rants & ramblings

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Confessions of a Recovered MOOer

Jesus, this whole article about the LambdaMOO virtual rape by Julian Dibbell is SO my psychological life in the wasteland of the mid-90s, I can't even handle it. Just revisiting this tale of LambdaMOO (I was not a direct part of Lambda but heavily involved in a neighboring MOO called DU) makes my lip curl. The article is written in the sort of flowery, indulgent style that makes for a perfect VR player (I am no stranger to this literary clumsiness, as will be demonstrated by the end of this post) and is hard to read... in fact, I doubt that anyone who isn't acquainted with the world he's describing will get very far. But it has taken me back to a different time in my head, when my virtual life was rich and self-created out of pure imagination and dreamy immaturity... and honestly, I'm half tempted to see if I can find my way back to the virtual landscape I so carefully built... I don't even know if it's still there. I deserted it long ago.

And I'm not sure why, or what flipped the switch. I had a whole world created. You entered it via a door in the English building, where gradually the floor beneath your feet turned into grass and sand. Head down a lane and you passed a Maritime farmhouse, complete with talking robot (programmed by yours truly) who, for all intents and purposes, looked and talked like Anne of Green Gables and who could make conversation with you about prim bullshit like roses and stars. You could explore the farmhouse—other characters from the Anne books were in the kitchen having traditional turn-of-the-century tea, and you could read an old fashioned cookbook with actual recipes that I'd researched and plugged in. (Sounds crazy, right? Oh, this is the tip of the iceberg). Exiting the farmhouse, you entered the garden, where poetic quotations were carved into themed stone benches and information about different types of flowers abounded—you could swing on the garden gate.

From the garden, you headed towards the shore cliffs, a crossroads of sorts that I created but where friends had joined in the insanity. Through some pine trees was the cottage of L.F. (a friend from an online reading group)—she build her own mini-environment within my larger world. Further through the woods was the gateway to a little house shared by A. and A., who went to the same college in RL and were also in our reading group. I forget what you could do in A. and A.'s house—they were heavily into Little House on the Prairie, so the Anne of Green Gables theme became less relevant if you went too far into the woods (I didn't do that very often). Back on the cliffs, for the secretly cynical, I'd programmed in a suicide verb... in case you wanted to throw yourself off, which people occasionally did (their death was described, then they miraculously came back to life, etc.). This was not an advertised feature of the shore cliffs, yet people discovered it all the time... says something about who was roaming (and building) these virtual landscapes.

From the shore cliffs, you could head down to the shore itself, which was my official stomping ground. On the virtual beach, I'd built myself a three-story lighthouse. The first floor was full of various sailing accoutrements and vaguely personal items—I had a (robot) dog called Chowder and several (robot) cats. Head up some stairs and you hit the lighthouse watchroom, where you could pull levers and turn cranks and learn all about how lighthouses work (seriously). Head to the top of the lighthouse and you reached the lookout, dedicated to weather lore education and the intricacies of the Fresnel lens.

Oh and that's not even the worst of it. I'd programmed all sort of atmosphere into these environments—you could sit on the shore and watch the fishing fleet come in, get soaked by a sudden squall, watch clouds shift and change... Chowder the dog had a whole script he'd act out if someone entered the main room of the lighthouse, whoring for attention just like a real dog would do... This was a complete, almost masturbatorily imaginative environment, charted to the last detail and researched more thoroughly than any paper I've ever written for school.

And I must reiterate that I was not alone in this insanity. Another friend from the reading group lived down the shore on a stretch of my beach (which means I owned that virtual real estate but had given her permission to build and program within it). In her beach shanty there was a "magic spyglass" that allowed us to spy on each other and teleport between locations (all programmed by one of the wizards). In addition to my personal world, I created other environments. I built a pirate ship in the Music building that taught the complete history of Gilbert & Sullivan's operettas. I constructed a multi-roomed House of Origins where you could touch things like forks and toilets and learn how, when and why they'd been invented (the histories of each are actually quite interesting)—one room was the lair of two robots, one an Egyptian princess, the other a Victorian lady, who could recite between them the entire history of cosmetics. And I had a small office of my own in another part of the English building, where I went to "work" when I wasn't in the lighthouse...

I was a fully functioning part of this world for at least two years (it's a little hazy now, actually). I was good at it—no, I'll be honest, I was great at it. I thrived in text-based virtual reality. I know, bizarre. And looking back at it all now (the Dibbell article was featured by Kottke today), I realize how absolutely miserable I must have been to retreat so thoroughly into a escapist universe of my own creation.

WHAT THE FUCK??

Ten years later, it is hard to really connect with that previous me. I don't have the same relationship with the internet, and my real life is much healthier. But reading the Dibbell article brought back some of the old feelings, and he makes some very true points about that legendary Lambda virtual rape—anyone who doubts that virtual reality can't be as impacting as RL has clearly never experienced that type of culture (Dibbell calls it "magic", and though I'm sneering at the whole thing now, my feelings of connection to the virtual world were sincere and emotional enough that I know exactly what he means)...

My questions now involve the changing times—I can't help but wonder if the whole phenomenon of MUDS and MOOS is something that is specifically a byproduct of the new relationship society was developing with the internet during the early and mid-90s. When I was a MOOer, I was one of the only people I knew online—Al Gore maintains that 1994 was the "year of the internet" but I started as a freshman in college in 1993, when an email address was a strange new novelty. There was no sense of "netiquette" or proper appreciation for risk—people naively gave out personal info all over the place. The internet was a young world, and I was a young person swimming through it. I'd be interested in studies about how our relationship with technology has changed, does change, is changing as we the culture become more tech... whether responses to virtual environments (ex. modern IM is a virtual environment) are uniform at certain ages, regardless of the fact that general cultural tech-savvy increases every year.

Perhaps I'm not as far removed from my old self as I'd like to think—even now, I'm looking into getting an MFA in Creative Environments (arguably connected). It's actually kind of a wake up call to be jolted back to my MOOing days and realize that what appealed to me about that then is possibly still relevant in my creative professional life... wow. Fighting through the Dibbell article doesn't make me wish for those years back, however. I'm glad to be a recovered MOOholic, and I think I'll let the ruins of my virtual world decay unvisited. On to the next technological addiction (er... blogging, anyone??).

Friday, July 21, 2006

Daily View, 7/21

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Camp

Slate has a whole mess of articles devoted to that great crazy (apparently American) phenomenon that is summer camp. I'm not talking cheesy little one week sports camps or—shudder—Vacation Bible School. I'm talking full-on-weeks-at-a-time-sleeping-in-damp-cabins-with-other-campers-and-pinecones-and-sand-everywhere-and-loving-every-minute-of-it sleepaway camp. Now, granted, I admit that the camp I went to is a bit cultish. But I loved it. LOVED IT. I stayed as long as I could every summer—one year I made it eight weeks. That's a lot of oatmeal and crafts. But my closest friends came out of my summers at camp, and I was a rock star there, which is more than can be said for my everyday adolescent existence back in the real world. So yeah, I loved it.

I guess that makes me a camp cultist like Michael Eisner (see Slate camp article 1). Scary, but I deserve it... though, to my credit, my eyes don't go faraway glazey when Miniwanca is mentioned and I did not meet and marry a camp boy, which cements you as someone destined to ruin your children (ah, so I should amend the earlier claim—I was a rock star in Girl's Camp. Once the boys came around I was reduced to grouchy Gidget status while they drooled over friends who were either blond or able to wield bikinis. Actually, that's the story of my damn life. But anyway...).

Two films capture the atmosphere of my camp: The Parent Trap (the 1961 classic with Hayley Mills—eleven year old Lindsay Lohan was breakout childstar great in the remake but it is its own weird universe and nothing like my camp) and Indian Summer (an admittedly schmaltzy yet endearing parade of b-listers that came out in 1993). We had all that faux-Native-American-wonka-how-how stuff—Navajo blankets, tribal customs, council circles, moccasins... they'd been peddling that imitation culture to privileged white kids since the 20s. Changing times had seen a few darker faces (though they were pretty damn sparse. All the African-American kids who attended during my seven year stint can be counted on one hand), and kids like me were there on *shhhh*... scholarship, but basically it was the same gang of pale troopers year after year (considering that the two movies I just mentioned were made 30 years apart but still reflect the same demographic tells you something). To be honest, this strange vanilla world was part of the reason I loved the place. My other reality was about 90% African-American and often tense. Racial differences were a constant presence. When I went to camp for the first time at 14, I'd never seen so many white people in my life, and for the first time I was able to disappear into the crowd, which was an odd relief, especially to an awkward teenager. I know that's flawed, but that was my warped little adolescent reality, for better or worse.

Take away the uniforms, and the Slate slideshow could have been shot at my camp. Just imagine all the wholesome looking youth with early 90s hair, wearing rugbies and boxer shorts (even the girls, baby—fellow campers used to pay me in candy and quarters for the chance to borrow my much-coveted orange daisy-print J. Crew boxers) and Teva sandals. As younger campers, we reveled in the novelty of being filthy, competing to see who could go the longest without hitting the showerhouse (pretty gross when you swim in a lake everyday, let me tell you) or brushing their teeth (mmmm). As older campers, we developed our own little camp fashion culture—"Evie locks" (basically a friendship bracelet in your hair) were all the rage one year, and of course the more stickers on your trunk the better. As counselors, it was about being tan and hooking up with the guy counselors—hopelessly fair-skinned and just as socially awkward, I failed on both counts year after year, but had fun trying and racked up adventures along the way (the Slate article about counselors pretty much sums it up).

The Slate articles, in general, are all right on (though Timothy Noah, probably better off for not being a camp cultist, clearly doesn't get that we aren't all insane). I fucking hate s'mores too. The only article that doesn't hit home for me is the one about the camp movie genre, but that's probably because I was only allowed to watch PBS at home, and we certainly didn't watch movies about camp (much less horror movies or sex comedies about camp) at camp (though I do dimly recall seeing Sleepaway Camp at a friend's sleepover birthday in third grade and being totally traumatized by the "murderous trannie" and gore. Eek).

I'm also a big fan of Space Camp, but that's because it rocks, has nerd romance, and they all get to go to space... I admit, went to a couple nerd camps before I ended up at Miniwanca. The Slate nerd camp article paints a decent picture of what that was like, and I definitely relate to this: "I attended an artsy 'school for the gifted' in Brooklyn, New York. My family didn't have a television, and I had pretty much listened only to classical music until the third grade. When I was 7, my dad had taught me some Latin, and I thought it was fun. My idea of summer entertainment usually involved trying to read 100 books by Labor Day." Um, put that girl in St. Louis and switch on the scheduled 7 hours a week of PBS, and that's me (why don't adults do those reading programs, eh? Hell, maybe I'll do my own 100 book challenge). I went to gifted kid camp—we did stuff like climb into barrels of water to displace our body weight, perform Shakespearian monologues, go spelunking, learn Italian, etc. Actually, it's probably good that I got out of those types of camp when I did and went to the outdoorsy camp, otherwise I might have been lost forever to the photography darkroom, the chem lab, the thea-tah, or the strange and clearly socially-stagnant world of hand drawn calligraphy. Well, I take that back. I'd have been alright, and likely a bit cleaner in those early teen years. But still...

Camp rocks, and three cheers to Slate for the camp showcase. How how!!

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Daily View, 7/18

Slow internet day...

Monday, July 17, 2006

Daily View, 7/17

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Daily View, 7/15

Sigh. Blog addiction + insomnia=Zombie consumerism. Grr.
  • As a GD, kinda generic mass production of stuff that people like me are supposed to be asked to create for unique individuals appalls me. Though at least people are embracing the pretty. Sigh. Fuck it.

  • Star Wars meets Architecture

  • Poor teenage T-rex...

  • I've joined the International Mix Tape Project. Here's some flashy press if you're not already sold. I'm told that the vast majority of members send CDs (good thing, because if I get an actual cassette I'm not sure I'll know what to do with it).

  • I drool for this stupid pretty blue umbrella. Being raised in that anti-umbrella hippie household has made me covet the enemy (while at the same time firmly entrenching within me the incapability to shell out a huge wad of cash for something so frivolous and unnatural). Sigh.

  • I always love things like this... and then immediately draw a blank when trying to come up with a phrase to put on my personalized scarf.

  • Man, the cool stuff is always sold out (though sure, I didn't need a unicorn and dinosaur bag anyway... especially one with crappy short handles).

  • While reading the Onion's movie reviews this morning, I stumbled upon the AV Club's The Hater column (meh). However, it led me to this article about Stone Phillips, which features the following quote: "The move to St. Louis led to one of the great blessings of my life: Parkway schools. I have often described Parkway West High School as Camelot in St. Louis County." Jaysus haitch. Only those of us who grew up in St. Louis (where it's true, your high school defines you) and went to non-Parkway schools will feel the same slow-spreading horror after reading that statement.

  • If ever I was to have an oriental rug (not likely), it would look like this. Oh, too bad it's just a concept. But what a great idea.

  • The town troubadour is (to my surprise) growing on me—I've had Grant Lee Phillips singing Mona Lisa on repeat for like, three days. His recent release nineteeneighties is solid too (I love the strummy cover of New Order's Age of Consent).

  • The TBS Humor Study (the ad campaign of which is currently plastered all over the NY subway) is worth wasting time with, if only for the periodic table of laughter and the fruit n' veg man thong. Cleese? Eh, he's old and established, he can do what he likes.

  • Man, I'm going to stop commenting anywhere: scroll down to comment 16. Note that the antagonizer named simply "e" made the special effort to hunt me down personally through GDBar (which was the link I provided and which uses a standards-compliant Blogger template with beautiful code). Asshole.

Friday, July 14, 2006

Daily View, 7/14

What is that, every day this week? Damn, I'm getting good at this (or better at procrastinating).
  • Love this shirt: Karma

  • Oh, of all the... Having grown up without umbrellas (hippie religious parents: "If it's raining, God wants you to get wet!"), this freaks me out (double the potential for eye injury!). Having been socially ingrained with a hearty disgust for PDA, this makes me roll my eyes. Having no one to share such a device with, this causes me to turn slightly green and taste a little of my own bile: Cupid's Double Umbrella

  • Um, what?? Atlas Shrugged, the movie, starring Angelina Jolie (!!)

  • One of the things I dealt with in a professional capacity today was this "fur-free" tweezer set, pushed by a non-profit client of ours as a fundraising item for those poor Canadian seals who keep getting bludgeoned to death by assholes. Now, how exactly a set of tweezers really helps our small furry friends is a mystery to me, though points for the (very likely unintended) irony. Meanwhile, if you want to know more about the seal protest, visit www.protectseals.org. And if you'd also care to explain to me why anyone would name a website eyeslipsface.com (the above tweezer site), I'd love to hear it.

  • Woah. Two-faced kitten meows in unison.

  • You know, at first I thought the whole idea of a home urinal was gross (what's next, Martha Stewart urinal cakes?), but really, why not. Settles the whole seat argument and provides a nice novelty item for dinner-party conversation.

  • Awesome iron-ons. I dig. Granted, I bought that stupid Parcel iron-on bag when it came out two years ago and had to take it home to my mother over the holidays and get her to iron the stupid unicorns and lightening bolts onto the bag for me. Why? Because my grup ass doesn't own an iron.

  • Free burritos!

  • Ok, I am not a porn girl. Sure, I respect the fact that men are visual and like to look at fake breasts, and sure, you can't swing a dead cat around the internet without running into nekkid pixxx, but I'm talking about actual filmed porn. I have almost zero experience with it—it just hasn't crossed my path very much. In fact, I've only ever watched about ten minutes of a real honest-to-goodness porno, and that was over a decade ago in mixed company at a friend's apartment. Thankfully, the other girl there gave me an easy out by declaring that she was about to vomit and proceeding to flee the scene. The only thing I took away from that experience was a forced acceptance of Traci Lords' bonafide superstardom (that's the whole reason we were watching in the first place—Jerry wanted to prove something) and a dim impression that watching other people fuck is kinda violent and gross. My point? Apparently there is a a whole world of porn out there—even pirate-themed porn—and I am missing out. Fascinating. Maybe I'll become a porn connoisseur. Ok, probably not, but I'll read anything online and therefore enjoyed the article (hey, I get the Wired feed—it came to me).

  • I'm sorry, but the Brits are right: non-traditional Kit-Kats are freaky and not worth bothering with.

  • I love that Ted McGinley and That 70s Show are so tied to the whole concept of jumping the shark.

  • Sweet lord, am I glad I stayed away from Little Buddha! Slate has an interesting review of Keanu Reeves. Not his movies... just him. Totally worth reading for the clips and for sentences like "Like the self in Buddhist philosophy, Keanu is less a person than an empty place-holder."

  • 'Bout time, that place was a dump. They're redoing the hotel that inspired Fawlty Towers. Like any properly anglophilic kid, I have been to this hotel in Torbay and to the fake one in actual Torquay that looks like a Taco Bell. Yeah, ok, maybe if I watched more porn I wouldn't be this geeky.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Daily View, 7/13

Nothing but frustration today. Job sucks horribly. Weather humid as hell. Roommate has an OCD houseguest who is getting on my nerves. He refuses to refill the cat's water dish (which sits in the bathtub, long story) after he showers, leaving a small cranky furry creature without water in the middle of July. Asshole. He's here all week. Woo.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Daily View, 7/12

  • Sweet lord. I know the US is getting dumber, but this is awful: many, many girls sign petition to end women's "sufferage" [sic]. "I thought it already ended..." Sigh.

  • I also find it appalling and mystifying that apparently 75% of women don't know how to use gadgets. ???

  • Ok, whatever, it's not just me: the Onion rips on Beowulf & Grendel

  • Smell my website, coming soon from Japan.

  • While I applaud the successful targeting of niche markets, and suspect that my tune may change when I someday birth a bunch o' babies, I still find it freaky that the entire point of these Mom calling cards is to strip away all identity but that related to your child. Sure, in all fairness, you're Little Snotty's Mom to all his teachers and to other parents... but to the point where you'd make up what is essentially a business card promoting that fact?

  • I'm not sure why this especially upsets me, since species are being wiped off the planet at a dizzying daily rate, but I actually cried "Oh no!" at my desk when I read that the African black rhino is extinct...

  • Chavs, however, are alive and thriving, and firmly clad in their Burberry. I kinda love that they've hijacked the snooty brand, though I'm put off by what seems to be the global rise of white trash culture. If you don't bother to read the article, at least watch the animation.

  • I'm becoming slightly (and unintentionally) intrigued by Donald Sutherland. Granted, I've been watching a lot of 70s films lately but damn, he's been popping up all over the place... Klute, The Great Train Robbery, Pride & Prejudice... and, yesterday, the 1978 remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I watched the original 50s version and the remake back to back, and I have to say, they both hold their own. They're very different films—the original is straight up 50s sci-fi, possibly a light commentary on postwar domesticity, possibly just plain popcorn. The remake is a full on 70s paranoia genre film, much more complicated, and actually surprisingly good (there is only one FX shot that rings totally false, otherwise it's held up nicely). The dialogue was particularly interesting—in one scene (emphasis mine), Donald Sutherland is trying to convince Brooke Adams to go see a shrink rather than jump to the crazy conclusion that her boyfriend is no longer really her boyfriend: "[The psychiatrist] would eliminate a lot of things... whether Jeffrey was having an affair, whether he'd become gay, whether he had a social disease, or he'd become a Republican... all the alternatives—all the things that COULD have happened to him to make you feel that he had changed." Meanwhile, young, luscious Jeff Goldblum is in it and Leonard Nimoy manages to be very un-Spock. I liked it. Donald Sutherland (and the paranoia picture genre) is growing on me.

  • I kinda love that you can send your kid to summer camp with a trunk full of clothes labeled in monster movie font (or something equally ridiculous).

  • Very cool: a Flickr set of groovy 1960s and 1970s pharmaceutical ads from Spain.

  • Apparently Slate thinks that none of its readers realized that Bombay became Mumbai in 1995. Um, seriously? I guess there are still people living under rocks, but I feel like this is really general knowledge (lol, meanwhile the Blogger spellcheck doesn't know the word!).

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Daily View, 7/11

  • Heyyy, it's restaurant week again. Good motivation to leave the house!

  • I dig eggs and birds, but I just can't find a good reason to buy what would total up to over 100 magnets.

  • Chimp plays Ms. Pac-Man

  • Hey, free Skype calls to the UK, Mexico and Japan during designated July weekends.

  • Yeah, you know, I never understood the cult of Princess Leia's metal bikini. Guess I'll never truly be a member of the Star Wars nerd club (just a fringe lurker, and not ashamed to admit it).

  • Nice. Witch pardoned 300 years too late.

  • Got 15 minutes to get creeped out by this old movie about bicycle safety featuring children in ape masks? Oh come on, you know you do.

  • I agree with Charlie. Blockbuster sanitizes videos as well and it's nothing but annoying. It's worse, actually, because it's Blockbuster, not some overtly conservative outfit, and they don't tell you when things have been edited. Bastards.

  • Haha, I was given one of these cell phone phones (in black, though, not emergency red) and it's true... only really funny the first time.

  • In twenty years, this sort of cracked out illustrative stuff will be retro and old hat. Threadless will get some credit, and grumpy aging hipsters everywhere will feel usurped as the teens of tomorrow borrow heavily from the trends of their lost youth (which, of course, are borrowed heavily from all the cracked out illustrative crap from the 70s). Sigh. I'm tired of this shit. Bring on something new already, eh?

  • Lantern water bottles rock my world.

  • I defend the Midwest, Josh Spear tells me to "chill". What an ass.

  • Gothamist was hawking Metafilter yesterday, and this was the post they linked to (probably somebody's friend). Honestly, this scares me.

  • Poor Hugh Jackman. I know, I know, I'm the only one who truly believes he is heterosexual but I just wished we lived in a world where a real old-school style star isn't mocked for doing something that breaks the mold of his initial Hollwyood breakthrough. Sigh. Points for using the King Arthur soundtrack, though: Last Standing Ovation

Monday, July 10, 2006

Daily View, 7/10

Happy birthday to my lame brother, who didn't bother to call me on my birthday. Ahem. Once again, I'm the cooler/better of us both. :P

  • Pirates 2 rakes in box office booty, and people seem to be mystified. Why, because there's a healthy consumer appetite for cheesy fun that isn't about fart jokes? C'mon, people.

  • Tell Coolhunting WHY you need this and they just might give you one of the new Le Cool Barcelona City Guides. They do indeed look (le) cool, but all my Barcelona stories/reasons to return involve cartoons, ham, and getting drunk for the first time (not in that order). Not particularly interesting or coherent, alas.

  • The Blue People of Troublesome Creek (no, not the latest Brooklyn band)

  • They found a photo of Stanzie Mozart. Er, so?

  • This is bullshit: unjust Wiccan grave issue

  • This is also bullshit: lame Mac ad parodies

  • Dude, I understood the beauty of the weird green shell thing right away. It's FUN. Apparently that makes me hopelessly juvenile.

  • I'm sure the Blackheart Gang thing is amazing... too bad it won't load. GRRRRR...

  • Inky Circus top tens their fave geek tees, and I discover more at One Horse Shy (love it).

  • Experience design. Maybe that's what I should do. ?

  • Always nice to read that no one reads news articles online right after I bust my ass to set up a news section for one of our major clients. Sigh.

  • What appeals to me here is not Seurat (ruined by Sondheim and pointilism), but the bunch of nerds in this town who got together and reenacted Sunday in the Park (on a Saturday). Trés Stars Hollow, kinda.

  • These design rules could surely be applied to anyone working with developing countries, yeah? Am thinking specifically of my buddies with dreams of a sustainable tourism outfit...

  • Must... see... Night Watch!! They've done subtitle FX!!! My little geeky heart is going pitty-pat.

  • Beer bottles that double as bricks seems like a great idea to me. Why didn't it take off? People suck.

  • She-Ra!!

  • Josh Spear thinks it would be cool to hang an art version of your fingerprint up chez vous: "something you get for yourself to show your individuality in your own home"... I think he it is dumb and narcissistic. Nyah nyah.

  • Apparently all designers should read something called Chasing the Perfect...

  • Today I discovered Pajiba. Now, what the hell that means, I know not, and I'm hoping like hell it's not some sort of vaginal euphemism, but meanwhile, they have some great movie reviews. Nacho Libre: words outta my mouth. Never has there been such an apt sumuppance of Vince Vaughn's odd charms (so true about the "money") as in this rant about The Break Up. Everything he says about The Lake House is exactly right, down to the 10th grade pleasantries and the plot holes (yeah, why DIDN'T she just Google him???). Yet I enjoyed the film, which is why I doubt I could ever possibly rule the world as a filmmaker—bottom line, people like movies for their own illusive reasons. Meanwhile, what a wonderful treatment of Winona & Co. in this article, which hits on everything from "if only someone could find a decent script for Christian Slater" to the disaster that was Bloodrayne, which "only bowed on 950 screens, but in Romar's defense, Boll's tally doesn't include the 7,000 screens in Hell that have been airing the film nonstop since its release." Rock on, Pajiba. Nice and bitchy.

  • And finally, a blast from the 80s past, via an obnoxious yet somehow funny Pole Position commercial. I remember the PP theme song being different, though...

Bit of a Makeover

I am in crisis. I am tired of my frat-boy style existence in a 10x10 room. I am tired of sleeping on a twin-sized piece of foam and living with the detritis that has collected over the last several years. I want clean new space and new furniture (and a paycheck with with to purchase these things). I want a window for my cat. I want things to be prettier. So I started here. Rants and ramblings... now in hazy, dotty blues. Sigh. I know, I know, it's really a cry for help, but at least I had some fun tweaking the design from the original template. Who knows, maybe I'll OD on dots in a day or so and go back to the old bare bones version, but for now... dots for everyone!!

Sigh.

7/27: UPDATE: too... many.... dots.... now cleaner. :)

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Daily View, 7/9

This is a Boing Boing heavy issue. Sometimes they bore the hell outta me, other times they interest and intrique me, post after post. Lately we have been getting along:
  • I'm a big fan of Tetris. And so I'm surprised I never bothered to download a free Mac-style version before I heard this woeful tale.

  • Frightening publishing stats (which may or may not be quite spot-on, after reading the comments).

  • And why not. If you're gonna have a fireplace... pirate hearth accessories.

  • Props to these crazy people who have turned the internet into their personal money making machine. Guy trades red paperclip for...

  • Not sure how I feel about the "Kill Whitey" parties. Have I lamented my whiteness? Of course. But have I attempted to do it with a hipster display of poseur "irony"? Um, no. Shit like this is funny until a person of color walks in... then you're just a bunch of stupid crackers who left your asses at home. Sigh. This sentence is interesting, though: "He came to see himself as part of post-racial Generation Y, for whom whiteness was an outmoded, oppressive idea." Since when are we living in a "post-racial" society??

Friday, July 07, 2006

Caffeinated version, 7/7

  • The new Science of Sleep trailer is out—looks good, looks good. I hated Eternal Sunshine, but I'm a fan of Michel Gondry's videos, so at this point I have mixed feelings. I'm glad Gael Garcia Bernal is finally having some fun, and I adore Charlotte Gainsbourg (this is sure to make her a mainstream indie darling... which will no doubt piss off the ones who considered her an indie darling already. I'm glad for her but also dreading it a little bit. Whatever, Yvan keeps her grounded). Plus, throw some Death Cab in the trailer and I'm pretty much sucked in (don't get me started on that phenomenon).

  • I love the look of India Amos's blog... so soothing yet smart. Like a cool drink of nerd. I dig it.

  • I'm both repelled and attracted by these Adidas London Gazelles, which manage to be kinda fun and sexy while straying way too close to clown shoe and wet leather perv areas. Yikes.

  • Wow, I haven't even seen the Godfather (I know, I know) yet this horsehead pillow is pretty amazing (and disturbing, but in an exhilarating film geek kinda way).

  • Ghostbusters... done entirely with animated gifs. And people say I waste my time! Still, it is kinda cool... heh.

  • Science resources... potential outlets to promote the mighty IBIS... must get on that...

  • These one-a-day artists have it figured out, man... an hour a day, maybe less, then a cheap whoring out for cash online. I'm telling you, if I had an extra hour a day, I somehow be the next Collage-A-Day (I've been keeping an eye on him for weeks, and I'm saying, it's not rocket science). It's catching on, too—I just read an article about it in the inflight magazine on my boring Monday domestic flight, for chrissake.

  • Damn we are a stupid country. But nice idea to make a pattern from high school inept drawings of the US. Make it art, baby.

  • I have finally gotten off my ass and actually put some photos on Flickr. Sure, they're crappy pix I took with my phone (for the most part), but I waste my time with that stuff, so there it is. You=Love.

  • Love Meghan Murphy. Kawaii not, indeed! And yet I can't find anything I'd actually buy... does one really need a pancake orgy mug or blow me dandelion magnet, after all?

  • Today I am proud—I taught my friend Cassie how to blog. I redid her website using a series of stealth blog templates (and one that's visibly a blog for product updates and such), so she can easily update the pages herself (rather than constantly having to ask me to do it). Woo! Spreading the geekiness, one innocent victim at a time! Hurrah!

Uncaffeinated Daily View 7/7

So.... sleeepy...
  • Wanna be an extra in Pirates of the Caribbean III?? Your chances improve if you're an "exotic amputee".

  • These plates from cul de sac are awesome. If you're going to have a platter, why not have a platter with a goose on it, for chrissake? I dig.

  • Fat Wonder Woman has her own blog. ?

  • Ryan at Good Hodgkins laments the Garden State effect (aren't you a bit late with this, brutha? This argument is already a little mainstream...)

  • Marmite & chocolate?? Gross.

  • I've been told that I can talk to anyone about anything—indeed, I'm often utlized strategically at parties and function specifically for this ability (works well with the old ladies). Yet even I have moments where these conversation cards would come in handy. (Actually, a little gadget recommending ways to gracefully remove myself from the conversation would be more helpful... but they haven't invented that yet, alas.)

  • Knitta, please. DIY thug gloves. (If I did this, mine would say HOLD FAST. Naval history nerds, unite! Woo!)

  • Fluxblog lets someone name Emily take over and gush like a maniac about A Hard Day's Night. Even if she is a bit crazy and throws around the term joycore, her enthusiasm is totally contagious (I've just added AHDN to my Netflix queue).

  • The British are surprisingly paranoid.

  • These awesome birdfeeders are cheap and nice to look at. I'm becoming obsessed with birdfeeders, because of my poor cat. When I lived in green, spacious St. Louis, the Fatman had a nice comfy window sill upon which to rest his girth—he'd bask in the sun, either snoring audibly or ready at full attention, intent on the birds in the trees outside my apartment. Now I live in New York City. There are no trees outside my window—my limited, greenless view is of a depressing backalley and the Staples across Broadway. I have two small windows in my room, one which is rendered useless by the AC unit and the other which is rendered partially obscured by my weak ass box fan. The cat has nothing to look at and really no place to look out. The occasional pigeon will fly by and, I swear, you'd think it's kitty Christmas. I feel bad about this, but that's NY real estate. A two dollar bird feeder isn't going to drastically better my cat's daily reality, I know that... and, in fact, would likely make mine worse, bringing pigeons crashing and thumping and cooing into my windows. But the idea is firmly in my head. Bird feeder=improved quality of feline life. Sigh. Really what I need is a tree. A four-story, concrete conquering tree. Or a fabulous new job that allows me to move into a nicer apartment where the creature I'm responsible for (not to mention myself) could enjoy the benefits of a green view. Arg.

  • More on my increasing NYC restlessness: yesterday a crazy person tried to cut through an innocent bystander with a saw, and honestly, that's a bit freaky (especially because it happened on my train line). This only a few days after the grand plot to fatally gas the subway system was discussed. I'm not down with widespread fear of terrorism, nor am I someone who spends time fearing death, but I just woke up from an incredibly violent dream (in which I, from the POV of an unknown middle-aged male killer, brandished a shiny medieval axe and, on the roof of a hospital, sliced off the limbs of "my" former girlfriend and half the brain of her current boyfriend before hacking off my own legs. The girlfriend hopped over on her one remaining arm to assist me). Really, the combined forces of the internet and too many movies are probably to blame, but I'm taking this one out on NYC, because I'm grouchy and woke up tense. Sigh.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Daily View, 7/6


  • The Volkswagen Rabbit is back!! God damn it things like this push me closer to the edge every day (the edge=moving back to the Midwest, where people can actually afford things like cars and nice furniture). Sigh.

  • Two words: Rope Yoga. Three letters: WTF.

  • Not a bad idea: Office In A Bucket

  • The 37signals boys always seem to be having the most fun at work... I'd quite like to be sitting around building sleek web apps, raking in international kudos, occasionally discussing quirky newsbits like balancing rocks and rooms within rooms with attractive geeks. Sigh.

  • Karen Allen, who has never done anything that makes her anyone but Marian from Raiders, will be speaking at a screening!! (scroll to the end) I'm half scared, half intrigued. The rumors of another Indy film have been floating around forever—sure, Indiana Jones rocks, and another movie is awesome in theory, but old Indiana Jones might not be so much (though Jaysus, I'd love to see Harrison Ford recover any semblance of a sense of humor in his work). Sigh, as you can see I'm a little conflicted about this.

  • Well, there it is. The NYTimes has pegged my problem: I need reprogramming. I was quite the Little Miss Athlete—varsity teams, captain of some of them by the time I was a senior... one season I even did double duty on the Cross Country and Field Hockey teams. I went to sports camps during the summers for soccer and tennis, even played soccer in college. And here I am, falling prey to exactly what they describe in the article. The gym bores the shit out of me. Yet the alternative is to join a team, and adult sports teams are nothing but meat markets. Arg.

  • I had the misfortune of renting Ultraviolet. I am not ashamed to admit that I love Milla Jovovich. Hell, I want to BE Milla Jovovich. She is multilingual, hot, healthy, has amazing fashion sense, does all sorts of cool things like act in crazy sci-fi movies, play in a band and design clothes, etc. I dig her. But, and I'm sorry Milla, because usually you can do no wrong, this movie sucked. Not that it wasn't pretty and all, but damn. I want those 88 minutes of my life back. At least William Fitchner (laughing all the way to the bank, playing yet another lithe, attractive, hangdog weirdo) emerges relatively unscathed. Such is the beauty of being a good character actor in a crappy movie.

  • Mouse rides frog to safety.

  • Sure, I'm anti-war, but the real reason I'm posting this parody of the obnoxious MPAA's anti-piracy campaign is because I take comfort in knowing I'm not the only one who hates that duhhhh-duhhh-dodododo-duhhh-duhhh-dododo ad. Arg. Seriously, when you watch a movie a night, you hear that thing ALOT.

  • Poor Orlando (it's true, though): In a canny shift, Disney chose the title Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest over the script's original title, Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Continuing Adventures Of A Vaguely Effeminate Johnny Depp And That Bland Guy From The Lord Of The Rings Movies.

  • I don't really get the physics of this iPod struck by lightening story. Hm.

  • Creatures.

  • Smart cars are coming!

  • Dancers, you're going to HELL!! Lol. My favorite line: "She is now in the vile embrace of the Apollo of the evening." Second fave: "she is to-day a brothel inmate, the toy and plaything of the libertine and drunkard." Jehosaphat.

  • People move in circles...

  • More Krrish!! No one will see this with me. I'm going to have to go down to the Indian backalleys of the LES and see this by my damn self. Sigh.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Daily View, 7/5

I have never wanted to be at work LESS than I do today. Sigh.
  • The new racially charged Sony PSP ads are causing quite a stir. I preferred the way Adidas examined color with adicolor...

  • Google Trends. I haven't quite taken the time to figure out why this interesting yet, but apparently everyone is doing it. ???

  • CouchSurfing.com dies before I have a chance to travel and check it out. Sigh.

  • Um, WHY is this necessary?? Do I need a cell phone to calculate BMI and menstrual cycles?? No.

  • Props to Keith Richards for having a sense of humor about homage parodies—he's agreed to play Johnny Depp's dad in Pirates of the Caribbean III.

  • Hm. Cute floaty things are cute, sure but I don't need a rubber duckie in my mouse. Actually, I don't understand the rubber duck subculture. Clearly I'm missing something but I just don't find them hysterically adorable like most people seem to. WTF.

  • Worth1000's latest Photoshopping contest: out of place landmarks. In this context, I can kinda see now why people think the St. Louis Arch is weird...

  • Movies, illustrated Russian-style. I like the Harry Potter and the Spiderman. Actually, I'm not sure I can identify all of them... hmm....

  • More from the RCA (apparently now that I've decided not to go there I am putting my energy into sneering at them. Productive? Nahhhh, but who cares.)

  • Interesting info graphics from Ronald Slabbers. This type of illustration usually isn't my style, but I'm a sucker for an engaging map.

  • Hahahahaha, well, at least the stuff is not going to waste: buy items from people's lost luggage.

  • Ok, I don't play tennis, wear/buy leather, or even dress in a way that would condone this accessory... and yet even I am seduced by the preppie fabulousness of this Kate Spade tennis bag.

  • Am always up for a good fringe religion story.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Daily View, 7/4

Fourth of July?? No, no, no... the real holidays are the birthdays of Eva (today) and Ginna (7/2, though she admits to annually celebrating through the 4th). Happy birthday, peeps! People also seem to get married now: my parents just celebrated 39 years of christian hippie dysfunction (7/1) and Aaron just got hitched (7/2). Happy matrimony!

Meanwhile, I'm trying to get better about posting shorter, more regular entries (that end-of-June link blitz wore me out).
  • What an awesome excuse to bust out accents at random. "Oi? Ow, sorreh, oi jess' hadda strowke." "Do not ree-dee-cool-uh me—Ay aff att a smolluh strrrrrrrrohkk and nowa ay took like zees."

  • Jaysus, the snobs at DO finally get wind of crafting.

  • Seriously, if I have the "Wait, do you owe me $10 from last week?" conversation one more time... maybe BillMonk is what I need (though what the hell kinda name is that??)

  • BibliOdyssey and The Visual Context of Music—I'm intrigued!

  • I tried to take Benadryl as a sleep aid once. Perhaps I am childlike in my makeup, because it had zero effect (actually, it may have kept me awake). Sigh.

  • Is it really exciting for a man to type on a woman's breasts?? Hard to fathom, yet the French Maid Keyboard exists.

  • Yeah, any plant that crosses my path definitely needs an IV.

  • New Mates of State Fraud in the 80s video is all cool stop-motion animation and fun.

  • COOOOOL. Movie title typefaces.

  • Yep, I am unabashedly a sucker for silhouettes, bunnies and birds, so Mozi is made for me.

  • I love when the word juju gets press. I throw this word around, much to the horror of some unforunate friends who insist it's a term for semen. I'm talking black magic fabulousness, ladies, not gism. As it is, while I still embrace the term, they have managed to ruin jujubees candy for me, the bastards. (POM pomegranate juice is also on my shudder list. People just shouldn't say things like "tastes like pussy".)

  • I also love when the coelacanth gets press. I did a report on the coelacanth in fifth grade that firmly implanted the dinofish into my brain. Pop culture and my nerd upbringing collided when Volkswagen incorporated the coelacanth into an ad. Go coelacanths!

  • Apparently I live in the noisiest NYC neighborhood. At first this seemed odd to me, but then I realized that I have called 311 a couple times (damn salsa music, grouch grouch grouch)... so maybe the stats are right on. Of course, my street really is pretty quiet, thanks to the temple (the Hasidim aren't quite party animals, after all).

  • New discoveries about dodos! (login required because the NYTimes is cruel like that.)

  • This baffles me. Man has no idea there's a light bulb up his ass. 1) HUH?, 2) how exactly do you successfully achieve stealth rectal wattage without waking the victim, and 3) how is that lightbulb still intact???

  • Cool aerial photography

  • Chinese Hollywood? No. Bollywood rules.

  • This little USB IM-notifying puppet is creepy and kinda genius. We need this in our virtual office.

  • Must everything become so damn literal? The Freudian slip. Sigh.

  • Jell-O lampshades? Orange lightbulbs? Nothing but fun at this Photoshop texture contest.

  • A treat if you've made it this far: 20 free mp3s of popular songs from 1901-1920, free for public domain use and great inspiration for the ears. Enjoy!