|
Wolf In White Van
''Wolf in White Van'' is the first novel by the American author and singer-songwriter John Darnielle. ''Wolf in White Van'' tells the story of Sean Phillips, a reclusive game designer whose face has been severely disfigured. One reviewer characterizes Sean as someone "steeped in video games, bad sci-fi movies, and Conan the Barbarian comic books". Machado, Carmen Maria"The Monstrous And The Beautiful Dance In 'White Van'" NPR.org. Published September 12, 2014. The plot, which is told non-chronologically, alternates among Sean's childhood, adolescence, and adulthood to describe the circumstances surrounding the incident that disfigured him. A fictional play-by-mail role-playing game called ''Trace Italian'' figures prominently in the novel. The novel has been described as a "meditation on the power of escape,"Gilsdorf, EthanBook review.''New York Times''. Published November 7, 2014. exploring the escapist qualities of fantasy fiction and role-playing games, particularly as a way ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Darnielle
John Darnielle (; born March 16, 1967) is an American musician and novelist best known as the primary, and originally sole, member of the American band the Mountain Goats, for which he is the writer, composer, guitarist, pianist, and vocalist. Early life Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Darnielle grew up in San Luis Obispo and then Claremont, California with an abusive stepfather (as referenced frequently in '' The Sunset Tree''). Darnielle often attended professional wrestling matches with his stepfather at the Grand Olympic Auditorium. There, he developed a passion for the sport and local wrestlers like Chavo Guerrero Sr. His childhood love of wrestling would go on to inspire the Mountain Goats' album '' Beat the Champ''. Darnielle attended Claremont High School, located in the Pomona Valley region of Southern California. For a short time after high school, he lived in Portland, Oregon, where he developed an addiction to intravenous methamphetamine and other hard drugs (as r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Escapism
Escapism is mental diversion from unpleasant or boring aspects of daily life, typically through activities involving imagination or entertainment. Escapism may be used to occupy one's self away from persistent feelings of depression or general sadness. Perceptions Entire industries have sprung up to foster a growing tendency of people to remove themselves from the rigors of daily life – especially into the digital world. Many activities that are normal parts of a healthy existence (e.g., eating, sleeping, exercise, sexual activity) can also become avenues of escapism when taken to extremes or out of proper context; and as a result the word "escapism" often carries a negative connotation, suggesting that escapists are unhappy, with an inability or unwillingness to connect meaningfully with the world and to take necessary action. Indeed, the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' defined escapism as "The tendency to seek, or the practice of seeking, distraction from what normally has t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Post-apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; astronomical, such as an impact event; destructive, such as nuclear holocaust or resource depletion; medical, such as a pandemic, whether natural or human-caused; end time, such as the Last Judgment, Second Coming or Ragnarök; or more imaginative, such as a zombie apocalypse, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics or alien invasion. The story may involve attempts to prevent an apocalypse event, deal with the impact and consequences of the event itself, or it may be post-apocalyptic, set after the event. The time may be directly after the catastrophe, focusing on the psychology of survivors, the way to keep the human race alive and together as one, or considerably later, often including that the existence of pre-catastrophe c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larry Norman
Larry David Norman (April 8, 1947 – February 24, 2008) was an American musician, singer, songwriter, record label owner, and record producer. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of Christian rock music and released more than 100 albums. Early life Larry Norman was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, the oldest son of Joe Hendrex "Joe Billy" Norman (December 9, 1923 – April 28, 1999), and his wife, Margaret Evelyn "Marge" Stout (born in 1925 in Nebraska). Joe Norman had served as a sergeant in the US Army Air Corps during World War II and worked at the Southern Pacific Railroad"Larry Norman Down Under But Not Out", ''On Being'' (1985/1986):4. while studying to become a teacher. After Norman's birth, the family joined the Southern Baptist church. In 1950 the family moved to San Francisco, where they attended an African American Pentecostal church and then a Baptist church, where Norman became a Christian at the age of five. In 1959, Norman performed on the syndicated televi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Backmasking
Backmasking is a recording technique in which a message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward. It is a deliberate process, whereas a message found through phonetic reversal may be unintentional. Artists have since used backmasking for artistic, comedic and satiric effect, on both analogue and digital recordings. It has also been used to censor words or phrases for "clean" releases of explicit songs. In 1969, rumors of a backmasked message in the Beatles song "Revolution 9" sparked the Paul is dead urban legend. Since at least the early 1980s, Christian groups in the United States alleged that backmasking was being used by prominent rock musicians for Satanic purposes, leading to record-burning protests and proposed anti-backmasking legislation by state and federal governments during the 1980s, as part of the Satanic panic movement of the time. Many popular musicians were accused of including backmasked messages in their music. However, appare ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The National Book Awards were established in 1936 by the American Booksellers Association, "Books and Authors", ''The New York Times'', 1936-04-12, page BR12. "Lewis is Scornful of Radio Culture: Nothing Ever Will Replace the Old-Fashioned Book ...", ''The New York Times'', 1936-05-12, page 25. abandoned during World War II, and re-established by three book industry organizations in 1950. Non-U.S. authors and publishers were eligible for the pre-war awards. Now they are presented to U.S. authors for books published in the United States roughly during the award year. The nonprofit National Book Foundation was established in 1988 to administer and enhance the National Book Awards and "move beyond heminto the fields of edu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coping (psychology)
Coping refers to conscious strategies used to reduce unpleasant emotions. Coping strategies can be cognitions or behaviours and can be individual or social. Theories of coping Hundreds of coping strategies have been proposed in an attempt to understand how people cope. Classification of these strategies into a broader architecture has not been agreed upon. Researchers try to group coping responses rationally, empirically by factor analysis, or through a blend of both techniques. In the early days, Folkman and Richard Lazarus, Lazarus split the coping strategies into four groups, namely problem-focused, emotion-focused, support-seeking, and meaning-making coping. Weiten has identified four types of coping strategies:Weiten, W. & Lloyd, M.A. (2008) ''Psychology Applied to Modern Life (9th ed.)''. Wadsworth Cengage Learning. . appraisal-focused (adaptive cognitive), problem-focused (adaptive behavioral), emotion-focused, and occupation-focused coping. Billings and Moos added avoid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Role-playing Game
A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting or through a process of structured decision-making regarding character development. Actions taken within many games succeed or fail according to a formal role-playing game system, system of rules and guidelines. There are several forms of role-playing games. The original form, sometimes called the tabletop role-playing game (TRPG), is conducted through discussion, whereas in live action role-playing game, live action role-playing (LARP), players physically perform their characters' actions.(Tychsen et al. 2006:255) "LARPs can be viewed as forming a distinct category of RPG because of two unique features: (a) The players physically embody their characters, and (b) the game takes place in a physica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Farrar, Straus And Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and Nobel Prizes. the publisher is a division of Macmillan, whose parent company is the German publishing conglomerate Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Founding Farrar, Straus, and Company was founded in 1945 by Roger W. Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. The first book was ''Yank: The G.I. Story of the War'', a compilation of articles that appeared in ''Yank, the Army Weekly'', then ''There Were Two Pirates'', a novel by James Branch Cabell. The first years of existence were rough until they published the diet book ''Look Younger, Live Longer'' by Gayelord Hauser in 1950. The book went on to sell 500,000 copies and Straus said that the book carried them along for a while. In the early years, Straus and his wife ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Play-by-mail
A play-by-mail game (also known as a PBM game, PBEM game, or a turn-based game) is a game played through postal mail, email or other digital media. Correspondence chess and Go were among the first PBM games. ''Diplomacy'' has been played by mail since 1963, introducing a multi-player aspect to PBM games. Flying Buffalo Inc. pioneered the first commercially available PBM game in 1970. A small number of PBM companies followed in the 1970s, with an explosion of hundreds of startup PBM companies in the 1980s at the peak of PBM gaming popularity, many of them small hobby companies—more than 90 percent of which eventually folded. A number of independent PBM magazines also started in the 1980s, including '' The Nuts & Bolts of PBM'', '' Gaming Universal'', ''Paper Mayhem'' and '' Flagship''. These magazines eventually went out of print, replaced in the 21st century by the online PBM journal '' Suspense and Decision''. Play-by-mail games—becoming known as "turn-based games" in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carmen Maria Machado
''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the Carmen (novella), novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875, where its breaking of conventions shocked and scandalised its first audiences. Bizet died suddenly after the 33rd performance, unaware that the work would achieve international acclaim within the following ten years. ''Carmen'' has since become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical Western canon, canon; the "Habanera (aria), Habanera" from act 1 and the "Toreador Song" from act 2 are among the best known of all operatic arias. The opera is written in the genre of ''opéra comique'' with musical numbers separated by dialogue. It is set in southern Spain and tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.png "Click for more on -> Play-by-mail")
