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Showing posts with the label Douglas Adams

It's-a Mario Time Again!

It’s-a Mario Time! Once again, we’re warping into the world of Mario to celebrate another Mar10 (or "Mario") Day. If all kinds of corporations can milk this property year after year, then why can’t we return to the Mushroom Kingdom for some more tabletop inspiration? This year though, instead of talking about Super Cereal or Mario’s details , why don’t we take a look at a comeback of sorts - Super Mario Bros 2 . The game actually has a complicated history, but don’t you panic, some of the best games do. Starting here might give us a sound footing in this sidescroller, though the plot itself is a bit mysterious, as well. Somewhere in there, we’re sure to find a few gems (or coins) of inspiration. So without any further loading time, let's select our player and start the level. Life is but a dream Unless you're a video game history scholar, the words "Dream Factory: Heart-Pounding Panic" probably don’t mean much to you... at least not in that order. That, ho

A Terrible, Stupid Catastophe: Loss and Trauma in the the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams would have turned 70 this year, and, over two decades after his untimely death, the impact he made on all our lives and culture, particularly through The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, remains largely unknown… just the way he liked it. Adams loved to blend the precisely known with the manifestly unknowable by turning the very concepts on their heads, filling his stories with asides, detours, and commentaries, usually(but not always) for their own sake, even especially when there was no way the characters themselves could possibly be aware of it. He took a shortcut through the entirety of human philosophy and religion by giving us the answer to the Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything... but kept the question itself a mystery all the way up to the end of the series. He never shied away from the very real massiveness and incomprehensible scope of the universe, but addressed the problems of long-distance space travel in some of the silliest (and most imagi

Towel Day

Towel Day is upon us once again and… What’s that? You don’t know about Towel Day?!?! Well, pull up a n ice-block desk chair and lend an ear. Towel Day is a time when nerds and geeks of all denominations, Wars and Trek, Who and Dwarf, celebrate the life of the prophet author Douglas Adams. Webster’s dictionary defines a towel as “an absorbent cloth or paper for wiping or drying”. In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, from the novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , Douglas Adams defines a towel as follows: “Just about the most massively useful thing any interstellar Hitchhiker can carry. For one thing it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth on the cold moons of Jaglan Beta, sunbathe on it on the marble beaches of Santraginus Five, huddle beneath it for protection from the Arcturan Megagnats as you sleep beneath the stars of Kakrafoon, use it to sail a miniraft down the slpow heavy river Moth, wet it for use in hand to hand combat, wrap it round