Twin Peaks and the Twisted Language of Spirits

After my 30+ hours of Twin Peaks I was literally in a trance state. So many things from prior working suddenly found their context. I went back through old journals and understood messages that had been given to me by the spirits that were lingering in my mind like timebombs which David Lynch and Mike Frost had set off with their creation.

So I wanted to write this article to suggest to people that don’t know: Twin Peaks IS an occult training video in modes of spirit communication. When you figure out who is in the Log Lady’s Log, what Creamed corn represents and if the Little Man from Another Place is the Giants, Black Lodge opposite, or the discarded Arm of the one armed man, than you will have graduated from the course.

via Jason Louv

The first time Aaron and I saw Twin Peaks we were literally screaming. Strangeness does indeed surround the series.

Movies, Supernatural | 2 Comments »

Shrimp Defense: Glowing Blue Spit Cloud

Smooth nylon shrimp (Heterocarpus laevigatus) inhabiting the dark depths of the Pacific employ a brilliant method of defense. When threatened with attack, the creature spits a cloud of bioluminescent blue fluid from its mouth, temporarily blinding its predator and allowing escape.

Click here to see the video.

This was just too amazing not to post. It’s like an anime martial arts move.

We need to start genetically engineering bioluminesence into people.

Science | No Comments »

Whitelight has new songs up on her MySpace page, with more music coming soon. You can find other music by Whitelight here on the site.

I love her sound.

Stay tuned to Electric Children for upcoming tour dates.

Music | No Comments »

Do We Live in a Giant Cosmic Bubble?

Earth may be trapped in an abnormal bubble of space-time that is particularly void of matter. Scientists say this condition could account for the apparent acceleration of the universe’s expansion, for which dark energy currently is the leading explanation.

Dark energy is the name given to the hypothetical force that could be drawing all the stuff in the universe outward at an ever-increasing rate. Current thinking is that 74 percent of the universe could be made up of this exotic dark energy, with another 21 percent being dark matter, and normal matter comprising the remaining 5 percent.

Until now, there has been no good way to choose between dark energy or the void explanation, but a new study outlines a potential test of the bubble scenario.

Stars Migrate Through Galaxies

About half the stars in our celestial neighborhood may have traveled great distances through the Milky Way, according to a new study, which suggests our sun may be one of them.

Planet Debate Gets Greater

The planethood question got more interesting this week with the naming of yet another dwarf planet, Haumea. It’s traditional to name planets after mythological deities – and Haumea, the Hawaiian goddess of childbirth and fertility, follows that formula.

. . .

The controversy came to a head in 2005 when Brown’s team found the object now known as Eris – a world like Pluto, only bigger and farther out.

Scientists Glimpse “Dark Flow” Lurking Beyond the Edge of the Universe

Distant clusters of galaxies are all shifting inexorably towards the same spot in the sky, beyond the boundary of what we can see, a baffling discovery by Nasa scientists that seems to challenge our understanding of the Big Bang.

Hottest Planet Ever Discovered

In the hunt for extrasolar planets, a new find is shattering records left and right.

A planet called WASP-12b is the hottest planet ever discovered (about 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2,200 degrees Celsius), and orbits its star faster and closer in than any other known world.

Electricity Found on Saturn’s Largest Moon Titan – Could it Spark Life?

But a new study reports faint signs of a natural electric field in Titan’s thick cloud cover that are similar to the energy radiated by lightning on Earth.

Liquid Mirror Telescopes on the Moon

A team of internationally renowned astronomers and opticians may have found a way to make “unbelievably large” telescopes on the Moon.

“It’s so simple,” says Ermanno F. Borra, physics professor at the Optics Laboratory of Laval University in Quebec, Canada. “Isaac Newton knew that any liquid, if put into a shallow container and set spinning, naturally assumes a parabolic shape—the same shape needed by a telescope mirror to bring starlight to a focus. This could be the key to making a giant lunar observatory.”

And The Number of Intelligent Civilizations in Our Galaxy Is. . .

31573.52

Our Solar System’s Young Twin has Two Asteroid Belts

Astronomers have discovered that the nearby star Epsilon Eridani has two rocky asteroid belts and an outer icy ring, making it a triple-ring system. The inner asteroid belt is a virtual twin of the belt in our solar system, while the outer asteroid belt holds 20 times more material. Moreover, the presence of these three rings of material implies that unseen planets confine and shape them.

Theorists Tackle Universe’s “Coincidence Problem”

Australian scientists have come up with a simple solution to one of the deepest puzzles in our understanding of the cosmos — why life on Earth coincides with a momentous shift in the makeup of the universe.

It’s Snowing on Mars

Scientists studying the coded signals from the lander Phoenix on the planet’s arctic surface detected the snow falling lightly from clouds drifting across the sky some 2 1/2 miles above the spacecraft, said James Whiteway, an atmospheric scientist from York University in Canada.

“Nothing like this has ever been seen on Mars before,” he said.

Space | No Comments »

The final issue of All Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely has finally been released, and with it has come a theory that hadn’t occurred to me before – Is Professor Quintium secretly Lex Luthor in disguise? Transformed? At first I had my doubts, but the articles below bring up some interesting points.

Leo Quintium is Lex Luthor

All Star Luthor: X’s and O’s

It’s an intriguing theory, certainly calling for another reading of the comic.

If you haven’t read the series yet I highly recommend, it is easily the most interesting interpretation of the character in a very long time. I have no doubt we’ll be writing more about it.

All Star Superman, Vol. 1

All Star Superman, Vol. 2

Comics | 1 Comment »

The more I travel through Europe (I’m in in Romania at the moment, Amsterdam in a few days), the more I am reminded of Jean K. Jean, the world’s first French Def Jam comic. Jean K. Jean is a character on Saturday Night Live played by Kenan Thompson from Kenan and Kel.

If you’ve ever been to Europe before this will crack you up. If you haven’t it will crack you up anyways.

The First Appearance

The Second (at 3:40 on the clock)

The Third

UPDATE:

Jean K. Jean on the G20

Jean K. Jean on Obama’s European Visit

Movies | 2 Comments »

Just flipping around on TV a few minutes ago, I came across an episode of Mythbusters featuring a clip of an old television interview with Lucille Ball. Lucy was describing strange experiences she had been having with her teeth, specifically her fillings, on her drive home through the San Fernando Valley from MGM Studios. This was during the second World War.

From the article on Snopes:

One night I came into the Valley over Coldwater Canyon, and I heard music. I reached down to turn the radio off, and it wasn’t on. The music kept getting louder and louder, and I realized it wasn’t coming from my mouth. I even recognized the tune. My mouth was humming and thumping with the drumbeat, and I thought I was losing my mind. I thought, “what the hell is this?” Then it started to subside. I got home and went to bed, not sure if I should tell anybody what had happened because they would think I was crazy.

She didn’t hear anything through her teeth again for another five days. Not until the night she decided to take a different route home.

All of a sudden, my mouth started jumping. It wasn’t music this time, it was Morse code. It started softly, and then de-de-de-de-de-de. As soon as it started fading, I stopped the car and started backing up until it was coming in full strength. DE-DE-DE-DE-DE-DE DE-DE-DE-DE! I tell you, I got the hell out of there real quick. The next day I told the MGM Security Office about it, and they called the FBI or something, and sure enough, they found an underground Japanese radio station. It was somebody’s gardener, but sure enough, they were spies.

Mythbuster’s claimed to have debunked this theory by testing two different types of fillings, but as usual their research was barely research. The academic standards for proving something boring are always lower than the standards for proving it interesting. They tested two types of fillings, but these were not the type she had in. Mythbusters tested gold and silver/mercury, but in her interview on the Dick Cavett show Lucy says they were temporary lead fillings.

From a comment on the Myth Busters wiki:

Mythbusters need to revisit, as the test(s) that I have seen are inane/lame. The tech that you did some test with was only using a function generator.

The Lucille Ball remarks were all of a magnitude where she was in proximity of probably 50 kilowatt AM radio stations in CA. I tend to believe her. Circa 1970 I was stationed in the CZ and seemed to remember that one radioman/ET was reassigned from the Summit transmitter site, because he was having a dental issue with the transmitter high power. Probably VLF (to 300 KHz). I was stationed at Farfan, across the canal from Panama City and the receiver site. The only transmitters we had were essentially microwave.

I also believe that Lucille Ball experienced CW (Morse code) transmission. In the LA area, at the time, there was probably a lot of this from military bases, probably Navy. Was it Japanese? We’ll never know. I know Morse code, but likely could not ‘read’ what she ‘heard’ or even the very early railroad telegraph. Clickity-clicks.

. . .

I think you need to revisit this subject.

Snopes lists the incident as undetermined, which seems a much more sensible approach to take with something like this, which is essentially unprovable in either direction.

You can see her discuss the story on the Dick Cavett show starting with this video at 3:30, and finishing here, almost all the way to the end.

Whether or not the signals were being broadcast by Japanese spies is unknown. Spies? Gardeners? Spies disguised as gardeners? Even Lucy is unsure of the final outcome, but she does confirm that a radio transmitter was found.

It certainly adds depth to all the more modern tales of supposed maniacs receiving CIA messages through their teeth.

Bonus links:

Lucille Ball on The Dick Cavett Show – All Nine Parts
Testimony Before the House Comittee on Un-American Activities
Lucille Ball Goes Mod
I Love Lucy – Grapes
Lucille Ball and Harpo Marx

“It was like being in a vat of eyeballs.” – Lucille Ball

Movies | 1 Comment »

I still remember Relentless like I had run around inside of it. The music was amazing, the graphics were unique, and so was the entire world. The game completely absorbed me when I played. In Relentless you play Twinsen, a young Questch (one of the four intelligent species living together on the planet Twinsun) who has been having strange dreams. The dreams lead to clashes with a dictator who rules with an iron fist and a cloning machine, and this dictator’s eventual overthrow with the help of a star child.

Twinsen’s Adventure had an excellent sequel, Twinsen’s Odyssey, which came out in 1997, but with the dissolution of Adeline Software and the eventual collapse of it’s parent company Delphine, the idea of seeing the series continue began to look more and more like a fantasy as time went by.

When I looked it up recently though, I discovered I was not the only one out there with addictive memories of Twinsen’s adventures. Fan sequels, fan prequels, fan films. There’s been a huge amount of activity around Relentless and Twinsen’s Odyssey.

This is a partial list of the projects I’ve found:

Little Big Adventure: The Great Rebellion

Little Big Adventure: The Great Rebellion is a game programmed on the L.B.A. 1 engine, set between the Twinsen’s Adventure and Twinsen’s Odyssey. (Relentless: Twinsen’s Adventure was also released as Little Big Adventure). It’s a Relentless game with political themes involved.

From their website:

Twinsen is a Quetch who lives on Citadel Island with Zoé, his fiancée. After having eliminated FunFrock in LBA 1, he and Zoé restored the peace on Twinsun, and organized the first Twinsunian presidential elections, where the citizens of Twinsun would elect the new, democratic leader of the planet.
The winner of these elections was a certain Angus Nizeda, who promised that he would help remove the last traces of FunFrock’s regime, and he actually started doing so.

However, at one point, Nizeda got involved into two unpleasant incidents. One is the sinking of the biggest ship ever made on Twinsun, the Twinsunic, after her collision with an iceberg just south of the Hamalayi Mountains, which caused the death of two thirds of the people on board. He witnessed it from a smaller ship, but did nothing to help.
The other is some new mutants, found in the Citadel Island caves, apparently created by the mutation liquid that Nizeda got left over from FunFrock and allegedly accidentally spilled into those caves. He’s supposedly also involved in deals with some unknown, suspect people.

He claims to be innocent in both cases, but there’s a group of rebels, lead by Pierre Chevay, with their headquarters on Kroptman Island, who believe that Nizeda did what he did on purpose. They have also closed Desert Island to the public, and built a military base there!

But what’s actually going on? Is Nizeda really innocent regarding these two incidents? Or did he really do what he did on purpose? Why do the rebels refuse to believe him so strongly? Why did they build a military base on Desert Island? And why did they close this island to the public?
If you want to know the answer to this question, well… then go play LBA: The Great Rebellion when it’s finished!

Official Website
Developer’s Homepage

Little Big Adventure: Prequel

A prequel to L.B.A., also done in the L.B.A. 1 engine, telling the story of one of Twinsen’s anscestors Hégésippe, who was briefly mentioned in a puzzle in the original game. This one looks exciting, and will most likely involve pirates.

Our first question was what would the game be about? A project without direction is like a boat without an oar, and with much debate about the setting and storyline, it was settled that the game would be loosely based on Twinsen’s ancestor Hégésippe, who is mentioned in the first LBA game. We did this for two reasons: 1.) There have already been a number of LBA fan projects that have taken Twinsen on side-quests and adventures, so we wanted to do something no one else had ever done before and 2.) We wanted to create a story that would not clash with any potential storyline of LBA 3: Genesis of the Stellar Entity should it ever be released. While our story may not necessarily be the exact ideas of Frédérick Raynal (the creator of the LBA games), Hégésippe’s adventures are open-ended enough to allow us some creative freedoms that will flesh out a really nice story, which may even become canonical. By basing our game around Hégésippe, we were able to write a plot that adds to, rather than contradicts, what has already been established in the official LBA games

On Hégésippe:

“This room contains information and weapons that were amassed for generations to help the Heir who will, one day, be chosen from our descendants. The key to the room was passed down from generation to generation, but our ancestor Hégésippe was the last family member to retain the key. He was attacked and killed by the ruthless pirate LeBorgne during a sea voyage. Nobody knows where Leborgne’s treasure, which undoubtedly contains the golden key to the room, is today.”

Characters
Gallery
Developer’s Blog
Tools
Story

Twinsen

This is one is amazing. A 2D side-scroller set in the L.B.A. universe. It has it’s own look and feel, and unlike many of the fan games out there, for any game, this one actually has a demo you can play.

Twinsen is a platforming game that focuses on the main character Twinsen in his world after it is greatly altered by evil alien TV network executives, he sets off to find out what is going on, how to return his planet to its normal state and to be reunited with his family.

Developer’s homepage
Download

L.B.A. Remake

Originally planned as an expanded remake of the original Relentless, the story of L.B.A. Remake has since evolved into something bigger, with new artwork and forum discussions indicating a more modern/apocalyptic feel.

Homepage
Gellery
Downloads (Including Demo)
Discussion Thread

Little Big Racing Adventure

A racing game based on L.B.A. What more do I need to say? You can find a demo through their site.

Homepage

Little Big Wars

A Little Big Adventure strategy game.

Homepage
UnitPedia

Around Twinsun in 10 Minutes

Around Twinsun in 10 Minutes is a cool little shooter, simple but fun. You play an airborne Twinsen, riding around on hid Dino-Fly as it shoots it’s fireballs at UFO’s.

After 10 minutes nothing happens. . .

Download

L.B.A. Ultra Game

L.B.A. Ultra Game is a playable demo by Henry Hoffman for a fan game that is now, unfortunately, officially dead. The graphics on this were excellent though, and for true Relentless fans it is still worth playing, even if all you can do is walk around a little.

Download

L.B.A. Lupin Island Destiny

L.B.A. Lupin Destiny is another big project from the makers of The Big Rebellion, a Relentless mod that is still very much a work in progress. It was just announced, but it is definitely one of the L.B.A. games I’m most looking forward too. Something about it is just grabbing me.

This project has as main protagonist our hero of all times: Twinsen!

Fergus asks Twinsen for some gas so he can use his hidroglider, an this is how the story begins!

Twinsen takes some gas from his house at Tiliar Island, but, will he succeed?
What will happen to our hero during his adventure to Lupin Island?
What obstacles will he find?

All these questions will be answered when LBA:LID Project is released.

Lupin Island Destiny Forum
Gallery

Little Big Adventure: The Stellar Entity

The first, and to my knowledge, only text adventure game set in the Relentless universe. Excellent.

Download
Discussion Thread

The Quest of Sendell

The Quest of Sendell is a fan game done in RPG Maker. I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, but it definitely looks interesting.

Discussion Thread
Download

Little Big Adventure Online

Few games lend themselves so perfectly to the idea of going online as Little Big Adventure. The expansive and immersive world, the unique and tranced out feel. Relentless was one of the first games I ever played that allowed you to wander anywhere you wanted throughout the world, and to interact with almost every person you could find. Combined with the soundtrack, this makes Relentless the perfect game to have multiple people connecting to at once.

The ideas for an online L.B.A. have gone through a lot of different projects, a lot of different iterations, but recent activity has been showing a lot of progress, and it looks like we could be seeing an actual online 3D chat client set on Planet Twinsun very soon.

Discussion Thread

The Relentless Movie Project

This is the big one. This is the one I’m most excited about. An L.B.A. fan film that will be more than 45 minutes long. It absolutely thrilled me when I heard about it.

There’s no word yet on when the film will be released, but they’ve got a lot of work done on it so far and I’m very interested in seeing it completed.

For years Hollywood has been picking the worst possible
games to make into films.

eg.
Mario – (Great game, stupid plot)
Street Fighter – (BLUE Camo’s?What is the point?)
Mortal Kobat – (Arghh…)
Pokemon – (Arghh!!!!!!)
Tomb Raider (no comment)

Final Fantasy (that one is OK)

What Next?
Tetris: The Movie

This is terrible. Not only to we get plotless rubbish made
into films we also miss out on games that would make good films:

Zelda (Links Awakening or the Original NES)
Monkey Island (Lucas Films should take note of Lucas Arts is doing)
Dark Earth (Is being made into a CGI cartoon )
Day of the Tentacle (Lucas Film take note again!)
and many others…

But the one game the would make a great film is Relentless (LBA1).

. . .

It will of course tell the original story (nothing will be added that couldn’t have happened in the game) but it wont always be from Twinsen’s point of view, some scenes will happen far of him, and we will more show other characters’ personnalities and actions (we’ll show Zoe who tries to escape from Funfrock’s cells…).

Some scenes we hadn’t seen in the game will be present, in particular in introduction, the Sendells and the Stellar entity will be shown…

To make the movie not too long, some scenes will be not shown, but they could have happened in the film, even if the watcher doesn’t see them.

Homepage
Gallery
Videos
Models
Downloads

Most of the fan games have corresponding message boards at the Magic Ball Network, which is an excellent place to go if you want more info on these and other projects. The list above is not a complete one. There are a lot of L.B.A. games coming together out there. LBA X, Young Sendel, Frozen Star; the list goes on.

Magic Ball Network covers a lot of information on the series and it’s fan sequels, but it is not the only source.

These are a few more:

Encyclopedia Twinsunica
L.B.A. Projects
Planeta Twinsun

There are also a wide variety of tools available to download for any fans out there with the uncontrollable urge to get their own game going.

You can download them here:

The Sacred Carrot
L.B.A. Prequel
Little Bit Adventure

jBot from The Alliance composed a song recently as tribute to Relentless and it’s soundtrack. It’s what got me scanning the internet for traces of the game. jBot and I used to play Relentless obsessively together when it first came out, so I thought now would be the perfect time for the song to premiere. It’s called The Friends of Equality are Friends of Twinsen. Right-click the walking Twinsen below to hear it.

The original soundtracks can be found at the Magic Ball Network. I’ve got them riding in my iPod.

Soundtrack to Relentless: Twinsen’s Adventure
Soundtrack to Twinsen’s Odyssey

There is one quote that I found especially interesting that I discovered while doing this research. I found it on Wikipedia. It’s about the third game. . .

Raynal and other former Adeline members have repeatedly told fans that creating the third installment is made difficult by having to license or reacquire the rights to the franchise, which currently belong to Delphine Software International. However, Raynal has hinted that his current company, Ludoïd, which Raynal owns jointly with his wife, is attempting to negotiate the rights for a game to be called Little Big Adventure 3: Genesis of the Stellar Entity, and at least one sketch, by Didier Chanfray, related to development of the title has been leaked to the public, later to be confirmed as appurtenant by Raynal.

Bonus Links:

Relentless Intro
Twinsen – A History
Relentless Ending
Twinsen’s Odyssey Into
Twinsen’s Odyssey – All Scenes plus Ending
Twinsen’s Odyssey Ending
L.B.A. 3 Fan Trailer
The Fan Fiction Forum
Honey Bee – Little Big Movie 2
Little Big Adventure 2 Music Video

Twinsen Forever
(more…)

Video Games | 2 Comments »