love is the Devil?

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/ 2011-06-26 11:29 am (UTC)(link)
And Rowling already has another new thing coming, while Daniel Handler keeps me waiting - coming in the middle of ASOUE I could at least read half of them in one go, but the next will be the usual year long wait.

Absolutely right. It's lonely here, but the last year of DW was an unalloyed delight. But HP fandom made me hate whom I used to love, and the overdone supersupersuperficial blind omglusting would turn me off anybody - I'm tempted to challenge you to a test but I could never forgive myself ;=

LitD is the biop of Francis Bacon! Another gay role for Daniel, a very early one, plus once you see Bacon's painting and get into them you know how exceptional he was ... only saw it in low quality once, as usual; you'd at least enjoy young DC.

[identity profile] idylchild.livejournal.com 2011-06-26 12:27 pm (UTC)(link)
I am definitely watching LitD this very day!

Yes, I have heard horror stories of the HP fandom and was wisely advised to steer clear when I joined LJ. I have never even gone there (except the trailers on hpotterdaily).

LOL at the omglusting. I teach that age group as well (my least favorite) so I have violent feelings about that sort of behavior. But I cannot imagine 13-year-olds would be attracted to an intelligent, talented, older man like Craig. I could be wrong but this is pretty exclusively the Justin Bieber/Robert Pattinson group. Even Johnny Depp fails to hold their interest.

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/ 2011-06-26 01:01 pm (UTC)(link)
'snort' and wow, you lucky gal, having it at the tip of your fingers.

Well ... yeah. I'm surprised you had heard, since to this day most people love it; and my problem was their OTT loving of people I had loved for a while, the underpinning of not-seeing-what-is-really-there, sickening exaggeration, necessary comparison and exclusion etcetcetc.... like a steady drip, until I hated him and his character irrevocably. I'm noticing it even after 30 posts in a row on anybody else, pity.

You are wrong! Totally wrong. They are lusting after Buster Keaton, even when doddering, and there is sexyoldermen, although the horrifying thing is that not only young Daniel but also someone like that Zach Q is there. Supposedly it's always been like this (I wasn't like that, opposite of daddy complex) and your 13 yr olds will be no exception. Not all of them .. the quiet ones :)))

[identity profile] idylchild.livejournal.com 2011-06-26 01:05 pm (UTC)(link)
O rly??

The 13-year-olds I teach would never be permitted to see anything like James Bond. Too violent and their lily white, middle class world must not be tainted by anything too strong. Must all be watered down and mellow so as not to get them ruffled.

Aren't the quiet ones the sociopaths? Or so we are told.

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/ 2011-06-26 11:31 am (UTC)(link)
Nah, -he-s the lucky guy *g* I like they did it secretly, and I hope it works - maybe now that he's looking older ;P while she of course just gets thinner. Thanks!!!