2007aug03. When I was eight years old, I was playing Monopoly against some of my relatives. I started to win, so my great-uncle began secretly siphoning money from my grandma, the compliant banker. I consider it a more-than-adequate Life Lesson™. I’ve played several Monopoly games since then, but I don’t think I’ve ever played real Monopoly.
2007aug04. Ordering off the menu.
1995 was about the time that John Woo’s movies were breaking big, with Chow Yun Fat’s two-fisted pistol stylings, and Jose Garcia of Daedalus Games showed me that it was possible to emulate this in Area 51, with one person playing both Player 1 and Player 2, a pistol in each hand. Later, in a London arcade, I worked through the game this way and turned away from the machine to find – for the first time in my life – a crowd of onlookers, who all now wanted to try the same thing.
I have seen the author in question performing this very thing and it certainly caught me by surprise. It reminded me of my habit during video driving games to turn my vehicle around 180 degrees to play 300mph chicken with the rest of the networked competitors, except for the implied part about still working toward the goal of the game. All video games should have undocumented mode hacks. I decree. I’m going to go play “Rip Off” against myself. GUARANTEED WINNER
Have I ever driven an actual vehicle 150mph? That’s a good question. I drafted a semi-truck at 110mph in a sporty tin can once for a ridiculous amount of time. The car wanted to go 110. Hahahahah, youth.
2007aug04. Deuce of Clubs: excerpts from God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens.
2007aug13. RIP Merv Griffin and Tony Wilson. I think the traditional third celebrity death will be Milton Berle again.
2007aug18. Two dudes solve the Adobe tower semaphore puzzle. It was an entire book. The accompanying PDF is also a hoot for amateur cryptographers.
We would not have to plant a fake newspaper box in front of Adobe after all, nor would we have to face up to the resulting interrogation from Homeland Security after they blew up our unexplainable black box with a water cannon.
Hahahaha, America!
2007aug19. DailyWTF: The Time-Space Continuum v. MENSA Boss.
2007aug20. Achewood: Ain’t nothing I can stand less than those pseudo-Mexican craphole joints that try to blow sunshine up your ass at premium prices. There are things I miss about Arizona, low-cost kick-you-in-the-face-but-in-a-good-way taco joints are like three of these things. Other things: road runners, barrel cactus, javelinas, a horned lizard parked over an anthole for infinite take-out, saguaros.
2007aug20. Americans Place Poorly In Collectivist Games. This is tatty nonsense. Americans, having been poked and prodded for generations now, intrinsically sense that the director knows exactly what the entire playing field looks like, and respond accordingly. The Chinese, they’re just starting to get a taste of marketing, so they think everything’s on the up-and-up, that A=A. If I was being tested like that, I’d assume that the test wasn’t even about the game at all, that someone behind a mirrored glass was watching how I reacted to subtle hand motions of the director, or whether or not my answers were different if someone handed me a glass of water outside the testing area, how many times I adjusted my hair, and how much I’m interested in appleplay all to create a new organic anti-oxidant herbal-scented brand extension of a popular ketchup product.
2007aug21. VW pool table. Cool + dumb = comb.
2007aug22. I was sitting in traffic behind a motorcycle and the guy/gal was standing up. Then he/she crouched down, and his/her long hair under the helmet sort of cascaded over his/her backpack and to me looked like a giant tarantula coming out of the backpack. When I say “looked like” I mean this is what I thought in my mind: “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH oh.” This is why I don’t take drugs, it’s redundant.
2007aug22. Penny Arcade: My Comeuppance.
2007aug22. Achewood: A nice present.
2007aug23. Wired: Hackers Take Down the Most Wired Country in Europe.
2007aug24. Super Freak-Out Friday Free Day. Use the length/existence of Friday Free Day to inversely gauge how much I’m working.
The Century of The Self
(1
2
3
4)
[4 hrs total].
The history of public relations vis-a-vis the application of Freud’s
theories on the unsuspecting masses. This is 100x better than previous
sentence sounds. It’s a must-see. From the 1928 PR stunt to get women to
start smoking through the first banana republic, EST, etc to
Clinton/Blair’s shared playbook.
“Here you see a very female aspect of Guinness.” “Add an egg.” I
could not stop laughing and cringing
while watching this.
The Great Happiness
Space
[1 hr 15 min].
Documentary on Japanese Host bars. This is like Japan’s hostess bars but
whereas hostess bars are places for high-rolling businessmen to enter into
high-priced transaction-based false deluded relationships with multiple bar
employees, Japan’s host bars are places for mainly high-priced prostitutes
to enter into high-priced transaction-based false deluded relationships
with multiple bar employees. Needs like 10-15min of cuts.
This Film is Not Yet
Rated
[1 hr 37 min].
Director releases private detective unto the wholly-unneeded MPAA to
determine who’s actually rating the movies, then submits the movie to the
MPAA for review.
Flight of the Conchords: A Texan
Odyssey
[41 min].
This Flight of the Conchords band is the same Flight of the Conchords band
that has a cable-based television show also called Flight of the Conchords.
I have stayed at the swanky Four Seasons Hotel of Austin which is a “key”
location in the documentary, at least in the first ten minutes of it. I was
there earlier, not when this was happening. Not earlier as in between then
and now, earlier as in before the documentary was filmed. Not just
before, much earlier, actually. The pool’s bathroom was tricked out with
hygienic things you don’t usually see in a bathroom like cotton swabs and
combs inside a jar of blue liquid. A man gave me a towel. I wore a bathrobe
at one point, but not in the bathroom. Perhaps the room’s bathroom, just
not the pool’s bathroom.
Eddie Izzard: Definite Article [46 min]. There’s a bit wherein he discusses learning French via audiotape but luckily there’s German subtitles, so if you’re monolinguistic like me you can feel dumb in two languages.
Some things I haven’t seen or have seen before in other formats at other times in other places: Ong Bak, Daft Punk, Mean Girls, Princess Mononoke, Richard Feynman – The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, His Girl Friday.
Other small things.
Minilogue/Hitchhiker’s Choice
Pan-kun travels in the city with his trusty
sidekick.
A very large rubber
duckie
which is fun!
Tex Avery: Symphony in Slang
Jessica the Hippo. [via
boingboing]
Old but essential: J Otto Seibold’s
Mixulator interactive mixin’
experience thing.
Spoon: Don’t You Evah featuring Keepon
Earl Scruggs, Steve Martin, etc: Foggy Mountain
Breakdown
2007aug26. Book: Look Homeward, America
2007aug26. There is nothing ... nothing in this crazy ding-dong King Don mukluk Tim Tam razzmatazz world that rubber-faced slack-jawed creepy-CPR-doll-lookin’ kids go nuts for more than Tiki Energy-Decreased Mineral Water Cubes with Strawberry Flavour.
Send me pudding:
Cardhouse
Box 2 0 7 0
Berkeley CA 94702
2007aug27. Portugal?
2007aug27. Ask.metafilter: “How many calories can you eat in one day?” Noted for this:
I know of some people who were going for a speed record on the Continental Divide trail (a mostly off-road bike route from Mexico to Canada). They did the whole thing in 11 days and were drinking vegetable oil pretty much the whole time – it’s the most densely caloric thing a human being can easily consume. I’d guess you could get up around 20k calories/day pretty easily if you wanted to drink vegetable oil.
I’ve done that with Karo syrup before during a “Twilight Zone” marathon. Commemorative pendants are available in our plush, carpeted lobby.
2007aug31. Mail.
I saw you at burning man, nice tux.
Yeah, I was there, but then I left early, ‘cause they burned the man. That’s how I know when it’s time to go home.
