Tuesday December 26th 2006, 9:47 am
…fine. You win.
I’m making Resolution Number One right the hell now: January will be known as Roughage Month, both in spirit and deed.
Dear Christmas Food…
I’m not sure what’s more disturbing…
Friday December 22nd 2006, 12:28 am
…the fact that the SciFi Network is playing The Day After in primetime three days before Christmas, or the fact that it’s now lumped in with every other crappy disaster movie the network has on constant rotation.
Thursday December 21st 2006, 10:33 am
Eddie Izzard Explains Why England Is A Nation Of Mutts
Just continuing the Eddie Izzard: this is the first of fifteen parts, and each is worth it.
Tubes of Stupidity
Thursday December 21st 2006, 10:25 am
I think I just lost some higher brain functions by watching this. Don’t click there, not unless you want to lose the ability to count or recite poetry or…oh, God, I’m already forgetting stuff. Must watch Eddie Izzard instead.
“Sir? Sir? SIR?”
Tuesday December 19th 2006, 9:16 am
So, we’re staying in this hotel in Solvang, a really nice place with feather beds and polite staff and excellent food. It also has classical music playing the halls, which wouldn’t be that bad, except there’s this one piece that I only know from The Blues Brothers. You know what I’m talking about: the scene where Jake and Elwood show up at Mr. Fabulous’s restaurant and proceed to rude him into rejoining the band. There’s that pretty lilting of strings as Elwood tosses shrimp tails into Jake’s mouth, that light plucking as Jake slaps some Chicago swell on the back and brays, “How much for you women, your daughters? Sell me your children!”
Truly, this is a classy joint.
Fearless
Tuesday December 12th 2006, 12:01 pm
Leslie Harpold has died, and I only knew about this through a website.
I guess that’s appropriate, since I met Leslie through the web. This was back in ‘98, with all its unencumbered enthusiasm about the future and how the web was going to be the medium of change. I had met a lot of people through Fray and felt saucy enough to go to a conference that, by all rights, I had no business attending. It didn’t matter: I was going to meet My People, and Leslie was one of those names I saw on all the sites I went to. We all were standing around, holding our bags of schwag, and she looked at me and said, “You’re Adam Rakunas.” Just said it in a tone that I should use every time I’m feeling unsure of myself. Hell, if this woman I’d never met knew who I was, why couldn’t I?
I owe Leslie for something, something that really didn’t come bubbling back until I saw Jason’s brief post. During lunch, we all were talking about doing Something Worthy, and Leslie planted what I thought then was a seed of Something Worthy: I would make my own game, designed off her idea (it would be called Cubicle Wars, and you’d run around an office, shooting each other with staplers). That wound up going nowhere, and I went on to do a whole bunch of video games that were anything but worthy.
But the thing is that it wasn’t a seed, but a bulb. A bulb has to grow and die for a few seasons before it blooms, and you’re never sure what’s going to come up, but you always hope it’ll be something wonderful. That idea, to do Something Worthy, came from that lunch and from talking with Leslie, but it’s bloomed into something else. I still write because Leslie Harpold just said, up on the patio at Moscone Center, “You should do it.”
I didn’t know her as well as others, but I mourn her death. And I thank her for being so sure. Good bye, Leslie.
iRage
Wednesday December 06th 2006, 10:56 am
I own an iPod. It’s a 60 gig 4th Generation Photo. I’ve been happy with it, happy enough to hold off to on the mad rush to upgrade (and thus help Steve Jobs achieve his dream of world domination. Or getting a platinum prostate. Who knows what goes on in that shaved head of his?). I’ve slogged through a few different versions of iTunes, put up with its occasional clunkiness and the way it scarfs up memory like Rush Limbaugh at an All-You-Can-Eat Steak ‘n’ Dominican Hookers buffet. The thing works, and that’s what counts.
Until this week. (Warning: rage and geekery follow.)