Yakuza Papers: observations on video games and film

 2.21 -in the Japanese game “Infinite Wealth,” Kiryu, the dying protagonist, is encouraged by friends to make what the subtitles refer to as a ‘bucket list;’-- a list of things he wants to do before he dies. The phrase the characters use sounds like the English words ‘ending note;’ this all makes sense because 1) the ‘bucket list’ is (presumably?) a relatively recent concept so importing a phrase for it makes sense but 2) the actual term ‘bucket list’ derives from the colloquial/ vulgar euphemism ‘kick the bucket’ for death which might not translate into Japanese (on several levels). a) anyway the use of ‘ending note’ (which might refer to a slightly more specific concept than the extremely vague English term ‘bucker list’) seems representative of the increasing prevalence of phrases derived from English in other languages, which was something that I was talking about with a Korean speaker recently. Obviously, here the language is Japanese, but the forces involving importing words ...

 there is something really poignant in how the DIYs in Dondoko Island are ALL the assets from the yakuza series; objects, buildings, even/especially seemingly random ones from all over the series become available for you to craft. For some of us, it’s a whole lot of memories.  I don’t think the Proust cookies** will become craft-able, although they should. RGG is good enough that the joke would not surprise me, but I’m not counting on it.  It’s an interestingly, intimate moment; almost like a lover taking off their clothes, because this, moving around these blocks of pixels,  exactly  these blocks of pixels, is what the RGG guys have been doing themselves all along; they are giving us a much deeper look at the programer’s world than we have seen before.  So far, I have not found the desire to recreate stuff, or even, create, riff take ownership, of my resort. I put stuff places where it will function as it is supposed to, but, otherwise, pretty much at rand...

 “I look out into your eyes, I look out into your faces, you know what I see? I see a little bit of Elvis in each and every one of yah.” -Mojo Nixon Chuck D: Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me you see straight up racist that sucker was simple and plain Flavor Flav: motherfucker him and John Wayne. -Public Enemy “Everybody in outer space looks like Elvis, because Elvis is a perfect being. We are all moving in perfect peace and harmony twords Elvis-ness, soon all will become Elvis, everything, everywhere will be Elvis. Why do you think they call it ‘ evo lution’ anyway? It’s really ‘Elvis-lution’!” -M. Nixon I have been aware of the idea that Elvis was essentially a racist construct for about as long as I have been aware of Elvis-- an idea which should be fairly intuitive to anyone with even a passing familiarity with American music and history. By the end of the nineteenth century it was fairly obvious that ‘the blues’ or ‘jazz’ or ‘black people music’ was the mo...