not falling down

Wow, Kelly Link’s first story collection is out there for free under a CC license! That’s only served to guarantee I’ll buy a print copy. And Small Beer Press, by which she’s published and which she helps run, is working on adding ebooks sans DRM. Man!

Kind of getting a hero-worship thing for Kelly Link.

Saved from an LJ comment feed, because Will asked. I don’t think I’ve ever explained Movie Pong here before.

Movie Pong!

In Movie Pong, which is normally played in groups of three or more, one human names a movie. The human to his or her left names an actor who appeared in that movie, and the next human along names a different movie in which that actor appeared, and the next a different actor who was in the second movie, et cetera. (You can also start with an actor, it’s just simpler to explain this way.) It’s better to play with odd numbers of humans, so that each player has to name both actors and movies.

If you can’t name a movie or actor when you’re up, you can challenge the person who went before you. If he or she can’t name one either, you win and he or she gets a strike; if he or she can, you get a strike. Three strikes you’re out.

If you play Movie Pong with DC, you will lose, but you might learn something. I suspect that Scott is the same way.

Using IMDB is cheating, but permissible for resolving disputes. Using the Oracle of Bacon is always illegal.

A variation I much prefer is Team Movie Pong, in which a group of humans work collectively to try and make a Movie Pong chain from one actor to another. It’s usually easy to do in seven links (Actor 1, movie, actor, movie, actor, movie, actor, movie, Actor 2). The challenge is considered won if the group can do it in five. Doing it in three is considered a mighty feat. Obviously, the more disparate the actors, the grander the accomplishment.

Just Letters: a Flash game that, as Ben said when he linked it, is “like the Internet in microcosm.” It’s difficult to get anything actually spelled out; it’s easiest to find the letters you need to steal in other people’s words, and vice versa. There’s a paper to be written in there about systems and recombinant entropy. Or maybe about memes. I couldn’t finish XORPH DOT COM or NOT ENOUGH VOWELS, but when I started sorting letters by color I had a dozen people helping me within ten seconds.