Randomness #785D

R.I.P. Gary Gygax. Found out from, of all places, How The World Works:

In the deep structure of ancient Internet culture, where the same computer programmers who helped build the Net often spent their leisure time pretending to be online wizards and warlocks, there’s no underestimating the genetic influence of Dungeons & Dragons. Gygax’s legacy is built into the infrastructure. I hope he took pleasure in that as the years went by, and I hope Gygax always knew how much millions of gamers and fantasy-dwellers, whiling away their hours on online quests, owe to him and his co-author Dave Arneson.

Order of the Stick has a charming tribute too.

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Zhou Enlai was born today, 5th March 1898. My impression of him was that of the model civil servant (not necessarily a compliment), managing to survive while Mao offed all his contemporaries. But what was he thinking on the inside? What kind of conscience did he have? I bought Gao Wenqian’s The Last Perfect Revolutionary with those questions and others in mind. Only managed to read a bit before being distracted by other books — should go back to it soon.

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Jottings From The Granite Studio also informs us that 5th March was the start of the “Learn from Lei Feng” campaign too. Ah, a man for all (propaganda) seasons

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When in London, why not visit the Stanley Kubrick Archive?

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Turns out that the rumours of a new lime-green Lamy Safari are true. Here’s one for sale on eBay.

Foto Friday

6ixth — Jeff Chouw’s photo exhibition of Opposition MP Chiam See Tong campaigning in 2006 — is now online on Chouw’s site.

(Found via Tan Pin Pin’s blog. And coincidentally: Yisheng’s just posted his review of the 2006 exhibition up on his blog.)

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An extract from the NYT feature on Yoshiyuki Kohei’s series on park voyeurs (picked up by Boing Boing)

“The predatory, animalistic aspect of the people in Yoshiyuki’s work is particularly striking,” she continued. “The pictures are bizarre and shocking, not only because of the subject itself but also because of the way that they challenge our clichéd view of Japanese society as permeated by authority, propriety and discipline.”

The series reminded me of Imamura Shohei‘s work, verging on documentary. This is the man who once said: “I want to make messy, really human, Japanese, unsettling films.”

And of course he made The Pornographers (1966)

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Behind-the-scenes photos from A Clockwork Orange

(found via Ectomoplasmosis)