#ransack morton

[whippoor-wont]

hello everyone I made the dangerous mistake of revisiting the extremely indie niche game (A House of Many Doors) that was very precious to me when it first came out (smash cut to 100 hrs of gameplay and a new oc later)

my supremely lucky and unlucky captain Curse keeps getting Maimed and left in an alley or what have you and dragged back to their kinetopede by their surprisingly loyal crew. I don't think there is a major questline i've gotten through without maiming this guy i swear

[eretzyisrael]

by Morton A. Klein

Moreover, Hamas terror attacks on Israelis increase Palestinian support for Hamas. For example, Palestinian support for Hamas increased dramatically after Hamas launched 4,500 rockets at Israel in May 2021.

Second, Gazan civilians actively participated in, aided, abetted, and celebrated the Oct. 7 massacre.

“Ordinary” Gazan civilian workers in Israel (thousands of whom were allowed into Israel due to the Biden administration’s pressure) collected detailed intelligence on every home and citizen in southern Israeli towns and drew maps for Hamas to easily locate Jewish nurseries and families to murder and kidnap.

Then, after the first wave of Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 1,400 Jews, huge waves of “ordinary” Gazan civilians, armed with knives and screaming “Allahu Akbar,” flooded into southern Israel, and joined in the Hamas massacres and kidnappings. Mobs of Gazan civilians killed and gang-raped innocent Jews, chopped off innocent Jews’ heads, took hostages, entered and burned down massacred Jews’ homes, and ransacked and looted everything in sight — televisions, automobiles, jewelry, children’s bicycles, etc.

Israeli Telegram Channel South First Responders reported: “The assault on Southern Israel was not carried out exclusively by Hamas. It began with the entry of hundreds of heavily armed terrorists and was followed by waves of Gazans who looted the communities.” The mayor of the regional council encompassing most of the Gaza border explained: “The second wave of Arabs who came into the country were just as cruel as the terrorists of the first wave.”

Throngs of Gazan civilians then cheered the ghoulish site of Hamas parading bloodied, captured, and dead Jews’ bodies through the streets. Gazans beat the Jews as they passed by.

Overjoyed Palestinian Arabs in Judea/Samaria (the “West Bank”) also cheered the massacre, dancing in the streets. Unfortunately, this is nothing new. Palestinian Arabs routinely joyously celebrate when Arab terrorists murder Jewish children.

[dollycas]

Miss Morton and the Deadly Inheritance (A Miss Morton Mystery) by Catherine Lloyd #Spotlight / #Giveaway @KensingtonBooks

Miss Morton and the Deadly Inheritance (A Miss Morton Mystery) International Historical Mystery 3rd in Series Setting - England Publisher ‏ : ‎ Kensington (August 20, 2024) Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1496740645 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1496740649 Kindle ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CNYL4QQW Audiobook ASIN B0DCZZLSMH Audio CD ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CZ7JTYW9 Social standing is everything in Regency England—and no one knows better than Miss Caroline Morton, a lady’s companion from a disgraced line. But when she has a chance to claim what’s rightfully hers, the one obstacle in her way is a dangerous murder mystery . . . Miss Caroline has doubts when she receives an urgent invitation from a London law firm to discuss her late father’s estate. After all, the dishonored Earl of Morton died without a pound sterling to pass on to his two daughters. But while immersing herself in helping Mrs. Frogerton’s capricious daughter navigate the high social season, Caroline meets with a cagey lawyer, Mr. Smith, who shares life-altering news—the earl composed a second will, leaving behind an undisclosed fortune. Mrs. Frogerton, however, is thoroughly unimpressed with the firm’s conduct and suspicious of their true motives. Her instinct proves right when the two ladies find the office ransacked, staff in turmoil, and Mr. Smith missing. The full weight of the situation doesn’t sink in until Mr. Smith dies following a brutal attack on the street—discovered with an empty envelope bearing Caroline’s name in his pocket. With a connection forming between two deaths at the firm, Caroline can’t imagine why anyone would kill twice over the contents of a will. Further complicating matters is the amorous Mr. DeBloom—who claims his mother goaded the earl into making bad investments and promises to link Caroline to her inheritance—and the disappearance of Susan, her younger sister. As Caroline unwittingly becomes the center of both a criminal case and a sordid love triangle, she must tread with caution while seeking the truth . . . because someone is waiting to reduce her to nothing more than a signature on a dotted line. About the Author Catherine Lloyd grew up in London, England in the middle of a large family of girls. She quickly decided her imagination was a wonderful thing and was often in trouble for making stuff up. She finally worked out she could make a career out of this when she moved to the USA with her husband and four children and began writing fiction. With a background in historical research and a love of old-fashioned mysteries, she couldn't resist the opportunity to wonder what a young Regency Miss Marple might be like, and how she would deal with a far from pleasant hero of the Napoleonic wars. You can find Catherine Lloyd's website at http://www.catherine-lloyd.com Also Written by Catherine Lloyd  Thanks to the publisher I have 1 Advance Review Copy of Miss Morton and the Deadly Inheritance to give away! The contest is open to anyone over 18 years old with a US or Canadian mailing address. Duplicate entries will be deleted. Void where prohibited. You do not have to be a follower to enter but I hope you will find something you like here and become a follower. Followers Will Receive 2 Bonus Entries For Each Way They Follow. Plus 2 Bonus Entries For Following My Facebook Fan Page. Add this book to your WANT TO READ shelf on GoodReads for 3 Bonus Entries. Follow Kensington Books on Twitter for 2 Bonus Entries! Follow Kensington Publishing on Facebook for 2 Bonus Entries! Pin this giveaway to Pinterest for 3 Bonus Entries. If you share the giveaway on Threads, X, or Facebook or anywhere you will receive 5 Bonus Entries For Each Link. The  Contest Will End on October 17, 2024, at 11:59 PM CST The Winner Will Be Chosen Using Random.org The Winner Will Be Notified By Email and Will Be Posted Here In The Sidebar. Click Here For Entry Form Your Escape Into A Good Book Travel Agent This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase using my links, I will receive a small commission from the sale at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting Escape With Dollycas.   Read the full article

[shipburner]

the fun thing about characters without representations of their lower bodies means that there’s nothing that canonically says they don’t wear whatever the fuck you think they do

(upper half by Catherine Unger, lower half by me, black background by me forgetting how exporting transparent images works. pretend he’s letting the darkness gently waft around his nethers. Ransack Morton wears a utilikilt and nobody can tell me otherwise.)

[nasa]

5 Things: How Hurricanes Have Changed Puerto Rico’s Forests

In September 2017, Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit Puerto Rico, knocking out critical infrastructure and ransacking the island’s forests. In April and May 2018, a team of our scientists took to the air to take three-dimensional images of Puerto Rico’s forests using Goddard’s Lidar, Hyperspectral, and Thermal Imager (G-LIHT), which uses light in the form of a pulsed laser. By comparing images of the same forests taken by the team before and after the storm, scientists will be able to use those data to study how hurricanes change these important ecosystems.

Here are five ways scientists say the hurricanes have changed Puerto Rico’s forests since making landfall eight months ago:

1. The Canopy Is Bare

One word defines the post-hurricane forest canopy in El Yunque National Forest: Open.

“The trees have been stripped clean,” said NASA Goddard Earth scientist and G-LiHT co-investigator Doug Morton. He was there a year ago, months before the hurricanes would ravage the area. When he returned to the forest in April 2018 to gather measurements of trees on the ground to complement the airborne campaign’s lidar work, he could now see from the mountainside downtown San Juan, which is 45-minutes away by car.

And no canopy means no shade. “Where once maybe a few flecks of sunlight reached the forest floor, now the ground is saturated in light,” Morton said, adding that such a change could have profound consequences for the overall forest ecosystem. For example, some tree seedlings that thrive on a cool forest floor may whither now that daytime temperatures are as much as 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than they were before the hurricane. Meanwhile, as we shall see, other plants and animals stand to benefit from such changes.

“Who are the winners and losers in this post-hurricane forest ecosystem, and how will that play out in the long run? Those are two of the key questions,” said Morton.

2. Palms Are on the Rise

One species that’s basking in all that sunlight is the Sierra Palm, said Maria Uriarte, a professor of ecology at Columbia University who has researched El Yunque National Forest for 15 years. “Before, the palms were squeezed in with the other trees in the canopy and fighting for sunlight, and now they’re up there mostly by themselves,” she said. “They’re fruiting like crazy right now.”

The secret to their survival: Biomechanics.

“The palm generally doesn’t break because it’s got a flexible stem—it’s got so much play,” Uriarte said. “For the most part, during a storm it sways back and forth and loses its fronds and has a bad hair day and then it’s back to normal.” By contrast, neighboring trees with very dense, strong wood, like the Tabonuco, were snapped in half or completely uprooted by the force of the hurricane winds.

“Palm trees are going to be a major component of the canopy of this forest for the next decade or so,” added Doug Morton. “They’ll help to facilitate recovery by providing some shade and protection as well as structure for both flora and fauna.”

3. Vines Are Creeping Opportunists

Rising noticeably from the post-Hurricane forest floor of El Yunque National Forest are woody vines called lianas. Rooted in the ground, their goal, Morton says, is to climb onto host trees and compete for sunlight at the top. That, combined with the fact that their weight tends to slow tree productivity potential, means they are literally a drag on the forest canopy. As lianas can wind their way around several trees, regions with more of these vines tend to have larger groupings of trees that get pulled down together.

“There’s some indication that vines may be more competitive in a warmer, drier, and more carbon dioxide-rich world,” Morton said. “That’s a hypothesis we’re interested in exploring.”

4. Endangered Parrot Populations Have Taken a Hit

The endangered Iguaca is the last living native parrot species of Puerto Rico. The island’s two Iguaca aviaries have reported a substantial number of deaths in the wild due to the hurricanes. In the forests of Río Abajo, in western central Puerto Rico, about 100 of the roughly 140 wild parrots survived; in El Yunque National Forest in the eastern part of the island, only three of the 53 to 56 wild parrots are known to have pulled through.

“It was a huge blow,” said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Tom White, a parrot biologist stationed at the aviary in El Yunque, which took the brunt of Hurricane Maria’s Category 5 winds. Some of the parrots died from injuries received during the storm, while others likely died from increased predation from hawks because there were no longer canopies for them to hide in. The rest succumbed to starvation. The Iguaca subsists on flowers, fruits, seeds, and leaves derived from more than 60 species—but for several months following the storm, the forest was completely defoliated.

Despite the setback, White said he’s optimistic that the Iguaca will rebound. In Río Abajo, the number of wild Iguaca are enough that they should rebound on their own; in El Yunque there are about 227 birds at the aviary—a strong number for continued breeding and eventual release into the forest once conditions improve enough. “One of their main fruit comes from the sierra palm, and they’re now flowering and starting to produce again,” White noted. “It’s probably going to take about another year for things to level out, but the forest is gritty.”

5. Lizards and Frogs: A Mixed Response

When Hurricane Maria stripped the leaves off of trees, changes in the forest microclimate instantly transformed the living conditions for lizards and frogs. Species have reacted differently to the event based on the conditions they are adapted to, said herpetologist Neftali Ríos-López, an associate professor at the University of Puerto Rico-Humacao Campus.

For example, some lizard species are naturally suited to the forest canopy, which is warmer and drier. “After the hurricane, those conditions, which were once exclusive to the canopy, have now been extended down to the forest floor,” Ríos-Lopez said. “As a result, these lizards start displacing and substituting animals that were adapted to the once cooler conditions on the forest floor.”

Likewise, among frog species the red-eyed coquí, with its resistance to temperature and humidity fluctuations and its ability to handle dehydration better than other coquí species, has benefited from the warmer, drier conditions in the forests after the storm. Traditionally a grassland species, they are expanding from the lowlands to the mid- and even high parts of the mountains, Ríos-Lopez said. “Physiologically, what was a disadvantage for that species when the whole island was forested now finds itself in a positive position.” Conversely, forest-acclimated coquí frog species have declined.

That said, as the forests recover, so will many of the species whose numbers have dwindled following the storms. “It will take many years, decades, I would guess,” Ríos-Lopez said.

Our scientists are working with partners from universities and government to use G-LiHT airborne data to inform ground research on forest and other ecosystems not only in Puerto Rico but also throughout the world. To follow their campaigns and keep up with the latest news, find them here: https://gliht.gsfc.nasa.gov.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.  

[mortons-solicitors]

Mindless vandals will not stop ransacking this Stockport charity shop - Manchester Evening News https://t.co/omNnbg4fai

Mindless vandals will not stop ransacking this Stockport charity shop - Manchester Evening News https://t.co/omNnbg4fai

— Mortons Solicitors (@MortonsSols) January 31, 2020

January 31, 2020 at 01:29PM

[ciathyzareposts]

Amazon – Fight or Flight

Jason Robert Journal Entry 1: My brother is missing so I’ve decided to trick my workmates in order to get what I need to follow him to the jungle. I’ve already deceived Darlene Fitch and Male Guard, and tricked Female Guard by proxy. Now I need to try to deceive the librarian – but first, I have to deal with a heavy metal monster.

Chapter 3

Despite Chapter 2’s cliffhanger of the robot telling me I’ll be terminated, at the start of this chapter the robot simply paces back and forth, not bothering Jason at all. Looking at B.O.B. Tells me that he’s waiting for his replacement to arrive so he can finish his shift! I can’t get past him while he’s pacing around so I have to get rid of him somehow. I check my inventory to see if there’s anything I can use on B.O.B. I figure maybe I can open him up and reprogram him, so I try my crowbar.

A flaw? Isn’t his purpose to protect the secrets of this vault?

I go outside and notice the trash can the bear was rummaging through earlier. Remembering that this location seems to have taken inspiration from Looney Tunes, I take the garbage can and go back to the vault.

Hopefully the evil commies don’t hire Oscar the Grouch or America’s secrets are compromised.

Thinking I’m the robot to relieve him from his shift, B.O.B. leaves. I take the garbage can off my head and use the large red lever to open the vault, which contains a simple set of drawers. The game tells me that nothing in any of the other drawers interests me, but the drawer I need is locked. I use Darlene’s crowbar to break the drawer open and take its contents.

Why didn’t Allen’s message mention I’d need a way to open his drawer without the key – lucky I stole the contents of Darlene’s car trunk for no sensible reason!

While inside I also check out the item on the right.

I originally thought this was a reference to the Mystery Science Theater movie, but then I realised this game came out four years earlier, so it’s a This Island Earth reference instead.

Finding nothing else of use in the vault, I go back into the office corridor I notice that the library window is now open and the librarian is there. I talk to her.

And if your ears weren’t attached you’d also lose your glasses because they’d fall off!

I ask if I can use the microfilm machine, but she gets suspicious

Seriously? If I go back outside the guards are still in the bushes and the vault is still open – where did that report come from?

Anyway, this is the wrong solution as she calls security on me and I go to jail. But she did give me a clue when she told me that once she left her headlights on and had to leave her station to turn them off.

So I go to the carpark and use my coathanger on her car door. I’m not sure if young people of this generation would even know that that’s how people broke into cars in the past so this puzzle might be a bit harder for people much younger than me.

I turn on her lights, then go back inside and tell Miss Morton her lights are on. She leaves her post immediately, giving me time to look at my microfilm.

The microfilm tells a story about the ancient “Eyes of the Jaguar” which are huge emeralds given by Montezuma to Cortez in 1519.

Wait, there’s eight of them – how many eyes do jaguar’s have?

The emeralds were stolen by Cortez’s general, Valesquez, who got lost in the Amazon Basin. A Dr. Stronheim has recently found inscriptions that he believes reveal the fate of Valesquez and the emeralds. But the microfilm doesn’t tell us anything about where Stronheim might believe the emeralds to be, so I don’t know why this information is so important. Maybe I’ll need to look for Stronheim at some point.

I was stuck for a while at this point. I’d guessed that I’d need to open Allen’s safe before I could leave to meet him in South America, but didn’t find a safe either in his office or the vault. I re-read all the information I’d gotten from his letter and other papers in his office, and he definitely mentioned a safe but gave no indication of where it was.

Eventually I had an idea that should have been obvious – maybe it was a wall safe behind a painting or something. I went back to Allen’s office and moved his dartboard. The safe was behind the dartboard – don’t I feel stupid! So what’s the vitally important item in Allen’s safe?

Well, I suppose that’s important but I was expecting something more plot critical.

Now that I’m rich in both cash and information, I drive to the airport and am presented with another cutscene.

Sanchez is upset that the package wasn’t found when his people ransacked my apartment. How a dodgy cop from a different country so quickly organised a ransacking of Jason’s apartment isn’t explained but now I have a bad guy to hate.

If movies have taught me anything, it’s never to trust a South American cop!

Chapter 4

I see my plane fly over various cities before I arrive at Cuzco Airfield. Outside the building I take a Jerrycan full of water. The description says that the inside is encrusted with lime, which may be a flavour detail but I suspect will become useful at some point.

I go inside and get a ridiculous amount of information on people I expect to never see again.

Thanks for that information, game. Are you throwing all this at me so I don’t know what info is important?

Now that I have Allen’s money in my inventory, I bribe the ticket seller rather than trying to talk my way through the dialogue. He tells me to go to the bar and give the bartender a card, which he gives me. I have no idea why, but I do as he says to see what happens. After giving him the card, the bartender tells me to talk to the pilots. I talk to them and they tell me about a different pilot who can take me to my destination.

The Hangover Part IV.

The guy, Tony Martin, offers me a ride for $150 and I take him up on the offer. I fall asleep in his cargo plane. When I awaken, I look at a few things in the cargo hold with me before the cockpit door opens and Tony points a gun at me and tells me to jump out of the door. That doesn’t seem like a good idea, but I don’t get time to react as the chapter ends.

This was a really short chapter and I suspect I might have missed picking something up or doing something at Cuzco. Am I dead-ended? Ah, why bother thinking about that, I’ll just keep playing and see what happens.

Chapter 5

But if I jump out of the door as instructed, don’t the documents I have go plummeting to the ground with me?

The chapter starts with Martin repeating his threat from the end of the last chapter. I offer him double his fee, but he figures my death will get him more than enough money. If I try to jump out of the door I can’t get there before Martin panics.

But… I was trying to jump out of the door as you commanded, idiot!

Rather than jump out of the door, I notice a chicken pen next to me and open it.

Cluck-cluck, mother…

Expecting to have to land the plane myself now that my pilot is dead, I attempt to open the cockpit door, but I can’t as Martin’s parting gunshot jammed the locking mechanism. After trying a few other things, I die…

… and become The Toxic Avenger!

Now, the obvious item to use in the plane’s cargo hold is a parachute. I must have skimmed the description when I saw it (I was under time pressure knowing I’d die if I took too long – I don’t have time to read everything) so I didn’t notice it was only a ‘cargo chute without a harness.’ I took the chute and used it, thinking it would save me from a 200 MPH death.

Well, I slowed myself by 60MPH. That’s an improvement at least!

I can also jump out without a parachute if I’m so inclined.

This game is obsessed with giving a numerical value to my death.

At this point I was stuck again. I didn’t know what to do and wondered if I’d dead-ended myself. I reloaded back to Chapter 4 which I breezed through by having the clever? idea of bribing people early on.

I found something that might be useful outside Cuzco airport, so I took it.

I’ve seen the word ‘lose’ misspelled so much on the internet that I’ve started to read ‘loose’ as ‘lose’ – damn you, bad internet spellers! I’ve sunk to your level!

I find nothing else useful to do in Chapter 4, or early on in Chapter 5, apart from upsetting people, so I keep playing until I’m back on the plane, after seeing Tony Martin chicken out of the door.

This guy does not respond well to conversation options that don’t involve me giving him money.

Back in the plane, I try using my new bicycle pump on the items in the area, but no luck. Thinking further about the cargo chute and the jammed cockpit door, I have an idea.

Okay, now I can see why the parachute didn’t hold my weight.

I enter the cockpit and after experimenting with a few of the controls, manage the right combination:

Pull back on the yoke to point the plane up 

pull back on the throttle to slow down 

move the flap lever to slow down further 

My plane ends up landing upside down in the water.

Tom Hanks will be playing Jason Roberts in an upcoming movie!

Managing to survive unscathed (I must have had my seatbelt on and assumed the crash position) I end up inside the upside down plane.

I’m upset that I can’t take the parachute or its cord because it’s stuck on the handle. I know from watching the Discovery Channel that I can survive in a remote jungle as long as I have an unlimited supply of parachute cord and a willingness to drink my own urine!

As the plane’s quickly filling with water and I haven’t been able to interact with anything on the plane I decide to swim to shore.

Good to know that whatever animal eats me, they always leave my eyeballs intact.

If I take too long to do things, the plane sinks and I get eaten by piranha anyway, so I have to work fast! Thinking that my seat cushion can be used as a flotation device in the event of a water landing, I attempt to take it.

You lied to me, cabin staff. You lied to me!

I was once again stuck for a while on this section. I love a puzzle that I have to solve quickly or keep seeing a death scene and waiting a minute or two until I can reload my game <sarcasm detected>. 

Many piranha meals later, I notice something very subtle. See if you pick it up quicker than I did.

Clicking on almost everything in the plane gives me this description. I can’t move or take any of these items.

But one item in the plane has exactly the same description but is called BOX instead of CARGO. This item can be interacted with.

I’m pretty sure I’m almost standing inside the box I need to get closer to right now.

A few more piranha deaths later, I find the right spot to interact, toss the box aside and find a box inside it labelled “RAFT” – I wonder what’s inside!

I open the interior box and try to move the raft.

Okay, so I’ll use the pump with it.

What?

Okay, first I need to PICK UP the raft, then I can use it with the pump in my inventory.

Jason paddles the inflated raft to shore, then walks through the forest for a while towards a nearby catholic cross that was visible across the jungle. 

As I arrive at the small village/outpost, I’m greeted by a large scarred man who gruffly tells me to get away from here.

I claim this small South American village in the name of the Sontaran Empire!

And this seems like a good cliffhanger to stop on. Despite my annoyance at having to solve puzzles in a limited amount of time, I’m enjoying the game. The ability to finish Chapter 4 without the bike pump (and probably without the jerrycan) concerns me that I can be easily dead-ended, but I’m betting on someone letting me know using ROT13’ed clues if that happens – or at least hoping.

I like the short somewhat self-contained chapters – it really emphasises the story moving ahead at breakneck speed.

So tune in next time to see how I deal with El Loco and whatever trouble I get myself into afterward!

Session time: 1 hour 50 minutes

Total time: 3 hours 20 minutes

Inventory: Compass, Map, Jerrycan, Jason’s Car Keys

Workmates Deceived: Darlene, Male Guard, Miss Morton

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/amazon-fight-or-flight/

[trevorbarre]

Why Do We Need An Avant-Garde?,  Part 2

1981 saw the release of Of Human Feelings by Ornette Coleman and Prime Time, recordings made two years earlier, in April 1979. This was an acerbic jazz-funk juxtaposition (or a jazz punk one, as some journalists called it at the time), which Ornette entitled Harmolodics.  As far as anyone could understand, it was largely-improvisational, and gave equal importance to melody, harmony and rhythm,  emerging as a dense, some would say turgid, mixture of usually fast, frantic and seemingly chaotic group interplay, a sort of free Weather Report. Along with the equally frenetic Are You Glad To Be In America?, released and recorded in 1980 by Ornette acolyte and guitarist James Blood Ulmer, Of Human Feelings provided an alternative to limpid acoustic and inoffensive bop-influenced records that the seventies had loaded onto us

As well as punk-funk (or whatever one wishes to call this slippery music), the 1980-1 period produced  some additional signposts to put next to Harmolodics - the Black Artists Group (BAG) from Saint Louis; the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), from which emerged the Art Ensemble of Chicago (AEC); the New York ‘downtown’ group of improvisers, whose best known member was John Zorn; and the ‘Loft Jazz’ scene, also from New York (which was dying by this point). Not only did these conglomerations keep the Free Jazz/Improvisation flag flying, but they readily acknowledged the influence of the jazz canon, in a more creative and challenging way than did the competing school of the traditionalists, led by trumpeter Wynton Marsails and critic Stanley Crouch. This debt of gratitude could be summed up by the Chicago avant trio Air, and their tribute to and development of, the work of Jelly Roll Morton and Scott Joplin, on 1979′s Air Lore. To cap it all, the album’s cover said goodbye to  the seventies by dressing the three improvisers to look just like Chic.

Around the time of the disintegration of the punk scene in 1981/2 (which had formed a four-year caesura in my jazz listening), I began to explore some of these avenues, including that of English free improvisation, for the first real time. In accord with this new generation of improvisers, I began to get a sense of the history of jazz in general, and spent about the next three or so years getting the relevant recordings, from King Oliver onward, which immeasurably enriched my listening experience and understanding. According to conservative critical voices, the more avant-garde voices mentioned above hardly figured as jazz at all, which was a ridiculous proposition when one listened to the music, and flew in the face of their various salutes to the ‘masters’. In these sort of situations, we badly need the avant-garde to reassure us that jazz is not, in fact, dead. It doesn’t even smell funny, despite Zappa’s 1974 asseveration (which was, however, perfectly forgivable, given the year that he made it).

The OED defines the avant-garde as “new and experimental”, and one could be forgiven for saying that most of the artists cited here were not particularly ‘new’. They were experimental though, as their work was inherently unstable and risk-taking. Jazz is still an embracing, open genre at its best, which lives and thrives outside of the concert hall and expensive clubs, which is where the traditionalists would entomb it, forever revolving round the ‘standards’ repertoire. Man people hear it in their minds as either early New Orleans ensembles, big swing orchestra or bebop small groups, and these forms are the ones that are usually ransacked for sampling purposes. Certainly not as Cecil Taylor or Albert Ayler. Without the avant-garde, where would jazz have gone, say in 1980? Basically, without it, we would still be in 1980, with eleven more years of Margaret Thatcher to look forward to and Kenny G’s rise to President all to come.

[shipburner]

What would you say is/was your favourite part of AHOMD?

Hmmm, toughie. I can’t possibly give you a Single Favorite Thing, but I’ll give you favorites in a couple categories!

Favorite crewmember: Fiona McConnaghe, because she’s gay, has a sword, and hates destiny.

Favorite character: the Governor, because I love well-written villains.

Favorite quest: Waif, because I’m always a slut for parenting plotlines.

Favorite moment: It’s small, but there’s a little moment near the endgame where, if you do something evil, Ransack Morton will attack you, for once in his life doing something purely, utterly, heroic, and there’s a line that says “How can you hope to defeat the Hero?”

Favorite lore: I really like the gods in AHOMD; they’re so incredibly diverse and bizarre. They really feel like they’ve been pulled from thousands of worlds, and have that Weird Fiction vibe I so enjoy.

Favorite ludonarrative decision: The upper-deck/lower-deck crewmember dichotomy; it gives a sense of “this is a realistic number of people to have on a kinetopede” that neither bogs you down in information nor makes your redshirts completely expendable.

If you wanna talk more about HOMD, hit me up!