Category: Culture

Wow, talk about a buzzkill…

A non-profit group has constructed a billboard in second life to let people know how many preventable child deaths they could have done something about while f’ing around in the non-real-world.

Second Life escapists told to wake up | The Register

In this case, I can sorta see both sides. It seems kind of trivial to be spending zillions of hours and some dollars in a role playing game when you could be fighting injustice in the real world. Yup, absolutely right. However, having an outlet from the horrors of real life is sometimes a necessity for our information-overload, news-drenched, overworking lives. I guess there is always a happy medium, isn’t there?

The way the kids talk

I heard the phrase “Peace… Out” used as a verb a couple weeks ago, as in “If I show up and they ignore me, I’ll just Peace Out, ya know.”

This was coming from a guy who must have been under 25, and it honestly blew my mind a bit.

I hadn’t heard “Peace… Out” even ironically for a few years and only ironically before that. This was a phrase that was dead when this guy was in high school.

Weird.

City planning, eastside style

There are some things I just don’t understand about the way people choose to live.

So, we decided to get out of the city and check out some fall colors this weekend. Maybe go for a walk in the woods. This is metronatural Seattle after all. So we drive east and east past what was once forest and now is housing developments with names like “cascade view,” and I was left wondering something. I can understand the desire for people to buy a house in the suburbs. You want some space, and you want an affordable house, maybe you want someplace safe to raise your kids. Sure, I get it. What I don’t understand is how people can move to these ridiculous subdivisions around Seattle (or San Francisco or Denver or any other place I’ve seen) where you may have a large house, but you stick your hand out of your window and touch your neighbors house. Also, you aren’t saving any money, the starting prices on these things are in the $600K+. Also, you are literally MILES FROM ANYTHING, INCLUDING NATURE. People spend way too much money for so very little in these places and then they have to spend hours in their car getting to work, or the store, or even a frickin’ movie. Meanwhile they are polluting the pristine places which must be at least part of the reason they moved there in the first place. What kind of life is that?

bad advertising

At first the whole, un-advertising movement was fresh. Especially as it was aimed right at me and my friends, Generation X. It is now mature enough that agencies can do it badly, which I see more and more.

Case in point: yesterday I saw a billboard for a national burger chain with a history of getting people sick with badly prepared meat. In big letters over a picture of it’s new burgers it said “Because you’ve only taken 4 fake sick days this month.” While I’m that the copywriter in the ad agency felt that it was very clear that their new burger was a reward for some lucky slacker, my first impression was “our new burger will make you legitimately sick.”

Maybe this is the new thing, where they specifically post stuff like this so that the late night TV shows can make fun of them later?

I am not overly fond of the City of San Jose

and I grow less fond every moment I spend there.
If you work in the tech industry, you will spend at least some time in your life in San Jose. If you are lucky, it will just be for a meal or a sharks game, or visiting friends, or visiting a corporation for the day. If you are like me, however, your company will be headquartered there and you will need to spend a significant amount of time in the area. This is especially painful if you live in a nice city, (ie: Seattle) and you grew up in a nicer city (ie: Chicago), because San Jose is not very much fun. The people there are lovely, but it is a bedroom community. For a sizable city, there really is very little of interest going on. Perhaps there are pockets of cool or fun, but for those of us who spend our time downtown, it is a wasteland. Over the last couple of years, I have found a couple good restaurants, and a nice bar or two, but that is about it. If you want music, art, theater, or cool stores; you gotta hop a caltrain north to San Francisco (1.5 hours non-express) and hope that you don’t miss the return train. For those in the area, what am I missing? I am especially talking about night life there. Oh, and I’ve walked all over the downtown areas so I know about the streets of sad bars and yuppie-geek pick up joints. I’m looking for culture, not alcohol.

Project Runway: you cheap bastards! Stop ripping off music!

So in the Paris episode of Season 3, there is a lot of lovely French-sounding background music. Sound familiar? Well it should if you’ve seen the movie Amelie or know the work of Yann Tiersen (one of my favorite artists). The Project Runway people took his tracks, changed the melody in only the slightest way and then did a new recording of his music. I mean, it is 90% note-for-note. Either, the production company tried to license the music and failed, or they didn’t even bother. Either way, I hope YT and his labels sue their asses. That kind of crap is low: for a well-funded TV production company to rip off an independent artist in such a blatant way.

Posted: Thu – September 7, 2006 at 01:15 AM

I’m baaacckk…

I was on vacation… (did you think I was just a bad blogger?)

I have just returned from my month-long inspection of the continent (as they used to say) and will soon regale you with hard-won knowledge and sparking witticisms about my trip to France and Britain. (And yes, I know the continent refers to the mainland of Europe and not the UK, but we were in France for over 3/4 of the time, so I stick to my statement).

A couple things first:
While British Air may be superior to US airlines, it can still make you want to kill yourself by changing gates randomly at the last minute and then making you line up multiple times for the same flight (if you have to fly out of Gate 1b, Terminal 4 Heathrow, just give up and emigrate to the UK instead, you’ll be happier).

DON’T FUCKING TAKE FLASH PICTURES IN MUSEUMS! ESPECIALLY IN DARKENED ROOMS WHERE THE ARTWORK IS LIGHT SENSITIVE YOU STUPID FUCKS!
(the subject of photography in museums is something you can expect a long diatribe about in the near future as it was a continued annoyance and hindered our enjoyment of several famous galleries).

I’m still alive

and I’m still here

I just haven’t had anything to say for a bit, or rather, anything I’d like to blog about. We’re getting ready for our big excursion to the continent as they say, and that has been keeping me busy.

but:
I’m generally disappointed with the Michelin travel guides for Europe, even penny-pinching Rick Steve’s guides are a lot more useful. And the Frommer’s is the best. I think we’ll be carrying those with us.

also,
Hey U of I alumni! Thanks for liking my blog name and motto. It makes this native son of Chicago proud, although I went to school somewhere else…

Last Olympics thoughts

and they aren’t positive ones…

Dear NBC, please don’t take a lack of ratings on the Olympics to mean there is a lack of interest. Instead, take them as a criticism of your crappy coverage (again). Maybe you could spend less time doing puff pieces about the athletes and more time showing the actual events. Also, instead of breaking up the events across an evening, maybe you could have the whole event followed by another whole event, so we don’t have to watch 20 minutes of skeleton to get book-ended snow-boarding coverage. Take a lesson from the CBC, they do it much better for both Winter and Summer games which is why we mostly watched them instead of you.

Dear Canada, Avril Lavigne? Really? Whose idea was that? I mean, she is better looking than most of your music exports, but Sum41 or the Bare-Naked Ladies are much prouder Canadians and they are also much better musicians. Also, I mean, the ceremonies are supposed to be full of art-wank moments, but I have no idea what you guys were going for. I know having the Cirque Du Soleil guys do the event would have been expensive, but they would have done a much better job for the 3 billion people judging your country.

Dear Olympic Committee, nothing like capping the Olympic games where men and women compete on the global stage as equals by having Ricky Martin trot out dancers dressed like hookers caressing him and each other. Don’t wait too long to remind those female athletes that they really are just objects after all. Also, was having him a budget cutting move or is he much popular in Europe than he is in the US these days?