雲門、因僧問、如何是佛。

門云

。

… from CLIQUE (or me, at least), as communicated by David Foster Wallace, now printed on AGENT ORANGE.

I’ve tried several times to take this passage and adapt it to Mararthon, but it seems not just hopelessly hard but actually disrespectful to modify it.  Still, I think it’s so important, so worth bringing to your attention, that I’d like to quote it verbatim below.  It is the best account I have read in years of mentorship, fatherhood, and self-consolation in the face of failure, disability, and lost potential, moral acceptance and selfish anger, and the way all of these seep bruise-like into your everydays.

For once, this isn’t community commentary — there’s hardly an agent in this text other than the father, and hence no room for the Pfhorums — but it does inform you of some community context.  Anyway, not everything is about you.

(Try to read between the lines a little bit more)

Following Hamish’s recent report of TOTAL INACTIVITY, I thought it might be good to fill in the gap. Apologies for both the iframe and the Javascript; ray will have my head for it.

I’m happy to consider more date submissions and corrections. This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list of all dates Mararthon-related; its focus on Hamish’s missing period is clear, though some earlier dates were included for the benefit of perspective.

Chrome gets it

Things have been quiet around here lately because no one gives a shit. Nez has been finishing the first draft of his novel, TK has evaporated, I’ve been working, TL has a kid to look after, and that makes most of us. The best Mararthon-related news I’ve got is that we’re 157 steps ahead of these chumps.

Definitely not a Pfhorums stimulator. This morning I finished playing Pfhorums.nits, pictured below:

Its most remarkable feature is its realism. Finish off a major conflict and then an angry Dugit appears, sputtering something incoherent and draining away the last of your stamina. Get cornered by Slave and tl and they’ll knock you out inside of a few turns.

There’s been musing about expansions already — I myselfs were surprised to find that there weren’t any dungeons in this installment. Hopefully there’ll be even more NitsLoch to look forward to in the future.

(07:45:44 PM) pfhortipfhy: Hey, do you live in the midwest?
(07:49:38 PM) pfhortipfhy: I met a friend of yours at a wedding in St. Louis.
(07:49:48 PM) pfhortipfhy: I have his email around here somewhere.
(07:49:58 PM) thermo: what, who
(07:50:20 PM) pfhortipfhy: I think he was a roommate of yours? You got him into marathon as well?
(07:53:00 PM) pfhortipfhy: j—@gmail.com
(07:53:08 PM) thermo: oh shit, really?
(07:53:22 PM) pfhortipfhy: Yeah dude. We talked about programming for a while.
(07:53:25 PM) thermo: a— and k—’s?
(07:53:33 PM) pfhortipfhy: Hell yeah! K—’s my cousin.
(07:53:39 PM) thermo: hahaha, that’s crazy
(07:53:58 PM) thermo: i went to high school with j— and a—, and i lived with j— for like four years :)
(07:53:59 PM) pfhortipfhy: Yeah, I know, right. I couldn’t believe it when he first said “Pfhorums”.
(07:54:15 PM) pfhortipfhy: Haha, yeah, he said you guys were wicked tight.
(07:54:37 PM) thermo: that’s nuts man
(07:55:14 PM) pfhortipfhy: Yeah. Small world, eh?
(07:55:27 PM) thermo: extremely, i can’t imagine the odds of that
(07:57:01 PM) pfhortipfhy: So, you know K—?
(07:57:16 PM) thermo: a little, she came over a few times to jog or to drink
(07:57:34 PM) pfhortipfhy: Nice. Yeah, I heard the whole story about the CUBE.^†
(07:58:57 PM) thermo: this is unbelievable, i need like half an hour to recuperate
(08:01:19 PM) pfhortipfhy: Hahaha. It was great, we were talking about games, and he asks me what games I like, and I talk about what I’ve been playing, and I say “But, my favorite game of all time has to be Marathon. It’s this old game by Bungie-” “You play Marathon?” “Yeah!” “Did you know that it’s gone open source? The new engine’s called-” “Aleph One, yeah, I know.” “Really? Did you ever go on the Pfhorums?”^‡ “WHOA, YOU’RE ON THE PFHORUMS?”

^† – incontrovertible proof that he did actually meet the guy
^‡ – I can hear J—’s tone here, using this question to test whether or not P-fail was a cool guy. Doesn’t sound like he passed.

Dugit and friends have been the subject of much discussion on #alephone, especially in light of some recent Pfhorums threads. To confirm the public’s suspicions that CLIQUE is more concerned with posturing than anything else, here’s what half of us really think of shitposting:

[thermoplyae] jesus christ
[thermoplyae] i was just thinking “man the pfhorums sure are active, this is totally contrary to that graph that irons had”
[thermoplyae] but 2/3 of the last posts were made by DUGIT, and now i understand what you guys are so uppity about
[thermoplyae] i’m gonna do steve’s job and see if i can flag any of these for shitposting
[Stevedollars] if you report posts I’m more likely to actually do something
[Stevedollars] I’ve only deleted two or three posts today
[ray] it’s a good thing shitposting kingpin patrick is suspended and quality poster dugit is able to go about his posting^†
[thermoplyae] well i lied, i don’t really know what shitposting even means, so i’m not going to flag anything
[Wrkncacnter] i took a screenshot from last night
[Wrkncacnter] it’s pretty great
[ray] nobody knows what shitposting means
[Wrkncacnter] ^
[treellama] ^^
[Wrkncacnter] that’s why it’s so fun to talk about
[ray] the only thing we can agree on is that dugit is a loser

^†: Whatever CLIQUE feels about shitposting has had little bearing on Steve, who’s taken the opportunity to seize some Pfhorums political power^‡ by suspending patrick and leaving the Dugit/WJ/Envy cell undisturbed.
^‡: hahaha

It’s not really fair to let me announce a post of the month, as I always immediately reduce to picking a patrick of the month. With that bias aired, this patrick post deserves the November title for being extremely intricate (unlike the usual ham-handed parody that gets picked for PotM). That kind of detailed image work isn’t something any of the rest of us bother with anymore, and that’s what makes it so impressive.

Congratulations.