A Zorky Piece by Iowahawk
[Guest post by Aaron Worthing]
Really, if you don’t already, you should probably make Iowahawk a regular read. Check it at least once a week and he will usually have something good. For instance, his piece just after Obama’s election captured the ambivalence I felt that night perfectly, with comic exaggeration (I hope), by writing America Can Take Pride In This Historic, Inspirational Disaster.
But I suspect that you really need to get your nerd card to fully appreciate this one. It’s an imagined text adventure, similar to the old text adventures that were popular on computers before there was such a thing as… um… graphics (or at least before they were good and easy to create). If you want to get an idea how these things work, there is a new one for the Amazon Kindle explained here.
So anyway Iowahawk’s piece is called Beltway Adventure, reducing the President’s conduct since becoming president to a video game. The commands entered are indicated with a “>.” Hopefully that will be enough for you to get it if you are unfamiliar with the form.
And its actually a pretty good way to remind yourself of all the crud that has gone on since Obama became president. Honestly I had forgotten a lot of this stuff, I think because the human mind generally tries to block trauma.
[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
Aaron,
That Iowahawk post is great stuff, and I say this as someone who gamed heavily as a teen and 20something.
OT request: I’ve got an idea to send to you. What’s your email?
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (fb9e90) — 10/19/2010 @ 9:20 pmBradley: Email address for Tips for Aaron.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 10/19/2010 @ 10:01 pmBeen a long time since I’ve seen Zork. As usual, Iowahawk nails the head right on the hit!
(I think Iowahawk must’ve hacked TOTUS, ’cause I’m almost certain that’s a direct transcript of the last 20 or so months.)
Bill M (12e02d) — 10/19/2010 @ 10:26 pmWow.
The detail over Obama’s 2 years is remarkable.
BTW, you can play Zork here. Only if you’re particularly curious. Iowahawk captures the experience. I loved Iowahawk’s twitter mockery of Ifill’s twitter ugliness. Really, the only twitters I like mock other twitters.
Dustin (b54cdc) — 10/19/2010 @ 10:32 pmAbsolute. Classic.
“Urban hipster f*kwit t*ats” made me spit coffee on my keyboard. I am happily splashing away with my fingertips typing this comment.
rtrski (192cf0) — 10/20/2010 @ 7:47 amWow. That’s the perfect metaphor. I remember on November 9, 2008 I felt like I was in a maze of twisty little passages.
In the dark.
And I could hear a grue.
Gesundheit (cfa313) — 10/20/2010 @ 8:40 amBut if we “attack the dark” are we being racists?
Yes, yes we are. 😛
rtrski (336865) — 10/20/2010 @ 10:51 amrtrski
btw, you should heed the warning on the latest post and put down your coffee before you read frank j. flemming’s latest. its really funny.
Aaron Worthing (e7d72e) — 10/20/2010 @ 11:05 amWell, its a catch-22, reading political news, really. Read something funny with a mouthful of coffee…spit it up.
After serenely finishing swallowing my coffee and putting down the mug, read what the Dems are really up to…and spit it up.
The second act is just a little more, um, visceral, that’s all. I’ll take the sticky fingers version anytime, and gladly.
rtrski (336865) — 10/20/2010 @ 11:51 amAt the risk of certifying myself as an almost-senior-citizen, I do need to point out that the original for these text adventures was called, funnily enough, “Adventure”, and was written in Fortran, to run on IBM Mainframes … (back, last millennium … in the late 1970s) … Zork was the direct PC descendant of Adventure …
For the chronologically-disadvantaged –
A Mainframe is a giant, like-totally-ginormous server, only robust and reliable and has never had a virus … ever …
Fortran (from Formula Translation) was one of the earlier computer languages (think of it, like, like Latin or Sanskrit) …
PC – Personal Computer … (not Politically Correct) (as you learned, if you typed “Eat bird”)
(grin)
Alasdair (e7cb73) — 10/20/2010 @ 6:31 pmNow, now…didn’t the whole initial concept of computer viruses evolve from Core Wars? Which was performed on a mainframe to begin with…at least, because there weren’t really any such thing as PCs back then.
The main difference is there was no real “operating system” environment in which the combatants could continue to reside….nor was there much by way of stored I/O outside of punchcards. Just address space and a rude assembly-language equivalent. When one combatant won the battle…they just power-cycled the mainframe and started over.
Always thought that was a bit of a cruel reward…
rtrski (192cf0) — 10/21/2010 @ 6:10 am