There is no Dana, Only Zuul

If you don't post for six months...

2009-03-20T10:57:00.001-05:00

Does the blog begin to smell?

Jack Thompson is a Lawyer No More

2008-09-29T10:33:00.003-05:00

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/09/25/jack-thompson-disbarred-in-florida/

Finally.

Jack Thompson is an anti-videogames activist, man of god, general kook and now a former attorney. Seriously, this guy is a joke, and the Florida bar association grew tired of his constant embarassments to his profession. Here is the laundry list of offenses taken from the official court order:

Among the extensive findings of fact presented in the report, the Court takes particular note of the following which occurred during the three-year period at issue in five counts in these cases: (1) respondent made false statements of material fact to courts and repeatedly violated a court order; (2) respondent communicated the subject of representation directly with clients of opposing counsel; (3) respondent engaged in prohibited ex parte communications; (4) respondent publicized and sent hundreds of pages of vitriolic and disparaging missives, letters, faxes, and press releases, to the affected individuals; (5) respondent targeted an individual who was not involved with respondent in any way, merely due to "the position [the individual] holds in state and national politics;" (6) respondent falsely, recklessly, and publicly accused a judge as being amenable to the "fixing" of cases; (7) respondent sent courts inappropriate and offensive sexual materials; (8) respondent falsely and publicly accused various attorneys and their clients of engaging in a conspiracy/enterprise involving "the criminal distribution of sexual materials to minors" and attempted to get prosecuting authorities to charge these attorneys and their clients for racketeering and extortion; (9) respondent harassed the former client of an attorney in an effort to get the client to use its influence to persuade the attorney to withdraw a defamation suit filed by the attorney against respondent; and (10) respondent retaliated against attorneys who filed Bar complaints against him for his unethical conduct by asserting to their clients, government officials, politicians, the media, female lawyers in their law firm, employees, personal friends, acquaintances, and their wives, that the attorneys were criminal pornographers who objectify women.

Spore

2008-09-04T11:19:00.001-05:00

I think Spore will be good.

I will buy it.

These are my statements of the day.

Also,

VAGINA!

Chrome

2008-09-03T09:29:00.001-05:00

Is the ballz.

That is all.

http://www.google.com/chrome

Remember?

2008-07-08T16:18:00.002-05:00

Remember when I used to blog?

That was awesome.

Brief list of things I wanted to blog about recently but didn't:

George Carlin dying
finding a cockroach in my apartment
the red sox limping to the all-star break
producing my play
my play opening
not knowing if my play will be any good
writing books for D&D 4th edition(which doesn't suck)
rockaway beach
rock band
my nuts

That's all for now. Maybe more topics will come to me in three months and I can post again.

Don't blog, write.

2008-04-01T10:08:00.000-05:00

Interesting commentary on not blogging if you are a "real" writer.

2008-03-20T13:41:00.001-05:00

Just got this in an email from MSG. In the fine print below Skynyrd it says there will be surprise appearances by Rev Run and Peter Wolf.

How exactly does Rev Run fit into this american rock and roll theme?

And how is it a surprise if they are, in fact, advertising it?

Making fun of Christian scientists (not Scientists)

2008-03-14T13:00:00.001-05:00

Halbert's Cubicle: An Ethical Dilemma

I got to this guys blog in a roundabout way, from a Slate piece claiming Gygax was a hack, to a rebuttal by Shamus, then a link by shamus to another rebuttal on Halbert's blog. A couple of posts down and I see this little bomb dropped.

I really don't get people who won't work with stem cells. It seems so arbitrary. Why is a bunch of cells more sacrosanct than, say, Germans in WWII? It was ok to kill them because they were killing Jews and taking over countries. But it's not ok to research POTENTIAL humans because of some ambiguous morality scheme dictated by old men in the Vatican. Wrong.

Of course, I've been antagonizing this guy in the comments, mostly because I haven't had a good blogfight in a while. But he and I are probably quite similar. He's a gamer, has a Christian background and hates mustard.*

*Disclaimer: I actually have no idea if he hates mustard.

Great Photo Blog

2008-03-07T10:43:00.000-05:00

A Test Of Will: Midtown Mess

This guy takes great pictures all over the city. I like his one or two sentence commentary, because it's usually about the process of composing shots. Reminds me of Mr. Savage.

I picked this link because in the background you can see the building where I work. But the Space Invader photos are great too.

Vermont towns vote to arrest Bush and Cheney | U.S. | Reuters

2008-03-06T14:02:00.000-05:00

Vermont towns vote to arrest Bush and Cheney U.S. Reuters

It's symbolic, but at least they have the right idea.

I'm not sure if everything that the Bush Administartion has done was wrong but I don't get how they seem to get a free pass, while we spent years debating blowjobs in the late 90s.

Tricking a country into war is surely worse than ejaculation is it not?

Photographic evidence that hippies exist in Providence

2008-02-08T09:24:00.000-05:00

It was only a matter of time before Google's push to document every facet of our world on the web reached a personal level of contact. Every street and intersection of Providence was recently photographed and compiled on Google's street view. Mi hermano was web savvy enough to recognize his vehicle on the side of the road.

My brother's VW Bus.

They haven't shot most of Brooklyn and my apartment isn't in the database. But here's where I work. If you pan the view around you can see that my building is right across the street from Radio City.

I love this kind of thing. Can't wait till they add more cities and locations.

Is this peter dinklage?

2008-01-25T16:07:00.000-05:00

I can't embed this so a link will suffice.

It sure fucking looks like a young Dink. I can't find anything verifying or denying that claim. I leave it for you to decide.

PS. The video is good if you've got 6 minutes to spare.

A long silence

2008-01-18T10:26:00.000-05:00

And I still don't have anything blogworthy to say.

Let me just impart that I am slowly becoming acclimated to my life. I will still strive to do things of which I will be proud, but I will not be depressed or despondent if they don't work out.

We'll see how long this lasts...

Kindle the fire

2007-12-04T16:27:00.000-05:00

I know I'm late to the blogparty, but this stuff gets on my nerves. I like the Kindle, amazon's new book reader. I think it's a step in the right direction. And by the right direction, I mean the kind of world where everyone is connected to the Intehweb via bionic implant, there's no money, and we're just a worp away from skiing on Centauri Prime for the weekend.

But people just can't get behind this little device. It's being smeared all over the place as a worthless replacement for everyone's favorite technology from 1455, the fucking book. I know the device isn't perfect, the DRM is too draconian and the price isn't exactly right ($400 for the kindle plus $10/book) but now it seems to be the fashionable thing to pile hate on Jeff Bezos, Amazon, Jews and anyone trying to make an electronic reading device.

This one guy even implies that the kindle will create a fascist world as depicted in Orwell's 1984. And the stupid thing is, over 200 commenters seem to AGREE WITH HIM. Here is my hastily written response comment.

I fail to see how citing literary sources alongside pretty standard contract language is supposed to argue anything. I think if you looked at every T.O.S. you’ve ever agreed to without reading, you’d be surprised as to how much “control” you had just signed away. The language is there to protect the company, not to harm the customers.

Should the Kindle be DRM free? Probably, but then no one will get paid for all of the R&D and risk-taking they are now making. I think the high price of ebooks and DRM are here for the early adoption phase. Both will fade with time, a la Itunes.

Should Amazon collect general usage information like every tech company (including Apple, Microsoft, you cell phone, your tivo)? Yes. Of course they should. No amount of doomsaying and conspiracy theorizing will make this research turn our society into Orwell’s 1984. How can so many intellectuals be afraid of market research? Are surveys on the streets of NY an invasion of privacy? Yes. Does that mean every member of Greenpeace is actually a fascist? Yes, but not because they are gathering information.

I don’t think the Kindle will replace books, nor is that its purpose. I think Amazon is working towards a viable alternative to lugging that backbreaking Complete Works of Shakespeare your grandmother bought you and you’ve never been able to get around to reading around on a crowded mass transit system. And that’s something even crotchety old anti-progress pseudo-intellectual bloggers can get behind.

Jack Thompson is out again

2007-10-26T11:11:00.000-05:00

Seriously, this guy is just blog fodder at this point.

Jack Thompson, the game-hatin' attorney from Florida, is up to his old antics again. He has filed a suit against BestBuy, the ESRB and anyone else he can think of for allegedly selling M rated video games to minors. Gamepolitics and Law of the Game are running the stories.

The funny thing is, Mr. Jack Thompson Esquire is just internet savvy enough to find these blogs AND ACTUALLY COMMENT IN THEM. I'm sorry, but if you want to be taken seriously as a lawyer, would you engage in trolling the comments on blogs written about your pending cases? Neither would I.

Check them out for yourself but here are some quotes from jack thompson, dickface-at-law.

"Pretty simple stuff, really, if your brain has not been fried by games."

"It's a shame you all don't know what you're talking about."

"It's called democracy, gamer nerds. Deal with it. And grow up."

"Sorry to embarrass you, but the Kaplan Foundation funds NIMF. NIMF is a grantee of the Foundation not a grantor. Are you on drugs?"

"Secondly, I am an activist against the sale of violent, mature-rated games to anyone under 17. You didn’t know that? I think you need a brain scan." [emphasis mine, i love how he baits gamers and then says shit like this next one]

"Correction, please:

I am not a “game-hatin’ attorney.”

As I repeatedly tell audiences, video games are reflective of a neutral technology. All technology is neutral. You can electrify or incinerate a city with nuclear fission. It depends what you do with technology.

Virtual reality is one of the most powerful teaching modalities ever devised. It can teach for good or for ill. Not sure why GP can’t grasp that."

If that were the case then why does he constantly refer to gamers as stupid nerds engaging in a masturbatory activity of which a 30 year old should be ashamed?

The Pride of the Red Sox

2007-10-22T09:05:00.000-05:00

I can't think of a more fitting way to celebrate winning the ALCS after trailing 3-1. Ok, maybe using the trophy as some kind of torture dildo ala Se7en on a very willing Tina Cervasio. Maybe that'd be better than dousing the American League trophy with Bud Light while wearing goggles and chomping on cigar in the center of Fenway Park. Maybe, but probably not.

I love this guy and I love this team.

Oh and...

2007-10-19T12:43:00.001-05:00

These stupid cats make me laugh everytime.

A man with too many mistresses

2007-10-19T10:10:00.000-05:00

I've been playing LOTRO this week. (That's Lord of the Rings Online for you uncouth bastards.)

It was suggested that I get more of a working knowledge of the game, as it's a slight possibility that I could work for the company. (more on that later) LOTRO is definitely fun, it steals some of the best things from WOW. And with patch 2.3, it seems WOW is stealing some UI elements from LOTRO, like the minimap tracking trainers, merchants, etc.

But the question is, what do I do with 2 MMOs? They are huge timesinks already. Will it be possible to juggle two of them and a wife, a full time job and a failing writing career? Will I go insane?

Perhaps I already am...

To the woman...

2007-10-18T09:47:00.000-05:00

An open letter to the woman on the L train whose breasts were smashed against my back this morning--

I'm sorry that I had to push my way onto your car. I'm sorry that the only means of conveyance to Manhattan from Williamsburg has become a crowded mess of livestock, braying and mooing to get on board the oh so scant few trains which deign to take us to our meaningless careers. I'm sorry about all that.

But at least we got to share a special moment. Remember when I looked behind me to be certain that yes indeed, that soft insistent pressure on my shoulder blade was actually your right breast. And remember after I confirmed that fact, I looked into your green eyes as if to say, "Huh, isn't New York crazy?" in order to disarm the tension such close proximity can evoke? And remember the look of utter disdain and hatred you gave me in return?

I do. I'll remember it forever.

Also, your tits. I won't forget them.

You had a great rack.

A guy on my basketball team did this to his finger

2007-10-16T16:55:00.001-05:00

CHECK IT

How I lost the weight

2007-10-16T14:25:00.000-05:00

This pic is from a Weight Watchers recipe card circa 1974. I'm not sure which is worse. That people actually ate fish balls or that it was presented in such a professional manner.

Candyboots has a tour of more delectable treats here. Click through them, it's worth a read. And the shudders.

Weight loss contest revisited

2007-10-16T13:18:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to give everyone an update to the Great Loss of Body Mass of 2007.

I lost.

But I won. Get it?

Rain Delay and I decided that the scale measuring our percentage of body fat was a load of mung-flavored bunk. This was proven after Mr. Delay downed a small trough filled with beer and then weighed LESS than before he drank said libations. I think it read that he was at 15% body fat instead of the 22-21% he was hovering at at the time.

The two of us went with plan B, which was just a straight ten percent loss of weight. Of course, at the time of last weigh-in, Rain Delay was well under that goal while I was still a few pounds short. Or heavy. Whatever. The final counting:

7.12.07	Greg	Rain Delay
Weight in lbs.	195.4	225
% of Body Fat	21.5%	26.5%

10.4.07	Greg	Rain Delay
Weight in lbs.	177	201.6
% of Body Fat (Bullshit)	17.5	21.5
10% lost goal	175.86	202.5
Pounds lost	18.4	23.4
Percent lost	9.2	10.4

*These numbers are from memory and may be a bit off. I may also be high.

I lost. And I lost a shitload of weight. So I guess I kind of won too. I'm thinner now then I have been since high school. That's a crazy idea to wrap my brain around. Pants are falling off me and I love it. We've accomplished more in 4 months than (incoming hyperbole!) most men do in their lifetimes.

Just to throw the point out there, I was actually up to 203 lbs just this February. In 8 months then, I have lost 26 lbs or 13.3% of my weight. But I'm not bitter. I am nothing if not a good loser. See what I did there?

I bought Mr. Delay his Wii and I'm glad for it.

The problem with health care in this country...

2007-10-11T09:10:00.000-05:00

I just went to the dentist and I am fucking pissed. She installed 5 fillings. After it was all over, I went to the front desk and was asked to wait while they have to calculate my co-pay. This did not bode well. I waited for a while, getting more and more annoyed that I'm missing time from work. Then the bitch told me that I owed $232.00. Because my insurance doesn't cover "white" fillings, only metal fillings. This is AFTER they already did it. So I'm forced to pay. Then I complained to the actual dentist and she gave me the standard line that "how was she supposed to know what your insurance covers" and "it's your responsibility to find out how much a procedure is going to cost." Totally ignored the fact that was hornswaggled and she knew it.

Moral of the story: get an estimate from your doctor like they are a fucking mechanic.

The debate can go on and on about how to resolve our health care crisis, and I don't know what the solution is. But I think the fundamental problem with the current system is that there is no accountability. The doctors and dentists screw the insurance company. The insurance company screws the customer. The customer screws their dog. It's all circular. Don't you think it's weird that you aren't the one paying for services rendered to you? Isn't it strange to think that your doctor and you often work in cahoots to wring more money out of the insurance company?

I was told a story recently where a doctor routinely charges exorbitant amounts for a visit, knowing full well that the insurance company will only pay the average price/visit. He doesn't do this to screw the customer, because he won't force the customer to pay the balance. The sole reason for charging high is so said average price/visit goes up and the doctor can make more money off the insurance company. Our system is that fucked up.

In order for a true capitalist checks and balances to work, there needs to be no middle man. Or at least, the middle man needs to be divested from your employment. Very few people have the financial freedom to quit their job and get a new one based solely on how the medical benefits perform. If we shopped for medical insurance like we did for car insurance, there would be accountability. If there's accountability, there might just be some change.

And I'd also like a pony.

And some cool ranch Doritos.

2007-09-26T17:00:00.000-05:00

Not sure why I wanted to do this but I spent about a month trying to get all my toons on Detheroc on the "decades." I have chars at 70, 60 50 and so on. Just a little minigame with myself, but I thought I'd post it as further evidence of my dorkosity.

Is it just me?

2007-09-26T12:58:00.000-05:00

I don't know if it's because I'm getting older or what, but my neighborhood has seen an influx of extremely hot girls in the last few months. I know school just started and NYUers like Williamsburg as an alternative to Manhattan but, jesus christ on the Forman, it's getting out of hand. I sat on my stoop last night for a few minutes and witnessed at least 347 women with short shorts and cleavage for days. We're talking about a cascade of hotness rivaling a Bryant Park catwalk. More hot than that actually because these girls were real and not stick-figure marionettes.

It's enough to make me divorce my wife and run down the street with pants around my god damn ankles.

Well, maybe just the latter.

Since the 2nd grade

2007-09-21T00:19:00.000-05:00

There are few performers I can say I've been a fan of since my days at Lillie B. Haynes. Weird Al is one of them. His show last night at the Beacon Theater was quintessant. He rocks like a man half his age and a nerd twice his stature. The show was a performance piece, complete with props and more costume changes than a one-man Hamlet.

I took some decent video and I'll try to youtube it for your viewing pleasure. Wait till you see Darth Vader dance.

Conscientious Objector

2007-08-22T15:50:00.000-05:00

I thought those words only referred to the Vietnam war. Apparently there more than a few US military personnel living in Canada after having been rejected for CO status.

http://www.wmtc.ca/

Is this war as immoral as Vietnam?

Football vs. Baseball

2007-08-10T13:12:00.000-05:00

I've wasted considerable manhours today on a pointless email discussion of which sport is better. Rather than have this amazing discourse be squandered on the waves of the interweb, I'm posting it here in entirety so that others may waste their time. My responses (in black) began through a proxy, the football fans wife. His answers are gay and in purple to denote such orientation. Fuck you, it's my blog. Enjoy:

Baseball is better than football. Make sure you tell him that.

I bravely told him that you said baseball is better than football. He laughed a deep and hearty laugh and then said "yeah right".

Football is for 300 pound fatties with 5 year careers, baseball is for life.

Here we go. Just to negate the 300 lbs comment........Cecil "Hall of Famer" Fielder. Okay, now that that's outta the way. I like baseball. Go Sox. I even enjoy going to a game or watching the playoffs on TV. The problem is, baseball is a game. Football is a sport. You do not have to be an athlete to play professional baseball. Manny an athlete? Not even close. Is he extremely talented? Absolutely. But so is the guy who can bowl a 300 consistently. A Hall of Fame baseball player succeeds at the plate 2 out of 5 times. So that's a possible two times a game offensively that a Hall of Fame player may have to actually run. That's good because I don't know if Papi could handle more than that. Now let's look at defense. Papi is out because, well, he's a DH. But let's look at Manny. How many times do you go through the batting order in a game, maybe 4 times in an average game? So that's going to be around 36 at bats for a team. How many of those at bats result in balls coming Manny's way? For the sake of argument I'm going to estimate really, really high and say 10 balls come his way. So, let's say he gets 2 hits on offense (not HR because then he doesn't have to run) and 10 plays his way on defense. That's 12 times over the course of a game that he has to run. 12 times???? That's ridiculous. And how many of those defensive plays does he actually run on? Manny is not an athlete and he's a Hall of Fame caliber player. Sport???? I think not. I'm not saying that running is essential to a sport (boxing) but moving should be. Every guy on every play of a football game has to be athletic and in shape. The same can't be said of baseball. The football guys may way 300 lbs but they're in terrific shape and if they're not they get booted off the team. So, in conclusion. Yes baseball players have skills but so do guys who play darts. There are athletes who play baseball but in most positions it's not a requirement. Football is superior in every way. While baseball may be America's past-time, football is America's passion.

Any and all baseball players would scoff at your statement that they are not athletes. The main point you are forgetting is that football players play in 16 games a season. Baseball players play in 162 games. That's ten times more, in case you didn't realize. Longevity and endurance is a much bigger part of baseball and involves much more than running 12 times a game. In order to be prepared to have bursts of speed and excellent hand-eye coordination, they must take batting and fielding practice, do calisthenics and keep their bodies in excellent shape much like football players. The Cecil Fielders and Big Papis are the exception, not the rule. Let me ask you this question, would a 300 pound lineman be able to play 162 games a year? How long would his career last if he did?

Also, last I watched a football game, there is a lot of standing around. What's the offense doing when the defense is on the field and vice versa? Not to mention the 2nd, 3rd and 4th string players who spend the whole game on the bench. To say there is more downtime in baseball than football is kind of ridiculous. Both of them pale in comparison to true cardiovascular sports like basketball and long distance running or cycling. Football and baseball are more akin to sprinting or long jumping. Preparation for an intense bout of truly incredible feats of sprinting or leaping or swinging doesn't lessen the athlete doing it.

And finally, DARTS ISN"T A SPORT? HOW DARE YOU?

David Blaine had to prepare his body to be in a bubble for 3 months or whatever the hell it was he did but I wouldn't say it makes him an athlete. If we're going to bring practice into the equation then the baseball season is probably shorter than the football season. I'm not educated enough in the baseball schedule to be sure but I know that teams not making the playoffs in the NFL have a total of about 4 1/2 months off. Football takes a much bigger toll on the body too, hence the average shorter career. And I'll take a batting practice and calisthenics over an NFL OTA any day.

I'll give you that a shortstop has to be a real athlete. You might convince me on 2nd too. Those guys really have to be able react quickly and control their bodies. But I know in my current out of shapeness that I could handle the "rigors" of a 162 game season playing right field. I just don't have the hand-eye coordination and other skill involved in swinging a bat at a professional level. I could handle the field though (throwing would take some practice but again I would argue the same about bowling).

To answer your question about the 300 pounder being able to handle baseball? Absolutely! He'd have to retrain his body but not because baseball demands it. Because that position on a football field requires you to build your body different from the average human. In thinking about positions I think I've come up with a good comparison. A baseball player is like the kicker on a football team. Waits around for three hours to be involved on his 8 plays a game. Yup, he runs down the field to help cover kicks but have you see these guys? Hardly athletes. They have to do calisthenics and stuff to keep their legs flexible. They have to keep their "heads in the game" ready to perform their miraculous feat. But they for sure are not athletes. And though there is no proof, I'm sure they would be just fine if the season had 162 games.

I'm typing this at work so I'm not able to formulate my thoughts real clear right now. You should come over tonight and we'll settle this like men! Or we can put on some skirts and settle it like baseball players. = ) Just kidding. I respect baseball players for what they can do, I just wouldn't call them all athletes.

Your definition of athlete is slightly skewed, mostly to win this argument, I fear.

Is a sprinter an athlete? Baseball involves sprinting. Is a high jumper an athlete? Baseball involves jumping. Hell, I consider myself an athlete and I only play basketball once a week and go to the gym here and there. Why are you slighting the fact that preparation and anticipation of a spectacular athletic feat is less strenuous or worthy of praise than "Hey you, push against this guy for 5 seconds" 20 times in a hour? I see you ignored the downtime involved in most football games. Take a look at your own precious players before wielding the "athlete" stick.

I also don't think you'd be able to handle the rigors of a 162 game season without training. The baseball "season" begins in February and stretches to October so I'd say it's comparable with football's. Younger guys also play Winter ball or now the W.B.C. so that will add games. Most players take only a month or so off and then have a routine off-season workout schedule to stay sharp.

The real difference between football and baseball athletic levels is one of resilence and endurance. Sure, a 300 pound guy can do well for a month or two easily, but to consistently perform well for 6+ months takes a tailored and trim athletic body. Have you heard anything about the steroids or greenies scandals? They are all about bouncing back, about maintaining strength and agility over a long period of time. Why do you think players would risk their career for the chance to perform consistently over a whole season? Perhaps it's because it's not as easy a sport as you claim it is.

But that's not even why I think baseball is better than football. What bothers me is the culture. Football is so Republican. So ritualistic. I don't like that they play once a week (or two weeks on a bye). What keeps your attention in between? Baseball is consistent. Every night during the summer, I can get home from work and watch a game. There are better stories involved in baseball. The starter trying to bounce back from a shelling. The young minor league callup having his first at-bat. Just look at how many great baseball movies there are: Field of Dreams, Major League, Bull Durham, The Natural, Eight Men Out, A League of Their Own(don't knock it, it's fucking great). How many football movies are there? Any Given Sunday? I hate Pacino in that. The Longest Yard? Rudy? Awful.

Weight loss contest

2007-07-31T08:49:00.000-05:00

In a decided effort to combat our expanding waistlines and our impending death, my buddy and I have begun a Herculean effort to lose weight. Realizing that there is absolutely no way that the two of us could motivate separately to eat less and exercise, we agreed to set our anorexic tendencies against the other.

I've known Rain Delay since 1st grade and we have been forever locked in a clash of wills, be it for girls, basketball, bike races, grades (we were separated in 3rd grade because I would proclaim my A on a test was better than his A-), and now FIFA 07 and Fight Night 3. I cannot let him win any more than he can allow my victory. Which is not to say we don't respect each other, quite the opposite. But this marks the first time that we have decided to harness this power for good and not for evil. The two of us have vowed before the Lords of Cobol that we will lose weight or die trying. Actually, the loser buys the winner a Nintendo Wii, but everytime I will play it, Rain Delay will die a little bit inside.

The rules are like this: We are striving to lose one third of our body fat percentage. We reasoned that losing straight weight would encourage unhealthy practices like slicing off our arms. Plus, I didn't want to feel bad about lifting at the gym, thinking it would skew the numbers to his favor. We weigh in every Monday on a scale which Rain Delay bought for $120. It figures out our body fat percentage by sending three tiny mice into our anuses and having them ascend through our digestive systems. It's either that or it uses electricity somehow. Regardless, it's foolproof and we trust it 100%.

Here are some surprisingly annoying-to-make tables of our results so far:

7.16.07	Greg	Rain Delay
Weight in lbs.	194.2	225
% of Body Fat	21.5%	26.5%

7.23.07	Greg	Rain Delay
Weight in lbs.	192	219
% of Body Fat	21%	25.5%

7.30.07	Greg	Rain Delay
Weight in lbs.	190	219
% of Body Fat	20%	25.5%

As you can see, I am currently winning. Mr. Rain Delay has stalled at 25.5% while my steady descent will lead me to the sweet fruit of Victory. I can already taste it. It tastes like cantaloupe.

Senator plays a 70 Dwarf Priest

2007-07-25T09:12:00.000-05:00

http://gamepolitics.com/2007/07/24/senator-is-a-level-70-dwarf-priest-in-world-of-warcraft/

The real question is: Guam has a senator?

Conspiracy

2007-07-20T09:47:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure what the human fascination with conpiracies is drawn from. After every major historical event now it seems theories sprout up about what really happened or what our government isn't telling us. Was JFK shot by the grassy knoll? Were the Kinghts Templar involved in Richie Cunningham's career? Is Paul dead and replaced by a robot? Is his memory full?

Perhaps it comes from history class. I remember the point being outlined many times in my Connecticut liberal public school education that history is written by the victors. That even commonly held accounts of the Revolutionary War, the Civil War or Vietnam are heavily skewed towards promoting US supremacy. I was a child at the peak of the Cold War, and it often seemed every movie was about Russia succombing to the capitalist wise-cracking might of America. Looking back now, I wonder if what we had was so much better than the Russians or if that's what we were supposed to believe.

My current obessesion/timewasting activity is to read about the myriad 9/11 conspiracy theories. It's undeniable that the destruction of the WTC was a polarizing event which conveniently divided the world into Us vs. Them. The benefits to the current White House administration were many (despite how it has blown up in their face.) It's not a very far leap of logic to consider that Cheney and Co. (Coming from Disney Films this Christmas!) perpetrated the attacks or were at least complicit. I've watched enough Jack Bauer to know that this shit happens all the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories

This is a exhaustive list of current 9/11 theories. The wiki editors do a good job of keeping this article neutral, neither endorsing or dismissing the claims. It's a decent read, even if you don't believe a bleeding word of it. I'm not sure where my own opinion lies, but some of the evidence presented (including corroborating eyewitness testimony of explosions in teh WTC basement as the planes crashed into the top of the tower) are too compelling to deny outright.

Another new conspiracy (for me) is outlined here. This is well-thought out and comprehensive thesis proving that Jesus did not exist. Historically. That there is very little evidence to support the claims that he was a social activist or even a public speaker. Instead, this dude proves that the gospels and the subsequent new testament were mythic writings on par with Homeric literature. Interesting, if you can deal with the wall of text on that page.

Finally, the pyramids were made by aliens because Egyptians are stupid.

News FLASH Businessmen are Boring!! Extra!

2007-07-13T13:32:00.000-05:00

There is this asshole Indian dude who I work for named Giridar Srinevasan (the names have not been changed because I don't want to protect this son of a bitch).

One day a few months ago he was looking through the shit on my desk (while I wasn't there mind you) and saw one of the fantasy short story magazines I've been getting. He looked through it, noticing only the advertisements which, regrettably, market towards the female readers with Fabio looking dudes on the cover. He insisted on calling it gay-porn. Everytime he's here at my desk with another person and time to kill, he brings up my obsession with gay porn. "Have you heard about Greg's taste in magazines?" I always bring out the latest issue of Realms of Fantasy and show them, trying as hard as I can not to feel embarassed. He goes through the magazine, pointing out every shitty advertisement for low-end romance/fantasy books, as if that's what I was reading. All the while it's peppered with derisive comments, "I'm worried about you..." Giridar constantly tries to make me feel like shit for reading fantasy, but I'm always like, "I am not ashamed, dude."

This morning, he did it again with one of the younger guys in the office. I said, "Don't you read stories?" His response, "I read newspapers." In a grim voice. Like that's the only thing that matters. Guess what you fucking prick? There's more to life than numbers and spreadsheets and whether your mail-order Hindian wife is going to get into the US on a shitty ass green card.

He's a dick in normal business too, nobody seems to like him because he gets agitated and upset easily. The guy acts like the annoying younger brother to those above him and a playground bully to those below. He's even tried to drag me in the dirt before on an invoice that he fucked up, blaming me to his bosses because I reproduced the exact numbers that he gave me an hour before. Douche.

This is for you, Giridar. If reading fantasy makes me wrong, I don't want to be like you.

CONTEST!!

2007-07-12T14:20:00.001-05:00

I'm participating in yet another one of those forced creativity things. Yep. It appears it's the only way I can get anything done. This one's a week long screenwriting challenge. Starts tommorrow. Let's just hope I don't get Romance set in a Public Bathroom in Central Park.

http://www.nycmidnight.com/2007/SC2007/challenge.htm

Actually, that one wouldn't be that bad. I could have a rapist who actually falls in love with his victim... GENIUS!

UPDATE! My criteria are as follows:

GENRE - Fantasy

SUBJECT - Swimming

When a kid jumps into the pool, he's transported to a dream world of magic. Or maybe, when man has a near-death expereience swimming on a beach, he is saved by a mermaid. Or maybe...

Just in case you were wondering how Fantasy Baseball works

2007-07-12T10:59:00.000-05:00

Although you probably weren't.

Fantasy baseball scoring: Every day, each team is ranked 1-10 on each cumulative stat. So if Player A has 50 saves recorded on Tuesday and Player B has 48, then Player A has a 10 in saves and player B has a 9 (assuming they were leading the league). If on Wednesday, Player B's relievers do well and record 3 saves and Player A's record nothing, then Player B is ranked 10 and Player B is ranked 9 for saves that day.

This is done for each stat, each day, and the rankings are all added which results in your overall score. If Player A has a 10 in saves, a 6 in ERA and 1 in Ks then his overall score is a 17. On Wednesday, his rankings are 9, 6 and 1.5 respectively and his score is a 16.5 (a .5 on a ranking means there is a tie and the two players each get the mean of the rankings above and below them). That's why on the main page change is denoted by -1 or +2.5. This is the team's cumulative change in the rankings of each stat.

Another important thing, players have to be in the game (not on the bench) to record stats. If a batter isn't playing that day or its a travel day for the team, try to have the players on the bench get in the game and get you some stats. Starting pitchers are the most important, you have to rotate them in when they are scheduled to pitch. This means you have to check every once in a while to see when their rotation is up. You can schedule roster changes several days in advance if you are leaving for the weekend or something.

That's only rotesserie league play. I've been slightly addicted to this whole fantasy thing, ever since my buddy got me involved in his Yahoo league. There's also head-to-head play where you battle one manager's team per week in all the league's stats. Good times. I'd link you my team but it's set to private for some reason. I'll give you a hint though. Manram Ordonez.

Yet another time suckage tool. Between this, playing 12 games of simul-chess on gameknot and reading the latest WOW news, it's amazing I get anything done.

Wait. I don't do anything. I forgot. *sigh*

British Atheist

2007-06-28T12:20:00.000-05:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/athletics/article1991114.ece

The greatest triple-jumper known to man has also become Britain's most famous atheist. I'm seeing a lot of parallels here. Triple-jumper. Jesus rose from the dead in three days. This guy won 7 silver medals in his career. Jesus's life was bought for 30 pieces of silver*. Jonathan Edwards had his reverse epiphany when he was exposed to BBC secular types. Jesus exposed himself to Mary Magdalene. The similarites are almost eerie.

On another note: Edwards carried sardines in his pouch when he won the gold medal. That's just gross.

* See Jesus Christ Superstar.

Ah those crazy ARGs

2007-06-21T08:40:00.000-05:00

There are some games that you don't even know you are playing.

The idea of alternate reality games is that they are viral marketing tools with their insidious messages shot directly into your eyeballs which will make you jump and dance and buy their shit. In fact, I don't think they do any of the above.

It's hard to define what exactly they are. A series of puzzles on the internet, a couple of dummy phone lines, a series of images which eventually point to ... what? The reward is intangible. A piece of lore. A scrap of story. Yet, millions of people enjoyed Halo 2's I love Bees campaign.

I don't know any of these people.

I like the idea. It is like an extremely complex scavenger hunt created by an evil genius. But ARGs are basically fabricated research projects. Which although neat, actually entails a lot of, for lack of a better word, WORK. Why would I spend hours scouring websites, reading encyclopedic tomes searching for clues or following up on Da Vinci Code-esque leads? Am I wearing a fedora? Am I named after the dog?

Anyway, if any of you are interested, Bungie is running a new ARG for the release of Halo 3. The game may or may not start here. You may be tempted into a tangled weave of intrigue with loose blondes and smart-quipping vilains. Or you may just read the comic, say, "Huh, neat," and continue on with your life.

Grape soda

2007-06-20T09:56:00.000-05:00

I'm drinking some right now. And all I can think about is the band I had in 9th grade with my friends who were way more musically inclined than I. I tried to write the lyrics of a song, I had most of them down but the only ones I remember were:

I stood upon the ground and I wished that you were there
There was something gone that I'd not seen before

Heavy shit. Unfortunately that's the entire catalog of Grape Soda right there. If we'd stuck with it we'd be the next Creed, or at least the New Radicals.

A month gone by

2007-05-30T13:16:00.000-05:00

Been busy lately. On May 17th, I left for a weekend with the boys in what will be known as the Greenville Drive. For details of our mass exodus to the southland, go here. He's got quite a few posts on the trip, make sure you check them all out. I will be adding pics and maybe even video here eventually. I filled up a 2 gig card of pics and I still had to delete some of the obviously out-of-focus in order to get the Cos. That's right, I said Kevin Costner.

Immediately after I got back from staying in dirty motel rooms in the bible belt, I began recreating a dirty motel ... ON STAGE! Good friend, Oliver Butler, and his fellow theater auteurs from the Debate Society have successfully staged their third play, The Eaten Heart. I humbly spent a few days banging together some moulding, hanging masking and stapling scrim to itself. The set is badass, the sound and the lighting is spot on, and the characters Paul (like naked Larry who believes he's invisible because he's wearing Magic Underpants) and Hannah (crazy woman who sings lounge acts castrating her dear husband) create are scintillating. I *heart* the Eaten Heart.

I received a wonderful shallacking from the sun on Memorial Monday. Mephistopholes and I loved our little jaunt to Jones beach, until the sun went behind the concrete clouds and threatened never to return. "Come back Father Sun!" we beseeched from sticky, lotioned faces. Come back he did, as he always does, and his vicious rays punished us for our doubt in him. Both of us are burnt, though (despite her name) Mephistopholes is worse. Her midsection is now a crayon-perfect burnt umber. Tasty.

WOW bits

2007-05-08T14:34:00.000-05:00

Most of my day is still eaten up by the menace which is currently plaguing 8 million people all over the world. World of Warcraft. I recently coerced, with 2 parts mindless reiteration, 1 part marijuana, my buddy back into the addictive gameplay of his Human Warlock, Savagei. Like Christopher Moltesanti to a freebase session, he has gobbled up all the new Burning Crusade content with reckless abandon. My main is stalled at 65 while he's been at 70 for weeks. I just hope he doesn't shoot me when he realizes that he hasn't slept in four days and still hasn't bothered to change the pants he shat when he and his guild finally bests Illidan the Betrayer in the Black Temple next month. This resurgent junkie behavior may or may not be why he hasn't blogged in two months and doesn't have a job, but who am I to judge? Judy?

I play when I can, when I'm not doing comedy or playing basketball or at my weekly D&D game. But most of my time in front of this here cubicle computer is still spent researching the little bits of lore at wowwiki.com or searching for new addons at wowace.com or wowinterface.com. A couple of months ago, I channeled my dorkosity into writing an article about the addon community and the very real possibility of mod authors burning out on what is a very volunteer project. It went up at the Escapist last week and I'm proud of how it came out.

There have been rumblings of a big announcement from the Boys at Blizzard. A new game is in the works set in the Starcraft universe. For those of you who don't know, Starcraft was an RTS made in 1999 and is the greatest computer game ever made, if you are a Korean. Seriously, this is an American game which has become a NATIONAL FUCKING SPORT in Korea complete with rockstar gamers and huge televised matches with thousands of screaming fans. Most assumed that Blizz's new game was the much anticipated Starcraft 2, a sequel which would give them a break from the MMO juggernaught of WOW and a chance to get back to their RTS roots. But today, quite a few channels link to this story, it seems that Blizzard is in fact going to announce a new Starcraft MMO at its third Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, South Korea on May 19th. The article linked above mentions "well-placed" Blizzard sources. It's anybody's guess who the fuck that is but my money's on this guy.

World of Starcraft, eh? I'd buy that for a dollar. Many people assume that it will be a clone of the WOW gameplay but I think a highly polished space economic sim like EVE Online or the crafting of SW Galaxies is the niche MMO space Blizz will be aiming at. They don't want to compete with themselves, do they? They already have LOTRO to do that.

I stumbled upon a gallery with screenshots from the alpha phase of WOW's development. It's pretty cool to see how the game changed, most of the models were replaced and the UI was redesigned several times it seems. But I wish I could find this in the game still. "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

And finally in the file labeled "Why the fuck not?" Blizzard has partnered up with Visa to bring the American consumer the most needless tie-in product ever conceived by humans: The World of Warcraft Visa Credit Card. Was it really necessary to poison every transaction with the taint of your WOW obsession? I can see nerds everywhere saying, "Sure, put it on my WOW card so I can rack up gametime." Really?

Really?

I applied the day it came out...

Cadaver Synod

2007-05-07T12:50:00.000-05:00

You come across some crazy shit on the interwebs. I was just browsing around on that wikipedia this morning, and stumbled upon on article describing the scene pictured here. Apparently, in 897 A.D., a pope dug up the dead body of his predecessor, dressed it in papal robes and put the cadaver on trial. Pope Stephen (the new pope) had deacons stationed near the throne who would mutter the correct (guilty) responses to the new Pope's questions. The dead dude was found guilty, stripped of his papal vestments (which I presume were just put on him a few hours before), and then buried, only to be taken out of the ground again and thrown into the river Tiber.

This was all politcally motivated, I gather. There were several warring factions in Italy at the time and the Papacy was used as a tool to gain power. But seriously, who thinks digging up a body and having a mock trial is a good idea? Why not just give a speech damning the last guys actions, or even moving the body to a place with less prestige than the Basilica? Fuck it, why even bother with the whole religious charade and stop bothering people about it?

I know what Christians like my dad would say if I ever brought this up to him. He'd say you can't judge the present church or question the existence of God just because some awful things were done in the past. My response to that is, why the fuck not? These popes were crazy. According to dogma, they are supposed to be the corporeal link to God. Does that mean God condones digging up corpses and having a puppet show? No. It means the whole thing is a fallacy.

And I still can't understand why so many people fall for it.

What is the Algorithm?

2007-04-22T21:24:00.000-05:00

I've been seeing these billboards in the city recently. I don't know what they are about. There is no mention of any product or even a website at the bottom to check. There is really no clue as to what the message is other than the recurrence of the Algorithm mentioned. In the past, New York has seen some interesting viral marketing campaigns before viral was used to describe something other than why you were puking all day. I remember Peter Barbieri, this TD I used to work with, told us how when Ghostbusters was being advertised in the subways, they used an all black sign with just the No Ghosts symbol in the center.

Man, remember Peter Barbieri? He was great. I used to work in his shop in Ossining, NY. I'd take the Metro North Hudson Line north against traffic and commute to Ossining, the location of Sing Sing prison, in case you were wondering. Peter used to go into the prison and help the inmates put on shows. He told us he couldn't bring in a SawsAll though.

What the fuck was I talking about? Oh yeah, the algorithm. Your guess is as good as mine.

Spoiler

2007-04-21T23:10:00.000-05:00

Saw this the other day near my apartment. RIP Curtis, indeed. But is this really a fitting memorial for the death of Curtis Manning on 24?

4:20

2007-04-20T15:30:00.000-05:00

My brother gave me his old Ipod. I've been against the infrenal machines for years, as I've documented here before. Mostly because they cost so much without the necessary payoff. I've had a 40 gb Creative jukebox for 3 years. It's never crapped out once or needed to have the battery replaced. Try to get the same story from any ipod owner. If it's a mini, forget it.

But here it was, a free 60 gb ipod. How could I turn that down? I decided to give it a shot. I tested it out on my laptop, getting the few tracks I keep on there for my wife . . . Mephistopholes.

Last night, I tried to install itunes on my computer at home. First off, Quicktime is a bitch and infects every fucking thing, but whatever, I'll deal with that later. Then I try to install the ipod but it says I can't because it's already has a library on another computer (my laptop). Plus there are songs that I bought there which I don't have the licenses for on my home computer. Itunes tells me to either cancel copying of those tracks or do a complete reset. I try to reset the thing, as prompted, so that I can start fresh. And it tells me that I have to plug it into the wall in order to complete the reset. Mi hermano never gave me the wall plug, because he thought I didn't need it. So now I have a brick which I can't use.

My Creative doesn't freak out when I plug it into different machines. And I thought Ipods were so useful, part of the Apple Zeitgeist that is busy making peoples lives better while charging a petamillion for it. They are the acerbic hip dude from Waiting, and I'm just the fat funny guy from the Daily Show. I'd rather be the fat funny dude, honestly.

I'm going to try this tonight, http://www.mgtek.com/dopisp/. It's a plugin for WMP that works with ipods. Maybe it will be less stressful than dealing with itunes, i always liked WMP's interface better.

Oh and 420, dude.

Jack Thompson is an asshole

2007-04-18T15:12:00.000-05:00

Why is he on FOX News as a "School Shooting Expert"? He is not an expert. He is an attorney who represents victims of teen violence in civil suits against companies like Take Two by using the Videogame Made Them Do It Defense. And loses. He is now linking the shooting in Virginia to videogames somehow, even though there is a mess of evidence that this dude was way fucked up anyway. It's preposterous, and yet he still gets the press. Who's dick is he sucking to get on Fox News? That's the 35 thousand dollar question. Smart money's on Oprah, but that could just be a dream I had.

Check out some of the crazy. You won't be disappointed.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/jack-thompson/

I recently saw a bit on Fox News (it plays non-stop in the cafeteria at work) where the host was talking about a Washington Post article mentioning that the shooter played Counterstrike, a popular FPS, in high school. Kotaku also has a bit about how that point was edited out, probably for two reasons, one being the fact that it was deemed irrelevant and the other being the fact that VIDEOGAMES DO NOT MAKE PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE!

Ok, I'm off to go home and play on my Columbine Simulator, er, I mean, my Xbox.

NY weekend

2007-04-04T09:11:00.000-05:00

So it's Wednesday and I'm only now writing about what happened on the weekend. I know. I'm the promptest blogger you know, admit it.

On Friday, my wife, Mephistopholes, got a call from our downstairs neighbor. Usually he calls to see if we are having similar problems with the landlord. Like he called a lot this winter because his heat was basically off for the entire month of February, aka the coldest fucking month of the year. The neighbor, I'll call him Jeremy, because that's his name and I'm over the whole anonymous thing I think, travels often and came home one night from Uzbekistan or whatever to find his breath was now visible inside his apartment. Not a good sign. We felt his pain but our heat was fine, that is until last week where our cheap ass Polish landlord (I'm not saying being Polish has anything to do with it, not really) decided to fix the boiler himself instead of calling a repairman. So the problem, which could have been fixed in a day, took 6. Yes, I was without heat for a week. We survived, mostly by snuggling together closely and having lots of sex. That's even what my landlord suggested we do. Fuck like rabbits to heat the apartment. I wish I was kidding about that.

Anyway, my neighbor, Jeremy, called last Friday not about the heat, but to invite us to a movie screening. He works in the movies, I thought he was a visual effects supervisor guy, he has done some awesome movies like Pi, Life Aquatic and a shitload of others. The NYC marathon goes by our house and the two of us usually have a competing brunch parties where our friends come over to eat bacon while 30,000 people run past us. I found out after this years event that Darren Aranofsky, director of Pi and more recently, The Fountain, was at the brunch. I seem to remember him flirting with Mephistopholes. I'll have to kill him. But back to the point, kind of, I basically want to be Jeremy. He actually makes his living making movies. And he makes really cool ones. But at least I can somehow reap the benefits of living above him.

He called on Friday to invite us to a screening of Wes Anderson's newest film. Mephistopheles and I were like, sure. So we go to the Viacom building, 1515 Broadway, home to a little network you might have heard of called Music Television or some such. We are directed to a posh elevator bank, and go up to the Paramount Offices with glass tables and movie posters on the walls from the current releases. Again, it is posh. Up a few steps is the entrance to the cinema they have in the building. At the double doors are standing two men, one is a bookish gentleman with long hair and a blazer, the other is Jeremy. I go to shake hands with my neighbor, at the same moment that I realize the other dude is Wes Anderson himself. I recognize him from the AMEX commercial. I wish I had the wherewithal to at least introduce myself to Mr. Anderson but I think there were some studio big wigs behind me because a split second after I say hi to Jeremy, both he and Wes were locked on the fat balding dude coming up the steps. If I know anything about the movies it's that fat balding men are always studio execs. So I didn't intrude and went to go find a seat.

There weren't any left. Seriously, a private showing, and there were no seats left. Would my tardiness prevent us from receiving this gift from the heavens, this manna? No, some hot female PAs, who are infinitely more happy at their jobs than I am at mine, busted out some chairs and Mephistopheles and I sat in the aisle and watched the first Public Screening of The Darjeeling Limited. That's right, Wes even came out and told us so before it started. They hadn't shown it to anyone yet. No one. We were the first to see the cut film, other than the editors and the director himself. It was a great honor. Oh, and Wes told us that his colleague Jeremy would be talking to us after the screening to gather some feedback. Jeremy is Wes Anderson's colleague now? What the fuck am I doing?

The movie starts and it's fucking great. Just great. The first ten minutes or so is a short film with Jason Schwartzman and Padme (I forget her name). The film ends and credits roll. Then the real film begins with a shot of Bill Murray in the back of an Indian cab. I'm not going to give anything away, but it's a great role for him, I'm so glad Wes used Bill like that. (I'm on first name basis with them now, I went to private screening.) The rest of it stars Owen Wilson, Schwartzman and Anderson newcomer, Adrian Brody. The three of them are brothers who meet in India a year after their father's death to go on a spiritual journey. The train they meet on? The Darjeeling Limited.

After the movie, we were given blank sheets of paper and a golf pencil. I've been to a few of these screenings before, they usually give you a worksheet with specific questions like "Did you think the film needed a better ending? Choose one: Strongly agree, agree, don't give a shit, wish you could shoot yourself." It was weird having a blank slate to say what you thought. But after being a little put off (how do you write comments to one of your idols?) I warmed up to the process. I wrote a whole page of things I liked and didn't like. Mephistopholes started to get pissed that I was taking so long but I didn't care. I was here to write what though so I did. I was proud of it. I even signed my name at the bottom.

Leaving the theater, Wes was nowhere to be seen. My guess is he bugged out after the movie, he probably couldn't bear to see 100 hipsters scribbling down "you suck." Wes's colleague, Jeremy, was the guy who facilitated the passing out of the paper. I met him after and handed in our comments. We chatted for a few moments about the movie. I tried to sound like I knew what I was talking about. In retrospect, I probably sounded like a douche. Character development? Did I actually just say that? But he listened attentively and then bowed out of the convo, saying he had to go and read everyone's comments now.

That was my Friday night. Mephistopholes and I talked about the movie the whole way home on the L train (except for that innocuous conversation with that hip art gallery owner). She told me she saw Jeremy's name in the credits of the movie. He's not a visual effects anything anymore, Jeremy, my downstairs neighbor, the guy with no heat who complains about the landlord and has competing brunches with me? He is one of Wes Anderson's producers. He produces for Wes Anderson! Wes Anderson was basically like, "I've got this idea for a movie, want to make it with me?" and Jeremy is like, "Sure, Wes."

I want to be him so badly.

This post was meant to encapsulate the whole of my weekend but I already wrote a freaking tome about Friday night. I'll spare you the rest. Here's the short short version: I went to a NY Islanders game on Sat. night, my first hockey experience and it was awesome. Brutally awesome. On Sun., My wife and I looked at buying new homes in Ditmas Park. We are screwed, we'll never own any apartment bigger than a breadbox. That is all.

Stream of consciousness personal ad

2007-03-26T12:35:00.000-05:00

I am a MAN!

I play D&D. I play WOW. I play chess online (not very well). I go to the gym. I play basketball. I run on the subway. I run on the beach with my brother his papillon. I drive a Dodge STRATUS! Actually I drive a 94 Volvo wagon. I eat meat. I don't eat seafood. I eat fruit every morning. My cum tastes like pineapples. I think. Therefore I am. I am a secretary. I wear short skirts. I put out for cash. I wear no makeup. I just bought two books and a teeshirt from Penny Arcade. I am currently wearing a headset for the telephone. My car gets 20 mpg, IF I'M LUCKY! I just left a message that was way too long. I tend to ramble on voicemail. I just want to get everything in there. I have to make people laugh for 20 minutes straight. I don't know how I'm going to pull that shit off. I am on the 51st floor. I email too often. I think I can fly. I am Brian McKnight. Or Rick James. I'm six feet tall. Or 5'10" but I'm rounding up. My penis is six inches of white meat. I like bacon. Better than sausage in the morning. Jimmy Dean is an asshole. Do you want to date me?

i am a man...

Friday and Subways

2007-03-09T09:42:00.000-05:00

Here it is. Another week gone. woo.

I ride the subway here in New York everyday, sometimes four or 6 times a day (but always in multiples of 2). That's a lot of subwaying. I know many people hate the press and push of the masses on the trains. It can fucking piss you off. Like when all you want to do is get home, take your clothes off and veg in front of your media of choice, and there are about 5 million people in your way. But I love the subway. It's part of what makes New York the city it is. Where else are you bombarded with so much humanness?

Here is a non-comprehensive list in no particular order of the various characters I've observed on the MTA's New York City Transit:

The Rabbit. These people know the exact door of the exact subway car which leads to the exact staircase they need to make the exact transfer. As soon as the door opens, they sprint out and run up the stairs willy-nilly, with no care for appearance or safety. I must confess that I am a rabbit. I run with the best of them, setting the pace for the pack. The rabbit hates to be caged in by the herd of cattle slowly marching up the stairs to their doom. The rabbit must run free.
The Wall. Tall dudes, usually wearing puffy black coats, who stand in front of the subway car doors. The doorway is normally about five or six feet wide. When the Wall stands in it, suddenly the opening shrinks to two. And when there are two Walls (not an uncommon occurence) you have to push through like a baby pushing through a fat chick's vagina. No really, it's that bad.
The Crazy Conductor. I've only encountered this once or twice in my career as a subway rider. Before the train announcments were automated on the newer cars, the conductor would get on the horn and shout out the current and next stops and end with the word "Standclearoftheclosingdoorsplease." As is common of MTA workers, though, most of the conductors had an outrageous foreign accent that only got magnified by crappy speakers. The announcements were unintelligble, and most subway veterans tuned them out. But once, while riding the L train under the East River, a conductor got on the mic with a message, "Don't just push and scrape onto the subway like animals. We are human beings, not cattle. Try to act like it." I'm sure that speech isn't exactly MTA protocol. Another time, I heard a conductor give out weather forecast information and his ironic predictions on the upcoming election. The smiling faces of the other passengers proved that this was a unique New York moment. I agree.

More subway characters to follow including but not limited to The Bitchy Mother, Subway Soundtrack , and Mr. I Just Crapped My Pants.

My web 2.0 footprint

2007-02-26T11:55:00.000-05:00

You tempt fate every time you Google yourself. That's a given. You may end up with some embarassing diatribe you wrote when you were in school and the internet was young, or may see baby pictures your mom decided to post on Flickr to get back at you for not visiting them last weekend. Or worse, you may find nothing at all. Is there anything more depressing than a blank page? In this internet web 2.0 culture, if you don't even rank in the first ten entries, you're nothing. That's sad. Sadder than the end of Bridge to Terabithia.

So I googled me recently and I gagged, or gaggled. Sure there are more mundane entires about theater productions I produced or movie contests I was a semi-finalist for. But there is a ton actually written about my writing. I mean, yeah, I've written a few gaming articles. And it may be cheating. The demographic of people who read articles about video games are probably also the kind of people who'd be likely to blog about said article. But still, I was surprised and more than a little happy about it.

At the risk of getting needlessly messianic, I'm linking the hell out of myself. Hell, everyone deserves a little self-promotion every once in a while.

http://mac.joystiq.com/2005/11/15/wow-player-analyzes-pvp-cruelty/

This well-known gaming blog posted this over a year ago and I'm just internet savvy enough to find just now. It even has over 30 user comments about what happened to me and my level 29 Night Elf Priest in Wow. I wish I knew when it came out so I could have posted some shit-talk back to some of these fuckers.

Here are some other bloggers chiming about crap I wrote for the escapist:

http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2006/06/gaming-links.html

http://www.qj.net/Science-fiction-and-games-go-together/pg/49/aid/70525

http://www.gamepro.com/community/profile.cfm?login_name=Lunchbox&blog_id=14073

http://tlundmark.blogspot.com/2005/11/in-end-there-is-just-no-point.html

And it's not just blogging people. I love that my words are now being used as if I am an expert. Some people are desperate for any promotional material, I guess. On this page, something I wrote about a game engine is used to sell it to other video game makers:

http://www.bigworldtech.com/company/testimonials_en.php

In perhaps the strangest link of all, here I am cited in some dude's law school paper on gambling in MMORPGs:

http://webpages.acs.ttu.edu/mmetheni/Internet%20Gambling%20and%20the%20MMORPG.htm#_ftn51

Scrolling up, the citation is on the following line,

These formal studies are in addition to the high volume of more anecdotal documented odd behavior[51] mirroring other parts of the real society in the Society.

It's crazy, people are using my shit to write their freaking papers?

new design

2007-02-23T10:31:00.000-05:00

I was getting tired of the old template. What do you dudes think about this fancy green one? Hold your applause, please, please, I'll be available for autographs by the stage door...

And because I feel guilty just posting that little statement, here's a picture of a douche on a banquette:

Ah, videogames

2007-02-22T11:02:00.000-05:00

So Rain Delay's got an interesting bit about videogames helping surgeons perform better. Well, duh. We're talking about manual dexterity here and any activity which reinforces the brain-hand connection will improve performance. Videogames, the first truly interactive medium, can and have been shown to actually help mental and physical development, despite being portrayed as a time-wasting endeavor. The news outlets, like the Fair and Balanced Fox news affiliates (who really believes that 24 interviews are news?), love to pick up the banner against any violent acts perpetrated by admitted gamers. "The videogames made them do it." It's the same that was said of the Beatles, Marilyn Manson, Ozzy Osbourne and Barney the Purple Dinosaur. The truth is that no song or movie or book or game can make someone commit awful acts of violence. Gamers are especially sensitive to this line of reasoning because they've seen such mindless discrimination from their mothers for years. But sometimes, this senstivity goes a little too far.

Take the case of the kid in Wisconsin who is in jail for murdering a homeless person. CNN ran an article about the case, highlighting a dangerous trend of sport killings amongst the kids of America. There have been many homeless people killed the last few years by teenagers, perhaps because of a lack of moral understanding and/or consequences by disposing of an unwanted member of society, ie. a smelly homeless dude. There is more to be said about the kid's sense of superiority over those less fortunate (most of the perpetrators are middle-class white kids) and the ability to exact their own perverted sense of justice. One could even argue that our country's stance on the world stage as a moral superior, able to wreak havoc on any state or individual for a perceived lack of character, is more to blame. Fuck Saddam, we're better, let's kill him. (insert "that smelly homeless guy" for Saddam and you'll get my point)

All of this would have passed my notice however if it weren't for one line in the CNN story.

Ihrcke told police that killing "the bum" reminded him of playing a violent video game, a police report shows.

That's it. One line in a 2000 word story. Who knew that one little throwaway jab at videogames would ignite such passion in the gaming community? At least 3 major gaming blogs have cited the CNN article as another attack against videogames. I agree with their stance. I laughed at the jokes at CNN's expense. Gabe from Penny Arcade makes a very funny rebuttal, citing the story claiming that one of the assailant's rubbed his own feces on the dead homeless man:

"[Rule #]4. Don’t take shit out of your butt and rub it on the hobo you just killed. To me this seems like the easiest lesson of all. My son is only two and already he’s coming to understand that “poops” belong in the potty. How did this kid get to the age of fifteen years old without learning this? Here’s how easy this one is:

Hey son, come here real quick.
Yeah Dad?
Don’t take shit out of your butt.
Sure thing Dad.

Done! How hard was that? What kind of crazy fuck takes poop from his butt and rubs it on someone?"

But I think the gamer reaction is a little extreme. I mean, the videogames thing wasn't even the lead on the CNN story. It was one line from a quote from the kid himself. Yes, that angle is overplayed in the media. Yes, that kid is a dipshit (or rather, a very smart dipshit) for bringing it up. But come on, let's not make a Jack Thompson case out of it. It seems that the gamer community is now guilty of some of the same inflammatory tactics that their opponents always use. Maybe it's worth it to muster this kind of outrage at every disparaging mention of videogames in the press. Maybe. But maybe if we start taking every quote from an obviously crazy fuck as a serious accusation against gaming, then we are also adding credence to that accusation. I'm just saying.

Videogames have enough demons to battle without creating new ones.

(And sometimes those demons threaten to destroy Azeroth and we have to travel through the Dark Portal to battle the Burning Legion on the shards of wasted Draenor. Yeah, I've been playing too much WOW again.)

And for those of you who still cling to the belief that videogames corrupt absolutely, read this letter from the stepmom of one of the teens jailed in the case. It's a crazy read.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/02/21#1172088960

Bad Words

2007-02-09T12:48:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while, I see some moron write something that inspires a scathing backlash essay. My friend sent me this link this morning from my hometown newspaper in Connecticut. It involves many things which I hold dear, UConn basketball, Gampel Pavilion, and swearing profusely.

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=38838b92-4244-42b7-b2e5-26f16600ef92

Here is my response, which I just emailed to the writer:

To Mr. Mike DiMauro:

RE: UConn Students Cross Line With Crass Behavior

I'm a UConn alum now living in New York. I've been following Huskies basketball for over 16 years and have been reading your writing in The Day for just as long. During that time, I've noticed your writing style degrade into simple, easy topics which the common reader in CT can consume without having their senior-citizen-values threatened. The pinnacle of which is the article a friend sent me this morning about UConn fans cheering at a game at Gampel. The piece is so fraught with fallacies that I'm not sure where to begin. According to your article, you expected this kind of a response, so I felt it was imperative that I indulge you.

The basic premise of your article is that you wish UConn fans, and sports fans in general, would resist the urge to cheer for their team. Or at least, they should only cheer in the way that you find acceptable. As long as we keep everything PG, the world is a better place. I whole-heartedly disagree with that attitude.

Today's organized sports grew out of the bloodsports of history, from Roman gladiatorial games to medieval jousting and combat. Watching the death of a criminal by hanging or otherwise was a common activity up until the 20th century. We, as a culture, have grown away from such profane entertainments, but there still exists a need in the human psyche for such exploits. We are fascinated by the unhealthy contest, the bitter struggling of individuals against any and all opponents. Our current fixation on reality TV proves this.

What does this have to do with UConn basketball? The contest of the two teams on the court can become an orgiastic experience for the spectator. I've been there. When I was a student, I had season tickets to the student section and rarely missed a game. I would yell anything that came to mind, such as "Kick them in the face!" or "Punch them in the throat!" I would even swear and use the f-word, if you can imagine. All of this behavior would increase my emotional involvement with the game. When UConn won, I would feel ecstatic. If they lost, melancholic.

Too often, I see fans sitting throughout the game, especially at the HCC. They only stand for the ceremonial first field goal, and then thereafter are planning to leave the arena with 10 mins left in the second half. These are the fans who cover their ten-year-old's ears from hearing the word "crackhead," as if they expected the game to be a showing of Happy Feet. Is this the behavior that you are encouraging? Or are you saying that fans should be raucous, but not too raucous? That is a difficult line to draw.

Perhaps the not-so-random shouting of fans (Paul Harris was actually indicted for drug sales and 3rd-degree assault) is actually a plea for an organized student section. I look at the Oakland Zoo in Pittsburgh and I wonder why nothing like that has grown at the University of Connecticut, which arguably has a program more steeped in basketball tradition than Pitt. Instead of suggesting the administration publicly censure the student fans in the Daily Campus, which I'm not confident would have the effect you intend, you could use your statewide circulation to call for a more organized and efficient cheering section.

Your article gets even more specious when you recommend Jim Calhoun write an email discouraging the use of expletives. You've been to many more games than I have, with a much closer vantage point to Calhoun's coaching style. Have you, sir, never heard Calhoun himself utter the dreaded f-word on the court? I have. Many, many times. Yet, in your piece, you say that he should be an advocate for decorum at Gampel. Perhaps you should, with all of your experience, tell Calhoun how he should coach a basketball game. I would cherish listening to his response for years to come. I bet he would drop some pretty big f-bombs on you.

Mr. DiMauro, you already named yourself many of the terms I might have used to describe your attitude so I will spare you any further name-calling. I will merely say that you are wrong. The behavior you suggest should be eliminated from the game is precisely what draws people to an athletic contest. We are not passively watching a movie or TV. The cheering or jeering of a crowd can actually influence the outcome of a game. It is why playing games in MSG or Cameron Indoor Stadium is infinitely more intense than at, say, the Hartford Civic Center. Gampel is the only arena UConn should play its games at because the student section is indeed raucous, supportive, loyal and occasionally profane. And that behavior helps the team win games.

Or did you want the Huskies to lose?

Let's see what happens. Maybe I'll be published in The Day tomorrow, maybe I'll never get a response. But somehow I feel a little better for having wrote that.

WhoreCraft

2007-02-08T16:35:00.000-05:00

So there I was, minding my own business and not looking at porn at work. Then BANG!, I happen upon this crazy mashup:

The World of WhoreCraft

It's episodic pron content set in an Azeroth-like world with blood elves, hunters and rogues doing it from behind. No really, that's one of the episode titles. At first I thought it was kind of ridiculously derivative crap, but then I read an interview with the creator (?). He's been playing WOW for years while starring in and producing hundreds of porn videos. He wanted to combine his worlds. Hence, WhoreCraft. It makes perfect sense, if you think about it. The asthetic of warcraft is very much based in anime and its sensual conception of the female form. We all know night elves are hawt. It was inevitable really, given WOW's popularity, that someone would make the leap from sexy cartoons to real people screwing.

I haven't DLed the content myself yet, but I plan to tonight. It may be good, it may be crap. I'll let you know.

But all I know is, I spent way too much time looking at this stuff at my cubicle.

Movies that were good when you were 6...

2007-02-08T09:16:00.000-05:00

But kind of suck when you watch them now.

A not-so-comprehensive list:

The Neverending Story - I remember loving this delightful tale of the Nothing destroying all of Fantasia when I was a kid. I just watched it on netflix and I have to say, keep your nostalgia firmly ensconced in better fare. The ancient effects, nonsensical editing, and bad child acting, consisting of yelling every line "But that's impossible!", definitely ruin the meta-story. Why did I remember the Empress being hot? She was freaking 10 years old, what's wrong with me?
The Money Pit - The only funny part is when Tom Hanks is stuck in the floor and does that weird barking laugh. The rest is actually rather sad and reminds me too much of life in my crappy apartment, where my shower has tiles falling on my head on a daily basis.
Spies Like Us - Still has got some great moments with Chase and Akroyd, but the sequence at the end with the lasers and the missiles and the pudding pops are way too Reagan-era for me now. I used to love the Cold War, what happun?
Star Trek 3: The Search For Spock - I used to think this one went against the odd-numbered Trek films rule, wherein they all suck, and pulled off Kirk and the Gang's weird quest to save Spock from being dead. After watching it as a mature human being though, I have to agree with what Trekkies (and everyone else) knew 20 years ago. It sucks.

Add your own tales of the disappointment in your childhood's ability to critically analyze films in the comments.

A tale of two blogs

2007-02-05T11:12:00.000-05:00

I've been doing a lot of work over at my comedy blog, scheduling shit and talking up my gigs. I still have a lto of work do on it, making it pretty and adding pics and video (don't even get me started on how much my myspace page sucks). I'm wondering if it even makes sense to have two blogs at this point. I mean, sure, it's nice to be able to post crap here that's on a more personal level, but that's part of the joy of blogging really, the baring of all your soul.

My dream is to have several urls which would point to the different aspects of my creative professional life. I'd have only one blog that I'd post to and give tags to each facet, like comedy, playwriting or producing. And the url producer.gregtito.com would only display blog entries with that tag. Is that even possible? Is it even necessary?

What think you, my loyal commenters?

Anyway, i thought I'd just point out to you that I do in fact have another blog, just in case you didn't know. There it is.

Bad Luck Streak

2007-01-30T14:57:00.000-05:00

We all have the shit hit the fan sometimes, but I think I've had a pretty awful lot recently. Here's a bulleted list, in no particular order, of the crap that's happened to me in the last few weeks.

My Honda got hit while parked
Got speeding ticket while looking for new car
Bought a used car which so far doesn't have working heat (or a front grille, don't know how I missed that)
Missed playing in my basketball game last night because I was dealing with car crap
Had sore throat for the last week
Spent hours writing for this website only to figure out today that I will never get paid for any of it
Pissed off the guy running said website by apparently snarky emails which I thought were clear and mature
My new camera broke while I was in Russia
My filet mignon from said russian restuarant looked/tasted more like Fried Ratnon
Mephistopholes will never trust me to purchase cars again

I thought it would be a much longer list actually. Maybe my life's not as bad as I make it out to be. Yeah, right. And maybe I'm a Chinese Jet Pilot.

What Bush can do to stop health care costing an arm and a leg

2007-01-25T11:20:00.000-05:00

Interesting discussion going on at my brother-in-law's blog re: health care.

http://blog.chemacki.com/?p=201

Here's a tidbit:

I do have a problem with the amount of money those in the medical profession charge. For today’s visit, I literally spent 5 minutes with a physician’s assistant and was charged over $175. That’s over $2,100 per hour! What the @#&$! I’m sorry, but I have a real problem with that. I’m guessing the idea is that the $175 is an hourly charge. But I should not be charged for the 45+ minutes I spent waiting…while they also charged other patients for the same full hour as well. This is total bullshit. I don’t understand how this is even legal, but every doctor’s office does it. No wonder they all drive Mercedes and Porsches and live in 5000 square foot houses.

My response:

Here’s an idea, what if a hospital offered customers a monthly plan to use the services of their doctors. Say $200/month for unlimited services, with a deductible for major surgeries. Think of it as a finance plan for health care. That would save billions of dollars by wiping out the need for insurance. There are holes in that plan, of course (like what happens if you get injured while you’re out of town?), but I think it’s a start.

Car update

2007-01-25T10:46:00.000-05:00

More news on the car, I got the accident report and the driver was actually a FEMALE. I know, I know, spare me the woman driver jokes, I've already made them all in my head.

And even though the car service company is insured, they are late on their payments and the policy was terminated as of 1/14/07. That's 3 days before the accident for those of you counting at home. And the place where I had the car towed hasn't yet estimated the damage on the car. It's been there almost a week. I just called to check what the damage is and Rusty or Ralphie or whatever the fucking guy's name is said he was looking for 91 Acura in the lot and couldn't see it. I told him I have a 91 Honda, not an acura. He said, "Oh." Maybe he'll call me back today, maybe not. It doesn't really matter at this point.

I'm paralyzed. I can't make a claim on somebody who doesn't have insurance. And I can't file anything with small claims court because I don't know what the damage is.

You know what time it is?

Hurry up and wait...

...

...

stilll waiting...

...

...

Never liked that car anyway

2007-01-21T12:32:00.000-05:00

There it is. My car was smashed by a drunk car service driver in Brooklyn. I didn't even find out about it until I happened to glance down the street. I thought, "Huh, why is my hood open?" Then I knew. I rushed down the block to find the little as yet unnamed Honda crushed on two fronts, shards of colored plastic on the ground surrounding it.

Ironically, the car was parked in front of a bar. I went in, slightly in shock, and asked the first waitress I saw what had happened to my car. She looked at me like I was crazy. "Didn't you notice the car smashed up right outside?" "What?" was all she could muster. I looked for a bartender. He said that he wasn't working when it happened, by he heard from the previous tender that my Honda got hit the night before, almost 20 hours before I first noticed it.

I called 911, they sent a patrol car full of veteran cops with perfect Brooklyn accents. "Oh yeah, that happened last night as I was finishing up my shift. They arrested the guy, DUI." The precinct had an accident report filed already but the helpful clerk I spoke to there said she couldn't give me any information about the case. "It's just our policy." I don't have collision on my car, it's not worth anything so why waste the money? But because this crap wasn't my fault, I might be able to collect from the drunk dude's insurance. Problem is, I can't find out what his insurance company is because the cops won't tell me until the accident report is processed. We're talking weeks here.

So I got the thing towed. AAA was a pain because they wouldn't let me tow it if the car hadn't already been moved from the scene of a crime. Apparently, if the cops had deigned to move the Honda ten feet, then it was legal for AAA to move. If not, which the cops were too lazy to do, then it was illegal. I talked to the supervisor at AAA for fifteen minutes until I was like, "Can we just start this conversation over with me saying that the car had been moved?" To his credit, whether he knew it was an asinine bureaucratic policy or if he was just annoyed with talking to me , he capitulated and sent the truck.

Luckily, as the car was being towed, a random hipster came up to me and told me that his SUV was the vehicle that my car was pushed into (there's barely a scratch on his bumper, BTW.) He was at the scene when it happened, and filled in a few blanks for me. The car was indeed a livery car. The dude was indeed arrested. He apparently swerved to avoid hitting something, rear ended my parked car, which then smashed into his car. He gave me his card and said he took a bunch of photos. He emailed them to me the next day, the pic at the top is his.

I played detective for the next day or so, trying to track down who hit my car. The livery guy's license plate number was on one of the helpful hipsters pictures. I went to this site and searched for it. The car is registered to Saleem Motors, which has an address and phone number listed in Long Island City. Problem is, the number is never answered and goes to a fax machine eventually. Who knows what's going on there? I could drop by the address, it's not that far, but it's cold out, and there's prolly nobody there.

So I'm playing the waiting game. I can't do anything until the report is available. My car is being stored at an auto body shop and will get estimates done on it on Monday. I'm pretty sure it's toast. Look at this photo, the radiator and grill are smashed, the hood is gone and the battery is dislodged. The car only has a blue book of about $1400 anyway. Repairing it is going to cost way more than that. I've started looking for new cars in the hood. These look promising but I kinda wish I had something right now. You don't realize how much you use a car in the city until you can't.

The frustrating thing is that in no way is this my fault (I wasn't even in the car) but somehow I know that I'll be the one penalized. One day I had a perfectly working car. The next, it's gone. Fucking bullshit.

An event

2007-01-16T14:16:00.000-05:00

So I was there in Midtown at the Best Buy on 5th and 44th. I left my apartment in brooklyn around twenty minutes before. Driving over the williamsburg bridge was a relative breeze. As I drove through the First Avenue tunnel and swung around so that I could go down Fifth, I was worried that I was too late. I mean, I had worked it out so that I would be at the store just as they opened their doors. Would I be too late? Would I not be able to purchase a copy of the first World of Warcraft Expansion Pack, The Burning Crusade? Or even worse, would I be forced to stand in line for hours, enduring the city's new found winter wind, and not be able to obtain a Collector's Edition of the aforementioned electronic entertainment product? I'm sure you are riveted.

There was a line of like-minded dudes who couldn't bear to wait until daylight on the day of the pack's release. It wasn't that crazy, maybe about 150 people. The thing that struck me was how the crowd was a complete cross-section of the city's population. Every race and/or age group was represented. There was a couple in their thirties with their 9 year old son. I saw several twosomes of run of the mill dudes wearing barn jackets and bad leather shoes. Ten feet behind me there was a Yo with a visor on backwards and upside down who was talking loudly into his cellphone about having kicked ass at a WOW trading card game tournament. A few hetero Asian couples bought their copies to ostensibly continue playing together. I saw a man in his fifties standing in line wearing an enormous black cowboy hat. There was a tiny Mexican right behind me wearing a Yankees cap (I was wearing my Sox colors, funny how WOW brings us all together.) We chatted a bit as we watched the customers ahead of us carting out multiple copies of the game. "What the fuck, how could they let them buy ten copies?" Both of us were worried that the store would run out of Collector's Editions (CEs) before we got in there. We never mentioned baseball.

I got inside, and on an impulse bought two CEs. I thought I'd be able to use one and ebay the other. I mean they are up there. I drove home and my wife, Mephistopholes, promptly made fun of me for the dork I am.

Then because I hate myself, I stayed up until 2 or 3 installing the game and looking all the neat things in the CE. I'm going to go home after work and rub it all over my body. If you're lucky, I'll post the pics.

Someone call a dentist, it's going to be a long night

2007-01-16T14:02:00.000-05:00

This is probably the coolest thing I've seen constructed out of gummi bears, toothpicks and Nerds. A whole lot of nerds.

http://missedmanners.wordpress.com/2007/01/12/what-i-did-over-christmas-vacation/

Just in case you were unclear

2007-01-12T09:59:00.000-05:00

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®, its
subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is
now played by more than 8 million gamers around the world. World of Warcraft has
also achieved new regional subscriber milestones, with more than 2 million
players in North America, more than 1.5 million players in Europe, and more than
3.5 million players in China.

World of Warcraft is huge. In case you weren't listening, they just announced that they have over 8 million subscribers. 8 million! That's freaking huge. Just to put that in perspective, Everquest, SOE's POS, topped out at around 500,000. That's like 6% of the numbers that WOW has now. And that's right before they will have a huge surge of new fanboys because of the expansion coming out next week. Expect the next announcement to top 10 million. We have an epidemic on our hands, ladies and gentlemen. And the only cure is some Strong Anti-Venom, or maybe a Healing Potion Injector.

Read the full press release: http://www.blizzard.com/press/070111.shtml

Your nerd percentage

2007-01-11T12:03:00.000-05:00

40.476190476190474% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

I find myself a bit chastened. This test was actually pretty hard. For most of the questions, I had no idea what book/movie/show they were even referencing. Post your scores and let me know how your nerdness compares to mine.

Haven't done this in a while

2007-01-05T15:32:00.000-05:00

but it's time for some linkage:

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/animator

An internet saavy friend of mine sent this over. It's a great little movie of a flash creation taking over a flash animator's workspace. And when I say flash, I mean, you know, Flash.

http://gameknot.com/

Gameknot is a great chess site and has consumed many hours of my work day. It's free, unless you want to upgrade to a special metal-based membership. Games are very easy to set up, especially if you like the low stress of only having to make one move every 7 days. I prefer the longer ones so if I forget to log in over a weekend I don't end up timing out. It's a fun diversion, with a lot of features including rankings, guilds (teams I think actually), game database of millions of possible moves, openings database and personal messaging. My username is jinglehopper, send me a challenge.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/movies.html

World of Warcraft's first expansion comes out a week from today, January, 16th, 2007. If you're not excited about the Burning Crusade, then you're no friend of mine. Go to the link above to download the opening cinematic (I recommend the flash viewer unless you want to wait hours for the bittorrent) which will play when you first boot up the game after waiting in line for 9 hours at your local Best Buy or Nerd Store. If that doesn't get your nerd juices flowing, then, sir, you never had a nerd heart.

http://worldofwar.net/

The WOW community is ramping up for the new content so I thought I'd give a little shoutout to the fansites I check the most. Worldofwar.net has been around forever. It actually grew out of a Warcraft III site I used to check and is part of the LoadedInc network or something. The site is a great resource for the latest news about World of Warcraft, highlighting quotes from Blizzard or other fansites. The Admins are from Britain so they pay attention to both the EU and North American servers. In addition to news, they have a great database of guides and info about the game that I have checked countless times. The profession FAQs are especially useful.

http://www.wowhead.com/

http://www.thottbot.com/

These sites offer similar functionality. In the game, there are thousands(millions?) of different items. Some are junk and can be sold off, but most have some sort of purpose whether for a quest or for crafting purposes. Thott has been around since early beta in 2004, and has proved invaluable to me and everyone else who is trying to figure out where crap like Breath of Wind drops. The quest database and commenting system is indispensable. In typical outsourcing web 2.0 style, if the information you need isn't gleaned from thott's bot, chances are a fellow player has already given you the info in the comments. Wowhead is fairly new and offers a more streamlined interfacethan thott, although it doesn't have the years of user comments support that thott does. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, most of the comments are informative due to heavy administration. They weed out the "leetz hunter weapon!" crap that you sometimes must wade through on Thottbot. Wowhead also has extensive Burning Crusade info mined from the Beta including new recipes, spells, talents and items.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Main_Page

Just what you expect, it's a wiki of all Wow related material. It has great articles on nearly every facet of the game but I sometimes like to just read through the lore pieces. Sometimes you really just want to know the story behind Detheroc, dreadlord of the Burning Legion.

http://www.wowace.com/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.wowinterface.com/

http://ui.worldofwar.net/

These sites are all concerned with customizing the interface of WOW. The original look of the game is great but there is just something tantalizing about being the complete master of my gaming experience. Using these mods, written by wow players and amateur programmers, I can go from this, to this,

The difference is huge (in a French pixie voice from Pulp Fiction.)

Holidaytime

2006-12-30T13:51:00.000-05:00

I like it. Last weekend was fun with my family and this weekend is fun with the inlaws (so far). I got bombed last night with my father-in-law drinking chilled Grey Goose. That's always a good sign.

So my new job starts on Tuesday. I'm a quiver with anticipation as I think it will give me the oppurtunity to post more here and write more often. My old job, as bad this sounds, was taking up too much of my time. The whole point of having a day job in front of a computer, IMHO, is so that I can work on the things I really care about while earning money from the man. The new job will be able to that much more efficiently. At least I hope so. It's hard to determine that during the interview process.

Interviewer- Do you have any questions for me?

Me- Um, will I be able to jerk off on the internet?

Interviewer- Yes. I do it all the time.

Me- Sold!

What else are blogs for?

2006-12-19T17:36:00.000-05:00

I officially quit my job three minutes ago. I was nervous and anxious all day because I knew I would have to tell my bosses I was out the door on January First like so many New Year's Resolutions. It is liberating. The copier doesn't work you say? Fuck you. You need some staples? Buy your own, bitch. The next two weeks are going to be awesome...

Of course, I'm just going from one corporate chump job to another but at least I'm doing it of my own free will. These a-holes were the first to hire me into this white slavery, and for that I thank them, but it's time I moved on from the lowest rung.

For posterity's sake, I am reprinting my resignation letter here. Ps. None of the names were changed to protect anyone. These are actually the fuckheads I work for.

Bob Jingle
*** Bedford Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Charles Fuckstick
The Bear and the Bull
Internal Audit Department
*** Park Ave
New York, NY 10022

December 19^th, 2006

To Mr. Charles Fuckstick:

Please accept this letter as formal resignation of my position as administrative assistant with The Bear and the Bull's Internal Audit Department.

Friday, December 29^th, will be my last day of employment with the company.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to work with such a magnificent organization of enlightened, supportive, and creative individuals. It is sad to leave, but you are all flaming ass-mongerers. Fuck you, I'm out.

Sincerely,

Bob Jingle
Administrative Assistant

Marvin Poopmaster
Bob Jewtard
Marshall McLuhan
Brent "I Touch Girls" Hamfist

They Actually Are Giants!

2006-12-18T15:09:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, I saw a band perform that has not forgotten that rock can be fun. Too much of our modern musical landscape is a dreary melancholic mess. There's really only so much that can be said about love unrequited or being cheated on.

They Might Be Giants have a few songs about that shit (I think), but most of their subjects are obscure references to 19th century presidents, Belgian painters or the classification of species.

I'll write more on the show later but for now, look at this monkey:

MLB.com

2006-12-06T17:17:00.000-05:00

The other day, my friend forwarded a job listing to me for MLB.com. Basically, they are looking for beat writers for each of the 30 MLB teams. While I would love to cover the Sox, I don't really want to move to Boston any time soon.

Anyway, here's what I wrote to apply to be a writer here in NY.

Dear MLB.com,

I love baseball. I grew up a Red Sox fan in the embroiled border state of Connecticut where half my peers remember 1986 with ectasy, the other half with despair. My family would take annual trips to Fenway, mostly at my insistence since neither of my forebears were very much into sports. I remember the feeling of the old Fenway, before the boxes and the Monster seats, with reverance and I still keep a special place in the cockle of my heart for anyone named Duey, or Marty, or Spike.

More recently, living in New York for the past six years has kept me on the front lines of the greatest rivalry in sports. I follow each game and hot stove rumor with the glee of a kid waiting for Christmas morning. And while I get to go to Fenway less often than I'd like, I have embraced the Mets as the lesser of the NY evil empires. Pedro's defection only made my affection for the Amazin's grow, despite Boston Dirt Dogs feeble cries for all Red Sox Nation to damn him. And now that the 20 year Anniversary season is past, it's time to let bygones get the hell out of dodge and start writing for MLB.com covering the Mets.

I've been a writer all my life. I've written videogame articles under deadlines for The Escapist Magazine and Next Generation, but nothing is as tight a deadline as performing stand up comedy here in New York as I have for the past 2 years. If you don't have material before you go on, you're screwed.

I'm excited to meet with you to discuss my credentials. Contact me via my cell, 917.***.****, or email me at ****@*****.***. Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,

Bob Jingle

That job is mine!!!!!

How I learned to stop worrying and love open mics.

2006-11-07T17:43:00.000-05:00

Open mics are always fun.

That statement is completely false. Sometimes.

Confused? Me too. But that's what being a standup comic in NY is all about.

When I first started performing, I tried to go to at least one open mic a week. My standup buddy, who I will call Joni, because that's her real name, was very good about forcing me bully up. We'd go to places like the Village Lantern or the Comedy Cellar, get our names on a list and do our schtick. It was great getting stage time, with a real microphone in hand on a real stage in a real comedy club. There was also the chance to interact with others of my ilk.

But that was also the major drawback. The only people in the audience at open mics were other comics. And they are a notoriously jealous bunch. They don't laugh. At least most of the ones who were in the audience when I did my set didn't laugh. But I knew my jokes were at least a little funny, because I would do them in front of paying crowds at Caroline's or whatever and people would die. It got really frustrating. There was one especially awful night where I went last at a open mic at the Village Lantern and bombed riotously (I remember I had a whole bunch of subway jokes that should have KILLED), then met Joni at Joe's around the corner to do another open mic. I went on at midnight and bombed spectacularly again, with what I thought were my "good" jokes. All five of the dudes left in the club at that point just stared at me, blankly. They offered no support, other than their drunken, silent presence, which, frankly, didn't help me think I was very funny. Then after walking uptown fifteen blocks to the L train, only to find that it had shut down at midnight, I proceeded to shoot myself through the face. And then walk home over the Williamsburg Bridge. I got home at 2:37am, a bleeding, sobbing mess.

There was also the time issue. Open mics are a huge timesink. Even if you sign up ahead of time via email or whatever, you have no idea when you'll be able to go on. So you show up at 8, get on the list, and sometimes you're stuck there until 10 or 11 before you get your fucking 4 minutes. This can be a good thing, if the comics are good. It's possible they may even inspire a few jokes of your own. I laugh more than the average comic at other people's stuff. But more often than not, the sad morons who go up at these things are just trying to work out their personal problems, more than actually being funny. The time spent wading through amateur ventriloquists, lonely alcoholics and wannabe fratboys can be considerable. And with my serious World of Warcraft addiction, I don't have tons of time to waste.

So I stopped going. To open mics. I didn't feel like they really helped that much anyway. I decided to concentrate on doing bigger bringer shows every once in a while. This meant I was performing less, but the shows alway meant something.

Then last Monday, after my well documented bout of depression, I decided to go the Underground Lounge near Columbia, otherwise known as way too fucking far. I drank a shitload of coffee, wrote same new material about daylight savings time (HILARIOUS!) and drove up there.

I loved it. I felt like I was back in the swing again. Even my wife, Mephistopholes, she was like, "You go to one open mic and suddenly you're all happy again." I don't know if it was the fact that I was writing new material, or that I got to perform it and it wasn't awful, or that I felt like I was part of a scene, the sad comic scene. The other thing was that I wasn't nervous. In my comedy youth, I would get so frightfully nervous getting up in front of people, even open miccers, that I would shake or stutter on stage. But I memorized all my new jokes in an hour and didn't care if I got them right or not.

It was a great feeling.

I went back last night and I plan on doing more.

Coming out

2006-11-03T15:38:00.000-05:00

The cover story for the November issue of Wired is about the New Atheism. One of the authors it profiles is Richard Dawkins, a biologist from Oxford. He not only believes there is no God, he believes that faith in such a deity, as well as passing this faith to one's forebears, is an inherently evil act. While I kind of share the article writer's view that this sentiment is just as extremist as the fundamentalist extremists (I don't believe you can fight fire with fire in this case,) Dawkins shits out one soundbite that struck a chord with me:

I think [atheists] are in the same position as the gay movement was in a few decades ago. There was a need for people to come out. The more people who came out, the more people had courage to come out. I think that's the case with atheists. They are more numerous than anybody realizes.

Dawkins does have a point. People are often scared to say they are atheists, or considering atheism, because they don't want to potentially offend believers. My wife and my father have both said to me separately that I shouldn't make jokes about religion on stage. And I've noticed that people do get uncomfortable when I mock religion, even if they theyselves don't believe in it. It's effectively taboo to talk about belief in nothing. Why is that?

Consider this my outing. Now I'm off to go wax my butt and get a facial.

Inability to rationalize

2006-10-31T13:49:00.000-05:00

I think the thing with depression is that it quickly becomes uncontrollable. Everyone feels depressed at some point in their lives, even so-called happy people. You fail a test, you get yelled at by your superior, it rains on your wedding (or a black fly in your... nvm), shit happens. And people feel sad. But then you get better. Something cheers you up. Or you forget about what bothered you.

But what I'm feeling is different. I feel anxious or nervous for no real reason. I can try to figure it out, as most of what that post was trying to do. I'm definitely not happy with what I've done with my life, that's for sure. But someone else could look at my position and say, what the fuck? This guy's got nothing to be depressed about. I have a somewhat loving wife, a decent paying job, a good group of friends and a family who's mostly healthy. That's all true. And I know that, on some level, my life is probably pretty great. I try to tell myself that when I start to feel like shit. And while that used to work when I was younger, the power to rationalize away these feelings has dwindled to nil.

That's my problem.

Of course, today, I feel fine.

The Wonders of Web 2.0

2006-10-27T11:55:00.000-05:00

There's now a website which can solve all your mental health problems of doubt and depression.

MOODGym

Joy. Consider me cured.

It's a little dorky and British and a tad bit too survey-based for my tastes, but it's interesting. The basic premise is that unhappy people interpret events and feelings with a negative bias and happy people interpret them with a neutral or positive bias. Which makes sense, I guess.

The weird thing with me is that I think I used to be pretty firmly in category B. Things didn't bother me, and, if something really bad did happen, I always seemed to think it was unchangeable so there was no point in worrying about it. I took criticisms well, or at least I ignored them, and that seemed to be ok. I was also genuinely happy with other people and was able to forge a strong group of friends.

What changed? I do not know.

Let's talk about feelings

2006-10-26T12:44:00.000-05:00

I pretty much battle self-doubt, guilt and depression on a daily basis.

I can't pinpoint when it started happening. I don't think there was a specific event, although I could point at my production company dissolving 2 years ago as a big one. But then there's chicken and egg shit there. Did it all fall apart because of my self-doubt, guilt and depression or did those feelings appear because of its demise? Whatever.

The fact remains that I am 28 years old and I have accomplished nearly nothing since graduating from college. I've had a few bright spots here and there. I did this, I got this, I am one of these. But overall, I consider myself a failure. I didn't think 6 years out that I'd be in a nowhere job, pushing paper around in an industry that I care nothing about. I mean, I hate the business world. Wait, that's not true, I don't hate it. I just have no interest whatsoever. People meantion stocks, bonds, derivatives, risk management, confirmations, audit reports and I have no idea what they are saying. It's like they open their mouths and huge logs of shit come out. These words enter my consciousness and leave in the same instant. I don't care. I don't know what they mean and I don't really care to find out. I walk the halls at my job and my eyes just glaze over with salty tears of boredom. I care about so many other things. I love to read about history and fantasy and maps and geography and science and computers and countless other things. I spend copious amounts of time staring at wikipedia and reading random articles about self-fellatio and the battle of Iwo Jima. But if it has to do with money that isn't mine, I do not care one iota. I have more interest in taking a shit, tying my shoes and the mechanics of a paper cut.

Maybe that's part of the problem. My job is unfulfilling. But that was the point, wasn't it? To have a good-paying job I don't care about so that I could pursue my other various unprofitable interests. I thought working here would finance my dreams. And maybe it does to a certain point. But I find I'm actually doing less art than I was before. I'm writing more maybe, but I feel I haven't produced anything. I don't know. I'm trying to get a new job where I can breathe easier amongst more creative people. Like publishing or even advertising. Anything. That should help.

But that's not what I think about when I feel guilt, self-doubt and depression. All I think about is how everything I do sucks. I can't write anything which people even pretend to like. How can I be a writer if everything I write sucks? But is that just my perception? I wrote something for this magazine, and when it was posted this week, I found that the last couple of paragraphs were almost completely rewritten. Is it because they didn't agree with my viewpoint and wanted to edit it up some to be in more in line with their position? Or is it just the fact that I suck? I'm leaning towards the suckage.

But that's also my mind trying to rationalize what I feel. When I feel self-doubt, guilt and depression, it doesn't make any rational sense. I have no idea why I'm feeling what I'm feeling. My chest tightens up. Anxiety bubbles. I feel like I'm missing a deadline. A meeting that somebody called which I completely forgot about. I feel it sitting at my desk. I sometimes feel it walking to the bathroom. There's no reason for it. Which scares me even more.

I never felt this way when I was younger. I was cocky, confident and a blast to be around. Now I'm moody, mean, and unfunny. I have trouble coming up with smalltalk. I constantly think that I'm boring other people, or am just annoying. Maybe I was an asshole all along. And I'm just now becoming aware of it.

You want to hear something funny? I'm even doubting this crappy fucking post right now. I think about my audience of nil, and wonder if this diatribe will bore the non-existent people who aren't reading this blog. This crap is getting out of hand.

What do I do? Do I get drugs? Do I talk to a doctor? What? That depresses me even more. That I need to self-medicate because I can't cope. We all self-medicate I guess. I drink, I smoke. And when I do I feel moderately better. Or at least I forget my self-doubt, guilt and depressions for however long the drug lasts. Is that what Paxil does? Prozac? Should I go on Lithium, just for kicks?

Or should I just get off my ass and accomplish something?

Things I notice

2006-10-24T09:51:00.000-05:00

With digital cable, the name of the show you just flipped to is displayed on the bottom of your screen. I love this feature and find I can't live without it when I go to the backwards country of crappy analog cable like Afghanistan or Topeka.

But the display only has so much text available before it gets an elipse. Usually, this doesn't matter. It's only when I flip to that new show from CBS that things get a little weird and the display reads:

The New Adventures of Old Christ...

Someone please do a photoshop mockup of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss hanging on a cross. Please, for the love of Old Christ, make it happen.

This library thing

2006-10-06T15:19:00.000-05:00

I like it.

Jack Bauer attempts to get a haircut in 24 minutes

2006-09-27T12:22:00.000-05:00

Do you take walk-ins?

I don't have a lot of time so I'll make this quick. I'm federal agent Jack Bauer. I have to attend a wedding which takes place in less than 47 minutes. My wife has forced me here to get a haircut before that happens. I need you to cut my hair as fast as you can or my wife will be humiliated in front of hundreds of people.

Shut up lady, I don't care if you were in line in front of me. This is a matter of national security. The wedding is in a church twenty minutes from here. That leaves us exactly 24 minutes for you to clean up around the ears and take a little bit off the top. Can you do that? Please. I don't know what else to do. Thank you.

Just take a quarter inch off the top. Fine. Good. Why are you using the scissors? Just use the god damn buzzer thingy, we don't have a lot of time! I'm sorry for yelling. I'm just under a lot of pressure right now.

Quiet ma'am! Don't distract her! You can talk about your damn cat when this is all over. We have to focus on one thing. Me getting a haircut. That's the only thing that's important right now.

Square or round? What kind of question is that? It's 1:34. We're running out of time!

I don't want to hurt you, but I need you to do exactly as I say. Now just take the razor out of the astringent and shave the back of my head. No, I don't need any shaving cream. Just do it!

Now, take off this smock and step away, slowly. No, I don't want to wash out the cut hair, my suit is blond. It will blend in.

How much do I owe you? What? 20 dollars for just a trim? That's ridiculous. Here, take it. It's just one of the many sacrifices I make on a daily basis. No, keep it. That's yours.

We did it. The problem is neutralized. My wife is appeased. Thank you for all your hard work today. We couldn't have stopped this disaster without the contributions from each and every one of you. Thank you.

Jack steps out and the hair salon blows up.

I am on drugs

2006-09-23T13:15:00.000-05:00

I got a bunionectomy on Wednesday. Yeah. I'm a 70 year old woman. I know.

I'd love to say that I've got all kinds of wonderful pain-killers coursing through my thickened veins, but it's not really true. At first, all I had was some tylenol with trace amounts of codeine. But that crap didn't really cut the mustard. Now all I've got is crappy industrial strength ibuprofen. What the fuck happened? I thought when you got surgery you got crazy drugs like vicodine and morphine drips. What is this world coming to when the only prescription I get is for More Cowbell? Bullshit.

Why Macs Suck

2006-08-29T11:15:00.000-05:00


Nothing more to say really. Watch it and feel the pain.

Newegg

2006-08-29T11:07:00.000-05:00

Just in case anyone had about 5 benjamins to lay down on their favorite blogger, here is my wish list for upgrading my home-built box.

Newegg.com Public Wishlist

I've become obsessed with tweaking out my computer. It's one of the joys I have of being a computer user (the others being WOW and naked ladies.) I can upgrade and mod my hardware components and user-interface at will. Right now, I have a pretty sweet setup at home, with a large 20-inch flatscreen and a smaller 15'' tilted 90 degrees so that it's portrait-oreinted. I should take a picture and post it.

My current specs: (This is from memory, so things may be wrong or incomplete. I could edit them when I get home but that would kind of defeat the purpose of wasting time at work.)

Mobo: Biostar m7viw
CPU: Athlon (1.9 mhz, don't know model)
Ram: 1 gb (2 x 512mb) crucial pc 133 sdram
Video: Nvidia 6800
Audio: Creative x-fi platinum
Scanner: Canoscan L something
Printer: Canon cheap jobber
Storage: 2 x 120gb harddrives
Keyboard: Logitech g15 gaming keyboard
Main display: Samsung 204b
2nd display: Panasonic (it's a tv actually)

This config was mostly built in the summer of 2004 by my brother on a beach. I had been having problems with my previous build spontaneously restarting, sometimes after only 5 minutes. It was getting really annoying, especially since I found myself saving games incessantly to avoid losing my progress. Anyway, after months of me complaining to him, my brother devised a master plan. We were going ot meet our sister camping in CT that weekend and he would bring down a box and I would bring my old system with my hard drives (and all my docs.)

We met at the beach, and he plugged together 3 UPS systems for a total of 15 mins of power. He was able to manually install my hard drive and get it all working before the time limit. I took my box home and was immensely happy that I could play Morrowind and only be worried about the Assassin's Guild. The era of spontaneous restarts were over.

But here it is 2006. I added the video card and the audio card and the dual monitors, and while the machine still runs great, it has started to chug a bit. I did a clean install of windows a month ago, hoping that would help. It didn't really. So I think it's time to upgrade.

I wanted to get better, bigger RAM, hoping that would be the easiest fix. But my mobo is so old that it only supports RAM up to pc266, which is hard to find cheap because noone really makes it anymore. So I have to upgrade my mobo if I want decent ram. And I would need a new CPU because the newer motherboards doesn't support my old one. Complicated, I know, but that's the life of a hacker. I'm always living on the edge of a knife! I'm a rebel Dotty, a loner.

With these 3 components, priced under $500, I can make my system as saavy as one from Alienware or some other high-priced piece of plastic.

Try doing that with a mac, sucka!

Sorry, had to get in the obligatory zang in there.

Game over

2006-08-21T16:15:00.000-05:00

The 2006 Red Sox are dead. Long live the king.

This series in Boston can't be called the Boston Massacre. That name already describes a similar series in 1978 where the Yanks swept a four game series to take the lead in the AL East. But it's still apt here in 2006. The MFY already had a 1.5 game lead going into Boston on Friday, they leave today with a 6.5 lead after taking five games in four days and outscoring the Red Sox 49-26.

Those bastards from the Bronx dominated the Sox in every way. They came from behind, they scored at will, they held our bats quiet when it mattered. In the battle of the fens, our red-stockinged braves were killed by gunpowder and smallpox blankets by an overpowering enemy. All we can do is wave sticks and rattles on their way out of town and hope the conquistadors never come back.

In some small way, though, this series has had a normalizing effect for me. Being a Red Sox fan since I was a kid has meant constant pain. 1986 was a great example, but also the early 90s and being swept by the Athletics in the playoffs to our current 2nd banana status in the AL East. 2004 was an anomaly. Red Sox fans were able to feel happy and proud for a time. While this was an amazing feeling, deep down I always thought there was something wrong. The ecstasy of winning a championship was not a feeling I associated with my team.

So this series, this Last Stand, has torn down the statue of the World Series. 2004 is officially over. And so is this season.

Wait til next year...

Absolutely nothing!

2006-08-17T21:34:00.000-05:00

So it's all about this cooze who's a regular fuck-machine.

Actually, no, it ending up being about a robot named Robbie. The first Robot ever created which held sentient life. But nobody wanted him around, they said he was an abomination. So the Cybodyne Corp. made Roberta the Robot and married the two robots on national television. They even made a baby robot, Bobbie the Baby Bot, but he malfunctioned like a retarded baby. Cybodyne never did figure out why he never worked right. Years pass and Robbie has had enough of being married. So he files for divorce and the controversy starts all up again. The whole movie is told through one of those bad tabloid TV shows like Geraldo or Dateline.

That's it.

I turned it in a while ago on a Saturday. That whole day was crazy. I knew I had to send this movie script in by midnight. But I wanted to visit my friend in New Haven and go on her friend's boat. So after working on the script in the morning (and leveling up my gnome mage Brandley for a few hours) I needed to get on the road. Driving on I-95 was fun, I was jotting down lines on my pad with one hand while driving with the other. I think I had the last five pages worked out, but I needed to type it up. I got to New Haven and brought my laptop along with me.

We ended up in Branford, on this marina. There were a bunch of dudes I didn't know, a 20 ft motor boat and 3 coolers full of beer. I drank a few, then it was time to board the vessel. My friend put the computer in a garbage bag, so it wouldn't get wet. All the guys knew I had a mission, so they weren't too put out when I immediately went down below (it was a big boat) and started typing. The boat was going really fast, bouncing and trouncing me all over the cabin. But I did it. I finished it up on the boat in Long Island Sound. I was so seasick by the end, I was sweating and about to blow chunks. I ripped off my clothes, threw on my shorts and jumped in the cold ocean. Luckily the boat had stopped.

We drank more beer and watched more people do watersports (not pissing.) I ended up doing the final editing back at my friend's house and sent off the final script at 11:47pm.

I wouldn't have done it any other way.

What am I doing?

2006-07-24T12:40:00.000-05:00

What do sci-fi and divorce have in common?

If you answered absolutely nothing (Huh! Good god y'all!), you'd be right. Or to be completely accurate, you'd have been right before you read this post.

On a whim, this past week I entered the Screenwriter's Challenge brought to you by the same folks that run the Midnight Movie madness I mentioned last November. The contest is similar to those, except instead of making a whole movie, you have one week to write a short screenplay. As I am a self-confessed writer, this contests appeals to me because I don't have to do any of that bloody producing work. I can just concentrate on writing the best thing that I can.

The trick of course is to write something that fits the genre and subject given to you before the deadline. And that's right, you've guessed it, the combo I've drawn is sci-fi and divorce. Two ideas which rarely if ever go together.

I've got a few ideas rambling around my brain. They are currently in the marinating phase. I don't know if any of them will taste any good but they need to be served by Saturday at midnight.

And no, I don't plan on putting that awful metaphor into the script.

Strangely Inspired

2006-07-10T09:42:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure why, but I usually get inspired while driving over the Queensboro Bridge.

It really doesn't make sense. It's probably the ugliest bridge in New York, on the lower roadway there is a limited view of the skyline and right now construction workers have placed a yellowed tarp over part of the bridge which looks like you're driving through a papery wasp's nest. I hate wasps, ever since I was a kid and was stung three times in 5 seconds by a sharp barbed flying menace.

But as I drive my Volvo over the disgusting span of the Queensboro (trying not to remember that scene from Escape from NY), I have a few moments alone to concentrate. It's different than laying in bed or walking down the street. Maybe it's the inebriation of a few stolen puffs, but I start dreaming. Driving forward from Queens to Manhattan is moving forward, from the low ghettoes to the flying skyscrapers. It's not unlike taking my ideas for movies, books or plays and pushing them forward from the dregs of my plotting braing into the stark dare-to-be-great reality.

That's where this post came from. Last night, while my Volvo squeeked over the bridge, I thought of listing everything I had ideas for and using it as a springboard to actually
accomplishing one or more of them. Something's been bothering me lately. I fear that I have too many ideas. Sounds stupid, I know, but I fear that I have too many projects I want to complete and that it paralyzes me into accomplishing nothing. Just look at the nouns I use to describe myself. I am truthfully a playwright, a screenwriter, a stand-up comic, a journalist, an author and a producer. My projects sometimes intersect my identities, I want to write a short film and probably produce it myself. Or I have this idea for a documentary about stand-up comedy. But I feel spread thin. I hope this list will focus my energies.

Creation Play. This is where a lot of effort has gone lately. I have been editing and rewriting this play for over four years and I think it's ready for at least a workshop type production. I've thought to book an engagement at the Red Room but haven't had the balls to actually do it. That will change. I will have balls!
Complete Works. This is a sci-fi play set in New York after a nuclear apocalypse. It's Mad Max meets Shakespeare in Love. I've written the 1st act, which will probably be changed. Right now there are too many characters and I need to streamline the plot. This needs to be shaped up for a reading, maybe I can set a date for that soon.
Work. MOvie about my time at Ivoryton and the Beach club. Been finished for a while but I got some feedback from some peops and it needs to be revised. The 1st act should be completely changed and I'm thinking about deleting the voiceover.
Untitled Freshman movie. I love this idea lately. A teen comedy set in 1992 with music by Belly, The Pixies, The Breeders and the Throwing Muses. I have the first act pretty clearly sketched out in my brain, I just need to get it down on paper.
Gogol movie (Diary of a Madman is a bad title I think now). Mr. Savage and I wrote this a while back but it's fallen by the wayside. I started revising it again last but stopped because of personal reasons. It's too good of an idea to give up though.
Road Trip Movie. I wrote the first act of this movie loosely based on my Brother and I driving across country in his VW bus. Needs to be finished.
Car Service short film. I got this idea during the last film contest I did and I've been meaning to write it for a while. My Volvo makes the craziest sounds and I think it'd be funny if a guy started his own Car service in his brookyn neighborhood with a crappy car.
Stand Up documentary. I love the stand-up scene in New York, and although there have been a few docs about the process lately (Seinfeld's comedian, The Aristocrats) I think they are ignoring the little guy, ie. me. Of all my ideas, I actually think this one has the greatest potential to make money. It's like i have the bullet point of a pitch already floating in my brain. I should move forward on this one.
Fantasy novel(s). I've been making progress in crafting the first volume of a fantasy trilogy set in a world of my devising. After I wrote a few chapters, I relaised I needed more backstory and went back to creating more details. I think now I need to write a short story based on the world to set the page.
Fantasy short story. I know the basic story I want to tell. It will cement a lot of details about Dwenelen. Now I just need to write it.
Article about Penciltopia. I think my friends are doing something amazing with running programs to teach kids about stop-motion animation. It's something I think people would want to read about and it might even make me some money in the process :). I need to finish writing an informed query letter pitching the idea to good magazines.
Articles. So far, the only money I've received from writing have been from writing about video games for online publications. I need t use the Writer's market and start coming up with ne and better ideas for articles. And then write the query letters for them.

I've written these kind of lists before. Sometimes they help keep me on pace, sometimes they serve as reminders to flog myself for not accomplishing any of them. Whatever happens, this list will remain in the internets for all time. Perhaps 100 years from now, someone will read it and wonder where that crazy Bob Jingle ended up.

Mac gamers don't exist

2006-06-09T12:11:00.000-05:00

I found this little gem of an article over at the Mac Observer which posits that the reason there aren't any games on the Mac is because Steve Jobs hates games. According to this dolt, Jobs doesn't want to break into the billion dollar game industry for moral reasons. John Martellaro (the moron pictured here) actually wrote this:

But amongst many more senior managers, including Steve himself, I suspect there is some lingering concern about the essence of the game market. Computer games, as we've come to know them, are mostly (not always) about aggressive behavior, conflict, battle, wars of power, domination, and sometimes, in the worst cases, some very unwelcome social behavior. To put it bluntly, death and destruction. Apple's public culture appears to celebrate, on the other hand, creation and life. When you have several hundred senior managers at Apple who are most likely married and typically have children, you'll find a culture of affirmation, family, and life.

What? Is that whythe Ipod Nano ships with a cannon turret shooting game? Is that why Jobs appeared on stage in 2001 with John Carmack (founder of id, maker of Doom, Quake and the progenitor of possibly the goriest, most destructive games ever created)? Besides the article being mostly untrue, pure conjecture is an apt description, it pisses me off on an wholly other level. A debate has raged in the comments section of the article, mostly pointing out how retarded macs really are and how ignoring a huge set of customers (gamers) for moral reasons is just plain dumb. I had to add my two cents, most of which has to do with the general anti-gaming sentiment in our culture that I've ranted about incessantly before. You've heard it all before, loyal readers, but I have a moral obligation to share my latest with you. That's what you come here for, after all, right? Or am I the only one who cares about this shit and you'd rather hear about the red sox and drinking on the job.

Anyway, here is the text of a comment I left on the article somewhere around the bottom of page two:

The whole article is based on the idea that games=bad.

This is an antiquated idea, which the overwhelming statistics posted in some comments above show. The writer shows his age and his moral bias a little too much to be considered a legitimate journalist.

But this article underlines my biggest problem with Apple, the holier-than-thou attitude that nearly every single mac user adopts as soon as they buy one piece of white plastic. Just because you use a certain brand of computer, you are not a better person.

You're not even that savvy of a consumer, because it's clear that these people are easily influenced by the image that Apple projects through its advertising.

The truth is, Macs break just as often as Windows boxes. I've seen it happen, I have a lot of holier than thou friends who complain about taking their Mac to Tekserve while praising the system in the same breath. And I'll reiterate what above posters have pointed out, if Apple had a market share higher than 2%, there would be a lot more viruses for OSX. Macs are less powerful gaming machines and much less customizable, while being more expensive. I guess the white plastic tree is an endangered species, its costs a lot to manufacture anything using it.

Flame away, Macboys!

I am bad ass

2006-06-02T10:36:00.000-05:00

That's right. Dig my shit.

This is my third or fourth article in The Escapist. I really dig everything about this magazine. I love their artwork, their take on videogames as lifestyle rather than "check this shiny new gamez!" If I read one more cock-gobbling review from Gamespot or IGN or any other so called games journalism source, I'm going to puke. The Escapist is a bright light at the end of the tunnel, showing how games should be viewed on par with books, movies or TV as an important form of media.

Just a little note from the Overmaster

2006-05-25T12:55:00.000-05:00

I signed up for the Google ad crap a while ago. I've already talked about how little I've made in that time, mostly due to that fact I have a readership I can count on one simpsonian hand. But apparently I'm breaking some kind of rule. Observe this email that just bounced into my inbox:

Hello,

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as http://onlyzuul.blogspot.com/2005/10/selling-out.html

Publishers are not permitted to encourage users to click on Google ads or bring excessive attention to ad units. For example, your site cannot contain phrases such as “click the ads,” “support our sponsors,” “visit these recommended links,” or other similar language that could apply to the Google ads on your site. Publishers may not use arrows or other symbols to direct attention to the ads on their sites, and publishers may not label the Google ads with text other than “sponsored links” or “advertisements.”

Please make any necessary changes to your web pages in the next 72 hours. We also suggest that you take the time to review our program policies (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) to ensure that all of your other pages are in compliance.

Once you update your site, we will automatically detect the changes and ad serving will not be affected. If you choose not to make the changes to your account within the next three days, your account will remain active but you will no longer be able to display ads on the site. Please note, however, that we may disable your account if further violations are found in the future.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

--------------------------

To avoid the risk of having your account disabled for violation of AdSense policies, we recommend that publishers also review the important guidelines found here: https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=23921&ctx=en

So let me get this straight, we, the advertisers, are NOT supposed to encourage people to click the ads. I guess it's better that we merely ignore them and hope random site visitors come to my site and want to click on a link to buying red sox tickets.

I understand what Google is trying to do. They want to create a service that is devoid of fraud, where sites are paid by how much they actually contribute to an advertisers revenue. But come on, how does my little post violate anything? I'm not encouraging people to commit fraud, I just said if you're going to search, try to search from here.

Whatever, it's not like I'm really making any money with this program. I'm not going to change the post. I want to see how long it takes before they kick me out. Consider it a test of Google's merit. I'm performing due diligence as an educated consumer and you're all witnesses to it.

How does it feel to be a part of history?

Guns in the home

2006-05-04T14:14:00.000-05:00

Read this story (Now with pics!)

It will blow your freaking mind. (Almost) literally.

NOT safe for work

2006-05-01T12:48:00.000-05:00

Watch this.

I can't even find the words. Why can't America show commercials like that?

A lunch hour in New York

2006-04-21T12:13:00.000-05:00

I've expounded before on the wonders of napping during lunch. And I still do grab at least 20 minutes of nap time most every day. But there are sometimes days when I have to get some errands down in the alotted hour of time in the middle of the day. These tasks range from getting my haircut at a place that always seems to play men beating up other men (Also known as the Ultimate Fighting Championship) on the tvs all day. to buying that new dork book that just came out.

Today's assignment: Buying supplies for a (very) low budget digital film shoot tomorrow.

This was a challenge. I had at least two stops to make, over twenty blocks to walk, and only an hour to do it. I left my cubicle at 12:01pm, hoping to get back by one so that my coworker could go on her lunch date with her Indian friend. I didn't actually leave the building until 12:08pm, however, because, while waiting for the elevator, I had a sudden urge to move my bowels (2nd time today!) which may or may not have been due to the mexican pizza I ordered at 10:11pm last night.

Feeling several pounds lighter, I emerged onto the Manhattan streets at Park and 50th. I had a lot of ground to travel as I had to make it to Madison and 40th. Here's my secret weapon: I walk through crowds faster than a hippy gets high on Earth day. Which is Ironic because, unbeknowst to me, Vanderbilt Ave between 47th and 42nd was closed to car traffic because of, that's right, the Green Apple Music Festival which coincides with Earth Day. Tactical error #1 on my part was to actually walk through the music performance by some chick at a piano and the countless corporate booths giving away free stuff while telling everyone how Green they are (while, of course passing out enough flyers to choke a small blue whale.) I managed to get by the meandering hippies, average new yorkers (smoking cigarettes and blowing it in the hippies faces), and the urge to wait in line for a free Google totebag. Ooh, teh shiny!

I made it to my first stop, Film Emporium at 274 Madison Ave., Suite 204. I know what you're thinking and no, much to my chagrin, it's not a nudey booth place. My mission here was to get DV tape stock and I was surprised to walk in to the premises to find, not shelves of merchandise, but miniscule cubicles with people slaving away at them. My first response when the fat, bearded, balding and pony-tailed guy (yes, comic book guy works here) looked at me was to ask, "Is this retail?" He assured me I was in the right place and I received my 5-pack of panasonic Master Mini DV tapes after he took a short trip into the back room. I can only assume what goes on in that room, but I think that's where they film the amateur porn we have all come to enjoy on the interweb. While he was charging my card, I noticed a flyer advertising the fact that this place also sells film insurance. Talk about your one stop shop. "Get all the supplies you need to insure your film is good." They would never sell malpractice insurance at a medical supplies store. Why do it here?

A timecheck after leaving the Emporium reads 12:32 (I lost 2 minutes going back up to retreive the information for my next stop which I left on comic book guy's desk.) I was doing all right, timewise, and I hoofed it over to 46th and 3rd Ave. where Tudor Electrical Supply Co. is located. This stop was more of a crapshoot. I found the address on Google maps after searching for Lighting supply stores nearest to my workplace. I had no idea if they had what I wanted or if they even existed.

I walk in to a very cluttered, but large, store littered with opened and unopened boxes of lighting bulbs, fixtures, lamps and other electrical mumbo-jumbo. 3 guys are clustered around two messy desks somewhat in the center. They are immediately friendly, which is odd, but then I notice the open bottle of Southern Comfort on the desk and the styrofoam cups around it with their names sharpied on.

"Been that kind of a day, huh?" I said to the guy with dark hair, moustache (which doesn't look creepy for some reason) and glasses.

"The funny thing is, it was that kind of day yesterday." He pauses. "And the day before that. And the day before that."

I genuinely laugh and ask the guy about what I came for. I explain that I was looking for something portable to light a subject in a car while driving. After saying he had nothing like that, I eventually track down a 6 in. battery operated flourescent tube. I buy two of those, 2 300 watt bulbs, 2 200 watt bulbs and batteries for the fluorescents.

While ringing me up, the other guy at the desk (bald, grey, looks like the sports talk guy from Frasier) mentions queitly to moustache that they should ask me for a ting. I play dumb until the happy black guy comes up and picks up the bottle of SoCo. "You down for a ting?" he asks. "Sure." So they pour four double shots into four styrofoam cups. Happy black guy hands me one, "Don't drink it yet," he warns. When everybody has their drink, they stand and hold it out, as if making a toast. They then touch everyone else's cup saying, "Ting, ting, ting," and down the shot. Happy black checks my work, "Good, he said ting." They put down the cups and continue working. I pack up my bags, bid them all good day, and hit the streets with a warm belly of Southern Comfort.

Timecheck reads 12:51pm. Just enough time to stop and grab some lunch on my way back to the office. I weave through the crowd, the hot blonde in tight pink sweat pants walking her tiny dog (also wearing pink,) the Grand Central Partnership dudes picking up trash, the middle-eastern guys selling halal meat and falafel in the lunch wagons. I'm only stumbling a little bit due to the liquor eating away the first layer of my empty stomach. But it feels good. I love New York right now.

Carrying a fresh Subway (foot long honey oat, ham, swiss cheese, onions, pickles, olives, jalapenos and Southwest sauce) sandwich, I arrive back at my cubicle at exactly 1:03pm. Not bad. One hour. Mission accomplished. Shots drained. Sandwich eaten while writing this blog. Now I just have to wash my hands, fill up my water bottle, and begin the day again.

4:20, dude!

2006-04-20T10:51:00.000-05:00

Today is 4.20.06.

This morning I resisted a strong urge to call my boss and tell him to fuck off, I'm staying home. As I snoozed for the 7th time, I daydreamed about doing nothing but enjoying the bright sunlit day. I would make a pot of strong coffee, sit on the stoop, comtemplate the movie contest I'm doing this weekend and maybe smoke a little. There would be delicious chocolate eggs left over from Easter and maybe I'd make a home-cooked meal for once. (living in New York, it seems the only things I eat now are steak fajitas, peanut rolls, and a concoction that Rain Delay and I have perfected: Ramen made with a can of soup, including the MSG packet.)

BEEP BEEP BEEP!

The damnable alarm went off sounding like some deaf doctor's demented beeper and I stumbled into the shower at 9:11am, where I'd have to bust my ass to get to work on time. Leaving the apartment, I was millimeters from locking myself out of the house without cell phone, wallet or, duh, keys. I mean the door spring clicker thing was touching metal. I walk out of the apartment without one of the aforementioned items on a daily basis, sometimes making it all the way to the subway two blocks away before I have to go back for, say, my cellphone. But this was the first time I was about to leave the house with out ANY of them. I should have known something was up, that the gods were aligned against me. After some bad train luck and an annoyingly long ride on the 4 train which involved a family of black kids screaming goodbye to somebody, I strolled in at 10:05 realising that I also left my ID at home. Where I should have stayed this morning.

It's only when I got to work and saw the date on my phone. 4.20. The day when stoners are stoners, men are men and women are women. I first heard about 4:20 in college, when it meant everything about smoking pot. I made fun of those kids, the uber-hippies with beeswax in their hair and smelly pits whose parents dropped them off in an SUV. 4:20 was the police code for dudes in the act of smoking pot, it was the number of chemicals in marijuana, it was the day bob marley died, I heard various reasons for why 4:20 was synonymous with anything pot-related. It was always a joke to me, though, it was a stereotype unto itself. I'd refer to someone in tiedye as 4:20, anyone who had the munchies or was suddenly paranoid. "4:20 Dude! I'm so hungry, what's that noise, is that the cops?" Anyone who said 4:20 without irony was an idiot, perpetuating their own negative stereotype.

But here I am, stuck at work, and all I want is a big fat bowl to smoke when the clock hits the appropriate time. Which is going to be 6:37 tonight when I get home.

6:37 Dude!

Random thought

2006-04-07T14:21:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person in my gym who's rocking out to Weird Al's "Theme from Rocky VIII."

"So today, his deli comes first.
Still he dreams of his past days of glory.
Goes in the back and beats up on the liverwurst,
All the while you can still hear him say:


It's the rye or the kaiser, it's the thrill of one bite.
Let me please be your catering advisor.
If you want substitutions, I won't put up a fight.
You can have your roast beef on the rye,
Or the kaiser."

Wise words from a man who knows how to ski.

Life After Work World

2006-04-05T15:17:00.000-05:00

I saw this poster taped to a tree outside my apartment in Brooklyn yesterday. The pic is from the signon screen for World of Warcraft, which I've seen countless times, but the caption is something new. As far as I can tell, the artist isn't trying to sell anything. Perhaps it's some private joke amongst hipster-nerds, trying to get a few laughs from their friends who wait for the bus to Greenpoint. Or maybe it's a public service advertisement lauding the wonderfulness of WOW. But it could just be that someone was moved to make an image and tape it to a tree. I offer it up to you, the discerning internet audience, to decide. I just think it's cool that someone did it within ten feet of my front door.

The Anatomy of a Road Trip

2006-04-03T11:27:00.000-05:00

I love to drive.

There is nothing more satisfying than cranking up whatever stupid song is on the radio (or my creative nowadays) and singing/screaming along the road. It's a therapuetic thing, spending quality time with yourself and performing for no one's sake but your own. The road offers an endless supply of entertainment for me. From checking the foliage or crazy sky formations, to people-watching, to trying to find that dream house, to determining the quickest route between two points, I enjoy it all.

The five years I lived in New York between 2000 and 2005, that was only one thing I lamented about city life. I wasn't able to afford a car. Actually, I couldn't afford the freaking insurance. I don't know why some companies charged over $4000 a year to insure a crappy car in Brooklyn. Who cares if the borough has one of the highest frequencies of grand theft auto (the crime, not the game) in the country? There's no way a sane working-class human can afford that shit.

But in December 2005, several planets aligned to let me own a vehicle. My generous brother was in the market for a new car and was fairly certain he wouldn't be able to get very much for selling his 1989 Volvo station wagon. So he let me have it. Upon checking inurance quotes, I realised 3 things which drove the price down considerably.

I was over 25.
I was married.
I had no moving violations in the past 5 years (this was because I hadn't owned a car, not because I was a good driver. More on that later.)

After pushing the paperwork through the annoying bureaucracy of Geico, the DMV, AAA, and the Polish guy who passed the Volvo through the NY State inspection, Sparky took up residence on the streets of Williamsburg. The name comes from the various wires poking out all over the interior, remnants of my brother's various wiring projects. He's a fiesty bastard, Sparky, but he kicks enough shit for me to love him.

With the myriad of public transportation available in NYC, I always thought that owning a car was a superfluous endeavor. I WAS DEAD WRONG. My life has dramatically changed for the better since Sparky came into it. It's easier to get around with a car. I still take the subway to work in Manhattan, but if I have to go to a basketball game, or play D&D at night I always drive in. Parking can suck, but once you master the basics of cutthroat space scanning, you're fine. I know exactly how long 10 feet from a fire hydrant looks from a block away.

And Sparky makes weekend jaunts so much easier. In order to go to the nearest beach that wasn't Coney Island, we would have to take the subway to Penn Station and then ride an hour on the LIRR to make it to Long Beach, where meatballs white hats and skanky women (not that bad of thing really) abound. The return trips were never fun, sitting on a far too heavily air conditioned train in wet shorts while rubbing aloe into your badly burned face. But now with the car, I can drive to Jones Beach, suck in the morning sun and get back to the city while hopefully avoiding the traffic on the LIE.

I like that I have a Volvo station wagon, too. I had a bunch of friends in high school with old volvos and I will always associate them with being 18 and reckless. They have so much character. Boxy but good. And they fucking last forever. When my brother gave me this one, the odometer read 289,000 miles. That's a lot of freaking miles. After almost a year and a half, it's got 298,400. I've said that all I want to do is break 300,000 and then Sparky can die a happy death. I think one good road trip might do it.

Which is what this blog is all about. This weekend, a couple of friends and I are departing on the next great road trip of our young lives, or The Death of Sparky, whichever comes first. My only plan was to go south and chase the sun. We've got a place to stay in DC on Friday night, and then it's up in the air as to where we'll end up. I see myself on a beach in VA as the sun goes down on another Saturday. Whereever it is, it will be somewhere I've never been before, and that alone is a reason to go.

This week we'll make the preparations. I bought a case of oil (Sparky's been drinking the stuff lately,) and a wiffle ball bat. I'll throw a few tee shirts in a bag and my digital camera will have all it's memory sticks clean. There will be plenty of reading material and all three of us will have our mp3 players. I'm sure somebody will bring the evergreen and the road sodas. After work on Friday, we depart for destiny.

And we're not coming
back till the 'meter reads 300k.

Reaping in the dough

2006-03-23T13:49:00.000-05:00

Since signing up for google's adsense program over 6 months ago, I have made a whopping $1.69.

These results are staggering:

	Page impressions	Clicks	Page CTR	Page eCPM	Earnings
AdSense for content	2,421	6	0.2%	$0.66	$1.60

	Queries	Clicks	CTR	eCPM	Earnings
AdSense for search	11	3	27.3%	$8.81	$0.10

Total Earnings					$1.69

(Goes to boss and quits job to blog full time)

My ban on blogging about the Red Sox is over

2006-03-23T11:09:00.000-05:00

Would Johnny Damon shut the fuck up?

Seriously, Every article I read about him in the last 3 months has got some jibe about the Sox management not giving him a boatload of cash. Cry your eyes out that the team wouldn't give you an extra $3 mil/year for throwing a freaking baseball like a girl (Damon's got a shitty arm for all those who haven't watched his fish arm not make the cutoff guy from center for the last 4 years.) We all know you're a Yankee now. We know you sold out. We know you have to cut your hair per Steinbrenner's rules. WE KNOW. You don't have to talk abut during every freaking interview.

You know, why can't he be like Bronson Arroyo? We traded him this week for Wily Mo Pena (which is a great move, BTW) but I could see Arroyo being pissy. He's someone who actually could have a legitimate beef with the Red Sox, having signed a "discount" contract last month in order to continue pitching with the Sox. But he's been nothing but understanding. He's hurt, sure, but he's not pointing fingers or calling bullshit. Bronson knows that baseball is a business and in business, there are no guarantees. Still, it's sad to see him go, I'll miss his crazy kick and I'll never forget him taking the slap from ARod in the ALCS. I hope the Reds appreciate that they are getting a solid starting pitcher with nuts the size of Saturn.

In related news, I've been reading Soxaholix pretty much daily the last few weeks in anticipation of Opening Day. It's a great little webcomic that simultaneously romanticizes being a Sox fan and mocks said fanhood, all while throwing down the occasionally obscure literary allusion (including links and footnotes.) And it's freaking funny. This little quote from yesterday's comic made me laugh out loud in my cubicle today:

Getting careah advice from Johnny Damon is like getting how to get along with your parents advice from the fucking Menendez Brothers.

Something Awful this way comes

2006-03-17T16:52:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned this site before but they have a slew of parody photos this Friday which made me laugh outloud a few times today that's worth another viewing. Here's a taste:

Gotta love the Schill

2006-03-17T12:10:00.000-05:00

I have a weird relationship with Curt Schilling. I respect the man for everything he accomplished in 2004 for the Red Sox, for beating the MFY in game six of the ALCS, for subjecting himself to possible permanent bodily harm with an experimental tendon surgery and for creating the symbol of the team, a bloody red sock. Schilling has cemented himself as a pitching legend in Boston that surpasses the likes of Cy Young and Roger Clemens. Winning the first world series after 86 years trumps everything that came before.

But Schilling, the man not the pitcher, is a complete douche. He is loud, cantankerous and strongly opinionated, which are not necessarily bad traits. I can respect a guy who speaks his mind. But the problem is that his opinions are often very contradictory to mine own.

It started with him stumping for Bush in the 2004 election. Again, there is nothing wrong with speaking your mind, but it left a bad taste in my mouth when Schilling invoked his recent star status so quickly after it happened to campaign for a complete fool of a President. He can have his politics, he can be as conservative as he wants, but being a hero in Boston and then campaigning against the hometown hero in Kerry was in poor taste. Plus, Bush is dumb.

But possibly more offensive than Schilling and I disagreeing on Bush v. Kerry is this recent development. Now, I've known that Schilling played EQ from various sources and at first I was impressed, even excited that a professional athlete also enjoys the same hobby that I do. It basically proves my point that all videogamers are not mindless freaks. But it's his choices that I just don't understand. Why would he play Everquest 2 instead of playing World of Warcraft?

Granted, I've never played EQ2. I can't say firsthand whether it's a well-designed game or not. But from nearly every account I've ever read in the interblogoweb, WOW beats EQ in most, if not all, categories. I never cotton to might makes right. but here the sheer numbers make sense. At it's height, EQ was the "giant" of the MMO world, garnering 500,000 subsrcribers at it's peak in 2003. Within a year, WOW had 3.5 million subscribers. Now, generous estimates of worldwide subscribers are at 6 million.

Now, illustrious pitcher and part-time dork, Curt Schilling signs on as official spokesperson for Sony Online Entertainment, effectively tying himself to a sinking ship. I don't get it. WOW works on so many levels. You can be the uber raiding geek with all the best armor. You can PVP in RTS style battlegrounds. You can grind for various rep with the factions. You can quest nearly incessantly from 1-60. You can explore the deliciously rendered fantasy setting with no reward but the scenery. It's a game that appeals to every aspect of a gamer mind, which is why it is so successful. Every gamer can find something within WOW that they like.

Except Curt Schilling. He'd rather stump for a broken game from a retarded publisher who ruins everything they touch (SWG). Way to go Schill.

Polish Mafia

2006-03-10T10:35:00.000-05:00

I heard about this yesterday, http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/62943.htm.

Apparently, there was a huge organized crime ring in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, imaginatively called The Greenpoint Crew. 21 Polish guys were arrested for extortion, armed robbery and attempting to fence a Stradivarius violin to a federal agent.

I live just a few blocks from Greenpoint and I enjoy the occasional pierogy or two, but I'm a little amazed that these people can muster the moxie it takes to run this kind of organization. From what I can see, they're too busy screaming in Polish outside my apartment at 8am on a Saturday and stumbling down my street after one too many Zywiecs.

I've got two questions:

Why aren't people making a Polish Sopranos?
And where the fuck did they get a Stradivarius?

The jokes write themselves.

I fucking hate Valentine's Day

2006-02-14T17:37:00.000-05:00

It's a made up holiday. It should be banned.

That is all.

Wicked Wiccans

2006-02-07T12:46:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I've been neglecting my little blogosphere. I'll admit it. 2 times in two months is not very satisfying (just ask my wife!) and I know it.

To be honest, I haven't had anything on my mind that I wanted to rant/write about. I mean, I think about crazy ideas all the time (like why is it every time we have a mild winter, people clamor that it's global warming in action? We've only been recording temperatures with any accuracy for the last hundred years or so. I'm sure there have been milder winters than this one.) but most of them haven't been spongeworthy. Plus, work, busy, blah, blah, blah, and the general excuses one comes up with for not doing something regularly that they should. It's not just blogging, I haven't been to the gym in 3 weeks. So not only am I an ineffectual and impotent blogger, I'm a ineffectual blogger with a fat ass.

On to what I want to talk about.

I got into a philosophical/religious email debate with a friend of mine who shall remain nameless. I won't go into the sordid (and there are many) details, but he has recently been exposed to the Wiccan belief system by a self-proclaimed vegetarian (not vegan.) He says that Wiccans revere nature, that all of their rituals and holidays are associated with the changing of seasons and other natural phenomena. The vegetarian chosses to be a vegetarian because they don't want to consume something which they revere.

I reacted negatively to this hogwash. I'm not exactly sure why. At the risk of offending my friend, I had to point out what I thought was wrong with that line of thinking. I guess I have an argumentative nature when it comes to religion. I was raised catholic, I was married in the catholic church, I'll probably die an guilt-ridden, alcoholic, child-abusing catholic, but I don't really go to church on days that don't involve rabbits, candy or trees. That being said, I enjoy arguing about theology and religion. It’s part of what defines my relationship with my mother and father, that I argue with them. It’s not necessarily a lack of respect. I think they are blind to certain truths which I believe irrefutable, and vice versa. I have accepted the fact that what they have chosen for their life is the best for them. The catholic religion has been a place of solace and comfort for my mom. It is nothing but monotony and misguided faith for me.

Wiccans seem even more misguided than catholics, if that's possible. My friend tells me that the vegetarian (it's getting harder to keep names and situations vague but I'm going to plow through it so as not to offend) is "one" with nature and cast spells, lights candles, performs rituals and sacrifices small birds. I made that last one up. See how easy it is to make fun of? I'm a big fan of fantasy and Tolkien and D&D and various dork practices, but I realise that it's all fiction. Somehow, wiccans never got the memo and believe that casting spells is how you go about dealing with life.

But besides the craziness of Wiccan, I've got issues with someone choosing not to eat animals for any supposed connection they have with them. For one, the animal doesn't care if you eat them beyond a fight or flee instinct. #2, humans evolved beyond animals by killing them. Ancient humans were able to eat more protein, which led to growing larger brains. Also, the killing of animals led to clothing ourselves in skins, using the fat to burn, and countless other technologies. To extrapolate, civilization would not have existed without killing a shitload of cows, goats and horses.

The vegetarian counters that it's okay to kill an animal if you personally kill it, skin it and consume it. Like that distinction is ok for some reason. Once again, I say that's like taking a giant step backward in human civilization. Let me explain: I’m not a hunter. I don’t choose to spend time stalking a beast, slaying it, gutting it, skinning it, hanging it, then butchering it. I pay someone else to do that. When I buy meat from a store, I am paying the farmer, the truck driver who brought it to me, the butcher who prepared it, the cashier who sold it to me and everyone else along the way who put that meat into my hands. Those people choose not to answer phones for a banking executive (who incidentally is probably connected to the subsidies which keep the farms in business.) When I buy that meat, I am trading my time for all of theirs. That’s what commerce is all about. What is wrong with that? Am I supposed to kill and grow all my own food? If that were even possible, I would spend all of my time doing so. It is precisely the specialization of different professions which brought about the growth of cizilization as a whole.

And it's exactly this kind of sloppy thinking that bothers me about the whole wiccan thing. It sounds all cool and spiritual to say, hey, I'm choosing to love nature and love my fellow man and cast spells (roll the die!), but it's also like choosing to live in a hut for the rest of your life and eat bugs. Yeah, it's possible, even tantalizing in our busy world sometimes, but we as a race have evolved past these vague superstitions.

All of this made me think about what exactly it is I believe in. It's not much, but to me, we are the only gods. Humans have learned to use their intellect and industriousness to shape our lives and carve out a comfortable existence amidst a dangerous and unpredictable world. Even two hundred years ago, natural disasters such as the Tsunami or Katrina, would have caused so much more devastation and death than they did in 2005. That is a direct result of man, not any god.

We have evolved past the idea of personalizing things we can’t control, like nature, weather, inspiration, etc. There is no God, gods or anything else out there. It's just us, baby. Just this Earth. And no amount of lighting candles, praying, casting spells, meditating, prostrating will make the superstition real.

Rectal Teapot?

2006-01-18T15:33:00.000-05:00

My goddamn rock solid ghetto shiznit name is

Rectal Teapot, Yo.

What's yours?

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