Craptacularity

In last week’s Saturday Sydney Morning Herald, a reviewer of Beowulf said “I was expecting a craptacular”. His unmet expectations notwithstanding, I found it somewhat curious that he had used “a craptacular” instead of just “craptacular”.

Yeah, yeah… it’s not even a real word – it’s just one of those stupid Internet concoctions, a combination of “crap” and “spectacular” – but because it appeared in the mainstream press, I’m allowed to get worked up about it. The Urban Dictionary defines it simply as “spectacularly crappy” and cites Bart Simpson commenting on Homer’s Christmas lights (“It’s craptacular”)*, amongst others, as examples of its use.

What I’m trying to get at is here is that “craptacular” is supposed to be a superlative form of the adjective “crap” whereas the reviewer, by adding an indefinite article**, used it like the noun form of “spectacular”. But is that wrong? Google tends to agree. A quick skim of the approximate 18,700 results for “a craptacular” shows that very few (if any) have used it in nounal form. But who knows, maybe in the next few months or years we might all be talking about movie craptaculars, craptaculars on TV, etc…

Ah, such is the folly of being a grammar geek.

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* An audio clip of this is available here.
** I didn’t actually know this, I just looked it up to make myself sound smart.

Mucking around

Thought I’d try my hand at writing a couple of short reviews in the hope of winning a $50 dStore voucher.

On The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger:

Of love and loss
Don’t let the sci-fi-ish nature of the title fool you; this novel is probably one of the most moving and emotional love stories that you will ever read, bar none. The “gimmick” – that the protagonist Henry DeTamble randomly and uncontrollably travels through time – is a device that is used to explore every nook and cranny of the relationship between Henry and his wife Clare. The narrative is expertly crafted, the characters believable and the emotions are raw and realistic, leaving you breathless after being taken on such a gripping journey from the lowest depths of despair to the highest peaks of joy that one could ever hope to experience in life. Truly a modern masterpiece.

… and on the 2006 movie Casino Royale:

A new beginning
Forget what you thought you knew about James Bond. Whether you like Daniel Craig or not, this is meant to be a totally different Bond to the one from your parents’ era. This movie is based on the first novel by Ian Fleming, and starts with the origins of the character, in the time before the smooth-talking, martini-drinking double-oh agent. Long time fans might find this a bit incongruent to the Bond they know, but by the end, you will start to see how he became the jaded womaniser that he is in the later movies.

Admittedly, the second half of the film moves at a somewhat plodding pace, and lacks the action and the excitement of the spectacular opening, but still manages to offer something different to the usual macho-romp that is typical of the genre.

A worthy “reset” of the series, in a field filled with both less deserving candidates (e.g. Superman Returns) and more (e.g. Batman Returns).

Keeping secrets isn’t easy

One of my usual haunts on the Internet is the Ars Technica OpenForum, and around this time every year they run a Secret Santa where forum members buy geeky gifts for each other. I won’t make any pretence of modesty – I expect the gift value to be worth somewhere at or near the specified value (US$25 plus shipping), or to have had some thought or effort put into it, or preferably both, but not none of the above.

In past years, the gifts that I’ve received have usually been good, but unsatisfactory by the above “standard”. I’m sure this is in no small part due to the fact that I live in Australia, and Ars Technica is a US-based website.

This year, however, my expectations were not only met, but greatly exceeded. My secret santa bought for me the entire first season of the game Sam & Max, plus a poster signed by Steve Purcell, the creator of the comic. I photoshopped the dialogue from a Sam & Max comic to express my gratitude, which you can see by clicking on the thumbnail picture above (my forum username is zzyss and my santa’s is westyx). Unfortunately, despite my santa’s attempts to conceal his identity, which included registering a purpose-specific gmail account, the games store accidentally provided his details in an e-mail informing that the poster was out of stock and will be shipping as soon as it becomes available.

I loved the original Lucasarts game Sam & Max Hit the Road, and I’m definitely looking forward to getting reacquainted with the characters and their quirky humour in this new series.

On a side note, this game also represents a new trend in gaming, where instead of releasing a story-based game all in one go, the narrative is broken up into discrete chunks and presented episodically, similar to a TV series. See also: Half Life 2 goes episodic on Gamespot.

It's so… depress-iat-ing

I bought my first ThinkPad notebook computer a couple of years after moving to Sydney. There was a fantastic deal in Hong Kong, and a mate and I got one of our colleagues over there to help us to secure some. It was wonderful – the machine was basically my life in a portable black slab of circuitry. It stored personal information, allowed me to play games, functioned as a portable DVD player and a whole lot more besides. My back was turned to the world of desktop computing.

However, the Geek Lust™ does not give up so easily. Notebooks weren’t designed to be upgradeable, and as the march of technological progress continued, I found myself with a less and less capable machine. Great games were passing me by! Then, a few years down the track, let’s just say I was very pleased to find myself in possession of a brand new top-of-the-range model (long story). But the pleasure was hollow, since with the pinnacle of anything, there is no way up, only down. Never have I felt this more accutely than when I finally decided to throw in my love of portable computing for the upgradeability of a desktop computer.

At this stage of my life, with mortgages, babies and other costs looming, one of the consolations I gave myself for splurging on a brand new desktop was that I should be able to recoup a decent amount from the sale of my notebook, which would have cost over $5,000 when I first got it (if I had to pay full price for it). However when I checked around on eBay, the prices being offered were no more than a thousand or so. That’s four-bloody-thousand dollars worth of depreciation in around 12 months! That is absolutely ridiculous. I mean, yeah technology, like cars, is a commodity that depreciates very fast, but surely not four-grand-in-a-year fast?!

Well, I guess it’s a great buyer’s market right now. My new desktop (a Dell Inspiron 530 with a 24″ widescreen monitor) was cheaper than I could have ever imagined for a machine of that calibre, and now I have the luxury of upgrading incrementally. Oh, and having a huge screen is nice, very nice…

A super game

Heh… a few days into my supposed new “quantity over quality” paradigm, and prolific is probably the last word that comes to mind. In my defense, I did write a couple of entries on my work blog.

I pre-ordered Super Mario Galaxy today. The very extraordinary thing about this game is that it has been received with raptuous praise from all corners of the Internet – a perfect storm if you will. At the time of writing, metacritic gives it a 98% which is probably about the closest that the press will ever come to unanimous agreement on any one particular topic. This upper echelon of goodness is for once rightfully described as “universal acclaim” – a phrase that is often used (particularly about movies) but rarely true.

Rather amusingly, a Variety magazine reviewer dared to offer a contrary opinion, causing howls of derision from fans all over the shop.

Otherwise, the general sentiment is that Nintendo has once again managed to distill pure, unadulterated, child-like joy and pressed it onto a disc. As one member of the Ars Technica OpenForum said: “It’s so grand and enthusiastic, that it could make an emo kid smile and think tomorrow is going to be a better day.” Just don’t count on the press writing an article about how a videogame did some good in the world.