Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:50 pm Post subject: The Brokeback Mountain Chat Room Game
Here are the questions I have collected so far for the chat room
"game".
Since they may spoil your enjoyment of the movie, I will post them as
spoiler code. So read at your own risk.
Spoiler:
Topic 1 - Significance of the phrase "Stem the Rose"
Topic 2 - How did Jack die?
Topic 3 - Did Jack really give up on Ennis?
Topic 4 - How did Jack know that Ennis was in Riverton?
Topic 5 - What might the lasso scene symbolize?
Topic 6 - Why is Ennis is reluctant to go to the 'Church Social' ?
Topic 7 - Is Ennis straight or gay?
Topic 8 - Did anyone other than Jack love Ennis?
Topic 9 - Did Alma really ever love Ennis?
Topic 10 - Is Ennis ever attracted to any other man?
Topic 11 - Why did it take Ennis and Jack 4 years to meet again?
Topic 12 - Was Ennis ever happy, and if so, when?
Topic 13 - Was Jack ever happy, and if so, when?
Topic 14 - Discuss Ennis' poverty.
Topic 15 - Discuss Jack's prosperity.
Topic 16 - Discuss "I wish I knew how to quit you."
Topic 17 - Discuss the significance of castrating sheep.
Topic 18 - Discuss "one shot deal"
Topic 19 - Discuss "If ya cant fix it ya gotta stand it"
Topic 20 - Did Lureen know?
Topic 21 - Why does Ennis leave open the window in Jack's room?
Topic 22 - Did daughter Alma Jr. always know Ennis' secret.
Topic 23 - Did you cry during the film. If so, why? If not, why?
Topic 24 - What was Jack's mother's inner thoughts and feelings.
Topic 25 - Did Ennis and Jack have friends?
The above link takes you to the chat room (channel) #brokeback
You will see me in there, if I am on line as @Sitaram , which is a
session running in the mIRC client on my computer. Often I leave it
running all night. It also serves as a BOT, which can give simple
responses to commands. If you type the word HELP, then you will see
a menu of help commands. If you type the word TOPIC, then the BOT
will give you a random topic from the above file. If I add lines to the
topic.txt file with notepad, then they immediatly become available to
the BOT's event script. If you type ALLTOPICS then the BOT will list
the entire file for you.
If you type ALERTADMIN then the BOT will pop up a large alert window
on my computer, and also play an audible alert, which will catch my
attention if I am home, with the speakers turned on, but away from
keyboard.
These functions are simply event scripts which I wrote during my first
hours of learning and experimenting with the mIRC scripting language.
mIRC client is shareware, which, I am told, continues to run, with a
nag screen, even after the 30 day trial.
There is also a totally free chat client (not even a nag screen) called
XirCON, which works fine, but is no longer in development, and its
scripting language is different from mIRC, which seems to be a
standard in the IRC world.
This Java/IRC free chat room feature would allow a message board
such as TBF to create a separate chat room for each monthly reading
in a book club, create a random topic file to suggest topics for
discussion to chatters, and, if you use the mIRC client rather than the
Java client, you may log the chats and edit them into a published
seminar for posting to the message board. Of course, it would take
some work on the part of volunteers, to create the topic.txt file, and
moderate the chat room.
One possible scheme, with regard to spammers, trolls, flamers, is to
automatically de-voice all who enter the chat, and have an event
script which recognizes TBF members, and gives them a voice. Visitors
with no voice may read what is posted in chat, but may not post. I
have not actually implimented such a scheme, but I know it is
possible and not extremely difficult.
Such an IRC chat room for TBF might attract more members to TBF
from the IRC community.
Or, if you just want an easy free place to chat real time, without all the
bells and whistles, then someone on TBF could promote each member
to OP(mod) status in the forum, and they would have the power to
boot or ban pesky interlopers.
Since I have gone this far in explanations, I might as well post for
those of you who are curious the actual scripts that perform all these
wondrous feats, so you may see that it is not that complicated,
especially once you have a model of a working script, to modify to
your needs.
mIRC scripts wrote:
on 1:join:#brokeback:{
/msg $chan The IP address for $nick $ip has been recorded
/msg $nick You are $fullname
/msg $nick You are on $network
/msg $nick Welcome! I am your BOT host
/msg TYPE THE WORD HELP at any time to see help menu of
keywords
/msg $nick This is chat room, which has no connection with
http://www.ennisjack.com message board,
/msg $nick is devoted to the discussion and enjoyment of
/msg $nick the movie Brokeback Mountain. Both gay and straight
people
/msg $nick love this movie and join the message board. So please,
/msg $nick do not come here to express your prejudice with unkind
remarks.
}
on 1:text:*hello*:#:/msg $chan $rand(1,10)Hi there!
on 1:text:*anyone here*:#:/msg $chan We may be away from our
keyboards.
on 1:text:*anybody here*:#:/msg $chan We may be away from our
keyboards.
on 1:text:*sitaram*:#:/msg $nick The real Sitaram is asleep. I am the
on 1:text:*where is everyone*:#:/msg $chan We may be away from
our keyboards.
on 1:text:*where is everybody*:#:/msg $chan We may be away from
our keyboards.
on 1:text:*help*:#:{
/msg $nick !topic - Random topic suggestion
/msg $nick !alltopics - Display all topics
/msg $nick alertadmin - Pop up an alert on Sitaram's screen
}
on 1:text:*alltopics*:#:{
/count {
var %i = 1
while (%i <= 24) {
/msg $nick $read(topic.txt, %i)
inc %i
}
}
}
on 1:text:*topic*:#:{
/msg $chan $read(topic.txt)
}
on 1:text:*alertadmin*:#:{
/msg $chan alert request issued to Sitaram
/splay c:\testofmike.wav
/window -d @alertadmin
/aline @alertadmin $nick requests your attention
/aline @alertadmin $1-
}
Having said all this, I must confess that very few people visit the
#brokeback chat channel, although I only created it a week ago.
I should mention that the most successful chat channel I have seen is
#philosophy at net.undernet.org, which is run by a retired teacher with
the nick of Skept. That channel has serious philosophy debate by 20
or 30 members at any given hour of the day or night. I left my mIRC
client running for 24 hours and captured a log of #philosophy to a disk
file for later study.
Though it is true that much of IRC is a wasteland, yet there is an
occasional meaningful oasis to be found.
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