Three Kingdoms

I am hooked on ancient Chinese history

The book Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, as translated by Moss Roberts (there are other versions), is a gripping read at more than 2000 pages. It is almost twice as long as Lord Of The Rings, and spans nearly 100 years of history, from the fall of the Han empire, through the struggles between abortive feudal states, through a long, bitter clash between three rival kingdoms, and finally to the reunification of the land under the banner of Jin.

Unlike Lord Of The Rings, which is cut from the same Indo-European cloth as Star Wars, Arthurian legends, and western mythologies, Three Kingdoms is (1) from the culturally distinct China, and (2) based on real history. The result is that there is no real main character. Nor is there a main ensemble cast. The story is not the story of men, but of a long, grueling, frequently thrilling war between all who would be king. Everyone who seems to be a hero, like the principled Liu Bei, in the end decides to be either (A) ruthless, or (B) dead. By the time the book sputters to a close, you have long since realized that there hasn't really been anything resembling a protagonist for at least a hundred pages, and that the inertia of these warring kingdoms is itself drawing the chaos to a close. Anyone you could consider a hero or villain has long since perished. It's fucking great.

This book (moreso than the actual history) is the source material for the long-running civil/military strategy series of video games also called Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, as well as Capcom's charming if somewhat incoherent Destiny Of An Emperor games for NES. All in all, this book has been the source material for probably 20+ games in Japan. They were mostly ignored by western audiences until the introduction of Dynasty Warriors, a sprawling, savage 3D action game with (light) strategy elements.

It is of course because of Dynasty Warriors that I read this 2000 page book. And if you skim the customer reviews on Amazon, you will see that I am far from alone. "I wanted to understand Dynaaty Warriors better." "Like many, I discovered this story through Koei's video games." And so forth.

Most of the focus in Dynasty Warriors is on the struggle between the Shu, Wu, and Wei kingdoms in the years between 200 and 234, and it is the generals, tacticians, and lords of these kingdoms that do most of the ass-kicking. The game is steeped in period piece strangeness and pageantry, but it is at heart a beat-em-up like Final Fight in 3D, and the soundtrack, instead of being sissy ancient court-comissioned flute-and-lute ditties, is for no internally justifiable reason heavy metal.

So you control ancient Chinese generals like "Ma Chao" (aka "Ma Chao the Splendid"), who rides around on legendary horses with names like "Hex Mark" or "Red Hare," mowing down thousands of generals, liutenants, bodyguards, and conscripts with your legendary spear, which is of course named "Stallion Fury," all the while shouting things like "I fight for justice!" and "I swear I will find the villain Cao Cao and run him through!" and "You'll never get past this spear ... of justice!" Plus the heavy metal. Enemy generals slaughter your allied troops, and you slaughter theirs, and you duel and you duel and unleash super combo attacks, conquer bases, hold chokepoints, and watch as history unfolds or is rewritten. The game has a built in Officer Encyclopedia and book synopsis to whet your appetite.

And, in a nod to Final Fight, you can break open crates to find delicious dim sum.

E3 tidbits and a bit more

Okami -- the watercolor game about the wolf-goddess restoring color to a dead world, from the Capcom studio that made Viewtiful Joe -- has been confirmed for US release. Awesome!

Nintendo has announced and released a trailer for the DS sequel to Snowboard Kids, the quasi-legendary N64 snowboarding game. It sounds like an SSX game with Mario Kart elements (like projectile attacks and 4-way multiplayer) added. And touchscreen control, of course. It's not like I ever played Snowboard Kids on the N64, but it was supposed to be good.

The PS3 controller looks like a melty batarang.

I cooked venison tonight. Lydia freaked out or something.

Done with all my finals. It's over.

Sierra Nevada, I'm sorry

This is another post about beer. You guys like these more than the video game posts, right? Well too bad. As soon as I get through my finals, I am buying Dynasty Warriors 5, which I have put off for a very painful, longing-filled month. That ought ot consume me like Tales of Symphonia did back in the day. Plus E3's next week, so expect me to not shut up for awhile, basically.

It has come to my attention that some people have interpreted the following statements of mine:

Luka has a nice selection of draught beers. Sierra Nevada, Stella Artois ... these are the shitty beers. Alright, actually that would be Pabst, which I feel must be a joke. What kind of a tard would choose Pabst over Sierra Nevada or Stella Artois or Pilsner Urquell? Yeah, anyhow...

...to mean that I dislike Sierra Nevada. I imagine that the sentence containing both "Sierra Nevada" and "shitty beers" triggered that interpretation.

No, no, no. I like Sierra Nevada. It is good, but it's kind of boring, since it's often the only good ale at a restaurant or party (key word: good). What I really hate is going to nice restaurants with eight page wine lists, and two pages of spirits, and then you get to the beer and it's like:

domestic
Miller
Budweiser
Bud Light

imported
Heineken
Corona

specialty domestic
Sierra Nevada

read:

shit
shit
shit
shit
good with Mexican food that we don't serve
Sierra Nevada
end.

All I meant is that Luka's beer selection is so eclectic, so out there, that Sierra Nevada, a perfectly respectable beer which I have had too often to be thrilled by any longer, is the unadventurous beer. Luka's serves cocktails AND they have a good beer selection. That's rare. That's worthy of note. And if I have to step on Sierra Nevada to make the point, well, Sierra Nevada doesn't deserve that, but nor do I regret it.

Battery Xtender

So one of the blogs I follow is called Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools. Kelly posts images, personal reviews, and links for nifty products of all sorts, ranging from "tactical shirts" to Lydia's invincible Zojirushi, to these preposterous odor-eating light bulbs. Usually I just look at the stuff and get on with my day, but after getting the Neo Geo and Wonderswan and facing a renewed, cosplay-driven need to refill Lydia's venerable hungry, hungry hippo of a digital camera, I was surrounded by empty battery husks.

Our cellphones, GBA SPs, and DSes recharge easily, thankfully, but we still have a lot of things that run off old-fashioned AAs:

• TV remote (2 AAs)
  
• DVD remote (2 AAs)
  
• VCR remote (2 AAs)
  
• Neo Geo Pocket Color (2 AAs)
  
• Wonderswan Swancrystal (1 AA)
  
• Wavebird [Gamecube controller] (2 AAs)
  
• another Wavebird (2 AAs)
  
• Discman (1 AA)
  
• Lydia's Discman (2 AAs)
  
• old reliable Philips discman (2 AAs)
  
• Lydia's avaricious digital camera (4 AAs)

Even dismissing the extra discman, that's a lot. And that damned camera really does just eat batteries without remorse. Beyond that, it is annoying to carry spare batteries around (especially if it's four spare batteries), so while getting up to change a remote battery (which is necessary, what, once a year?) isn't a hassle, having the Neo Geo or camera go dead when you're out and about can all but ruin your day.

So when Cool Tools linked to some fancy pants alkaline battery recharger that can keep alkalines -- as well as all other sorts like nickel-cadmuim -- topped off, works with regular store-bought batteries, and works with AAs, AAAs, Cs, and Ds, I jumped on it. And you know what? It's great. It can do different sorts of batteries at once, and is extremely easy to use.

This also renders moot my long-term, half-assed quest to find one of those battery life gauges that used to be stuck right on the fucking battery (which was awesome), and then used to be stuck right in the battery packages (which was also pretty good), and then disappeared entirely. How full is my bettery? It's totally full, just how I like it.

I've actually had only a few hours of use of this product, so I'll post again if it turns out to suck after all.

Berliner Weisse!

Cynth, this is the name of your beer. I looked up "woodruff" in the index of the Michael Jackson* Beer Companion (a book we have checked out from the library), and was directed to a two page article on exactly the beer style you ordered. A summary, in quotes:

The champagne of the north.

...

[Fermenting with lactic cultures in addition to the normal yeast] may sound odd, but it has parallels in the maltolactic fermentation used in the production of many wines, including some champagnes. With that technique, harsh 'green apple' acids are transformed into softer, 'milky' ones like those found in Berliner Weisse.

...

Like a sparkling wine, Berliner Weisse tends to foam quickly then lose its head. Sparkling wines (and soft drinks) do not generally have the protein structure to form a lasting head, and that is also true of this beer, due to its acidity.

...

I have heard of Berliner Weisse being laced with Kummel (caraway) schnapps, or being served hot with lemon juice during the winter, although I have only ever seen the summer versions, with a dash of the herbal essence of WOODRUFF OR RASPBERRY SYRUP. This is the familiar face of Berliner Weisse.

The syrup colors the head as well as the beer, the woodruff making for a vivid lime-cordial hue and the raspberry looking more like peach. Everyone knows the flavor of raspberry, but what of woodruff? Sampled on its own, it is heavily fragrant, with notes of hay, lemon grass, and cough candy. The herb grows in the forests around Berlin, and is also used to make a soft drink and to flavor mineral water. When Berliner Weisse is served this way, the idea is that the drinker first tastes the sweetness of the syrup, then senses the acdity of the beer.

Whenever I have asked for a Weissbier in Berlin, the server has demanded: "Red or green?" If I have requested it without either, to sample the beer in its natural state, I have sometimes been viewed as a madman. The syrups are considered necessary to moderate the intensity of the acid.

Okay ... so why not just bottle it with the syrup, or introduce the woodruff during the brewing process? That's because, unlike in Belgium where folks just love making crazy beer with any damn herbs they can find, Germany is governed by/afflicted with a "beer purity" law that forbids the addition of things like woodruff to beers. So i the case of Berliner Weisse, the beer itself is designed as incomplete, and is meant to be served with a sweet syrup.

*the other Michael Jackson

Ham Sandwich

I didn't do it, I swear!

Ham Fucking Sandwich

Say it with me: File, Save Page As, Web Page, Complete. That's how you do it (put up your dukes, let's get down to it).

OED...ILF

From Boing Boing, destined for a repost.

OED...ILF (Omnificent English Dictionary ... In Limerick Form)


Here's a few example "definitions":

Besiegers extracting surrenders
From fortified fortress defenders
Would aim at the sky
With their arbalests nigh:
Steel bows with mechanical benders.

The hamstrings and quads interact,
And are paired to relax and contract.
One's the agonist, which
Will respond to a twitch
Its antagonist triggers, in fact.

A thing added is called an addendum.
As, for instance, to books. When I've penned ‘em,
At the end I append a
Whole slew of addenda
(Because I'm reluctant to end ‘em).

Yeah, so they're only doing the A-words right now.

Angry Bread

I haven't baked in like a year, and Lydia pressured me into baking this morning. It was a frustrating experience, and I manhandled the bread throughout the process. The fact that the bread turned out is more a credit to the nature of the ingredients than to any skill I might have once possessed. I was very grumpy.

I had some coffee and played some Taiko, and got my sense of humor back. Lydia, Sarah, and Cynth should be home in about an hour to marvel at my foodly art. In the meantime, I am a bit giggly.

Angry Bread 

Angried Bread 

Luka: thumbs up

Intro: I am surrounded by shitty food

Okay, so when we moved into this apartment in summer 2003, the five closest restaurants were:

1. Taco Bell. Taco fucking Bell.
2. 1/4 lb Giant Burger. Open 24 hours, and serving shitty burgers all 24 of those hours.
3. Off The Hook. Terrible, terrible seafood and burrito (but NOT seafood burrito) place which has no redeeming value beyond the brilliant name.

"Worst damn burrito I have ever, ever had." -Zack Fornaca, bigstupidjerkface

4. Subway. It's in the BART station.
5. Fat Cat Cafe. Decent sandwiches, pricier than they deserve to be for the quality. Only open for lunch.

It's really a shitty set of local restaurants. There's also a children's center of some sort nearby. It's not a restaurant, but the building has that distinctive Wienerschitzel shape, so maybe it's worth a mention.

Hofbrau Shenanigans

Then there was Hofbrau, which shut down, like, a month before we moved in, and which had until then been a local institution for, like, fifty years. So we are also familiar with the dead, dry husk of a building that used to be the Hofbrau.

For at least a year, there were signs on the Hofbrau building saying that "Luka" was coming Spring 2004 (a target it missed by about two seasons), bearing a curious image of, oh, let's say a deer or a dog or something.

I was so used to Luka being not there, that when it opened in October (apparently), I didn't notice. Recently, Sarah (you know, the one who posts naggy comments if I go a week without posting) and Lydia noticed that it was open, and then I saw that the Express decreed their burgers to be "juicy."

So we went. Lyd and I went to Luka last night, and it was great.

Matters of drink

Luka has a nice selection of draught beers. Sierra Nevada, Stella Artois ... these are the shitty beers. Alright, actually that would be Pabst, which I feel must be a joke. What kind of a tard would choose Pabst over Sierra Nevada or Stella Artois or Pilsner Urquell? Yeah, anyhow, the bulk of their draught list is bizarre Belgian things. I tried a "Flemish red ale," which looked like wine, smelled like beer, and tasted like both. Strange. Good. Strange.

This is in addition to the even larger and stranger (and also largely Belgian) list of bottled beers. I tried one of these, too, and although it was interesting, its citrus and pepper notes weren't quite right for that moment in my life.

But forget about peppery amber ales. Let's talk about some legendary super-beers.

There are four bottled beers on the menu which run for about $25. Per bottle. Granted, that's a 750ml bottle, but you can get an Asahi that size at Ryowa* or Cafe Jun** for like $5, so even accounting for the size, $25 is kind of a hell of a lot. Now, I get curious about food and drink*** and I will need to know what a $25 beer tastes like, even if my immature palate can only extract about $14 of flavor from the beer on a good day. So if anybody ever wants to stop by Luka with me to try a legendary super-beer with me, let me know. I'd love to split one 2, 3, or 4 ways.

In addition to all the beers, Luka has a nice selection of cocktails. Do they taste nice? I don't know. But there was a nice selection. It's tough to find a place that has both interesting cocktails and a serious selection of beers. Luka is one such place.

They have wine too blah blah who cares.

Matters of et cetera

The food -- that chewy stuff you use to clear your palate between sips of beer -- was good, too. First, for $3 (or $5 for a bigger order), you get Belgian-style fries. Very crispy, great spices, and comes with three dipping sauces ... none of which really live up to the fries themselves, unfortunately. We couldn't help but compare them to the fries at SF Belgian place Frjtz (which also serves Belgian fries and beer). I certainly have no complaint about Luka's fries, but Frjtz's sauces jsut embarass Luka's.

There are a number of seafood options -- mussels prepared in various ways, dungeness crab, and our selection, the West Grand Platter. It's a bunch of seafood, steamed and then served cold, over ice, with a handful of different dips, like aioli, clarified butter, and some onion and vinegar sauce I can't remember the word for. The oyster was very good (and also not steamed, despite what I just said), and almost everything else was excellent. The highlight, though, was unexpectedly the clam. Salty, fatty, gross little clams, boasting such a strange flavor. It was a sensation I never thought I'd associate with clams. Okay, now I'm salivating. I mean, the shrimp was good, but the clam ... man!

Didn't get to try any of the turf, but the surf was memorable.

There's a main dining room, with both tables and bar seating, plus a huge lounge where they serve drinks and appetizers, and there's also a back room that has a pool table, a pinball table, and a couple arcade games -- Centipede, and Super Pac-Man. Super Pac-Man is a cocktail cabinet, and apparently differs from the original and Ms. varieties in that there's a key/door system. Look, it's not as good, but both games are still just a quarter per play.

Website (beer menu has been expanded a bit): Luka's Oakland

*very good ramen house on university ave
**sake/karaoke bar, also on university ave
***by the way, I don't recommend goose feet, different story

Card Fighting

This game is ridiculous.

In the first few days that I owned both, I was more enamored of the Wonderswan than the Neo Geo (it is very shiny and very slim). The NGPC does have this really great springy, clicky thumbstick, though, and is extremely comfortable to hold. It also has fucking fantastic games, and loads of them. I have already blogged about Ogre Battle, about the addictive trifle that is Neo Turf Masters, about Metal Slug, and about the super high quality, unexpectedly joyful SNK brawlers. All of these are great. The version of Sonic The Hedgehog is also great, and possibly the all-time best Sonic game, believe it or not. However, greatest of all is SNK Vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash (SNK Version).

This game is: a Pokemon-style adventure videogame version of a fictional collectable card game (like Magic: The Gathering) based on the fighting game properties of Capcom (Street Fighter) and SNK (King Of Fighters).

So your avatar goes around to different areas like Capcom Plaza and Joy Joy World, challenging other little sprite people to Cardfighters Clash matches. And instead of controlling Ryu, you play the Ryu card, which has 1000 BP, and on your next turn you can "tap" the Ryu card to activate his "S-HADOKEN" power to reduce another character-card's BP by 500 points. If, later, Ryu's BP is fully depleted (say, if you use Ryu to block both the 700 BP Ken card and the 600 BP Heidern card), Ryu is placed in the discard pile, and the game continues without him, although since you may have up to three copies of the same card in a given deck, another Ryu may wind up on the table before long. Clearly it doesn't matter what BP is or what the letters stand for. Suffice to say that you need it, you want it, and you are in serious trouble if your stable of character cards is low on it.

The game plays like a claustrophobic version of Spellfire, if anybody remembers that. It was the AD&D-branded competitor to Magic. Although it was a much (much) less carefully balanced game, Spellfire was loads of fun. It was very loose, everything was very disposable, and there was no equality in the cards. In Spellfire, some cards were awesome, and some were shitty. Same in CFC: Akuma is amazing, and Deejay is just awful. In Magic, by contrast, "better" cards were more expensive to deploy, or had some glaring weakness that could be exploited in some counter-maneuver. Skill and luck are crucial in CFC but they can only do so much in the face of superior cards.

This game is rridiculous. Good, though.