Red vs. Blue

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on November 10, 2008 by admin in Popular Media

No, not THAT red vs. blue. The one that knows it’s funny.

Our quadrennial fascination with red vs blue (here’s an interesting NYTimes map, by the way) reminded me of the brilliant machinima web series Red vs. Blue that debuted back in 2003. After taking a look back at a few episodes (many clock in at around 2-3 minutes) I realized they hold up pretty well, in spite of the media used to create the series. I’m no machinima fan (please, if you know of other machinima this clever, let me know) but the almost existential humor the creators utilized was actually perfectly suited to the stiff, personality-less medium of the Halo game engine. There are episodes that still make me laugh out loud. I recommend starting at Episode 1, as the feel and characters evolve over time. Jumping into later episodes would probably feel like tuning into a fan-driven TV series at the end of its run. This really isn’t just nerd stuff; the Lincoln Center’s film society for instance, described Red vs. Blue as “truly as sophisticated as Samuel Beckett.” As a Beckett fan I might not go that far, but it is pretty damn clever. Although most episodes can be found on YouTube, they look and sound much better in the Windows Media or Quicktime formats found at the Red vs. Blue web site.

Believe In The Impossible

[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 9, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion

In an infinite universe, blah blah blah

Fear of Facebook

[ 3 Comments ]Posted on November 8, 2008 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

It’s not that I don’t love the virtual you, I just prefer the real one…

Someone please absolve me of my FaceGuilt. As an addictive person who works on a computer a lot (am I addicted?)  and is very social and very networked (Malcolm Gladwell would call me a “Connector”), social networking sites present me with a terrible dilemma. Log in and lose several hours of my life, or not log in and have long-lost friends think I’m a jerk. I’ve opted for the latter most of the time. Although many of my friends are a-Twitter, I still find that I’m not interested in what on-line game my friends have been playing for three hours, whether or not they’re spanking me, or how many requests to plant imaginary ginger plants are backing up in my account. Please, I have e-mail, I have two phones, and a mailing address…if you really loved me, you’d just CALL or send REAL flowers. This goes double for people who participate in on line communities like Second Life; my take has always been Get a First Life. BUT DON’T GET ME WRONG. I don’t sit in judgement; I once spent an hour-and-a-half playing Stack the Cats, for chrissake. There are other reasons to avoid FaceBook though. You may have seen this YouTube clip that practically implies that FaceBook is an NSA project or something. Never mind that level of paranoia, there’s no tin foil hat necessary. FaceBook can get you murdered or at least beaten unexpectedly. Why risk your life? I jest of course; for me it’s really about time management. Which is why a site like atomkeep.com cracks me up. Sure. Set up another account to manage all the others. Kind of like the counterproductive act of spending all your time managing all your time in Excel.

Far-Gone Conclusions In A Doggy-Dog World

[ 5 Comments ]Posted on November 8, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion

Though for all intensive purposes I’m not gamefully employed, I remain internally grateful

Some people use language like a bowl in a china shop. Although my spear of influence is small, this is something I’d like to nip in the butt. So girdle your loins, because without further adieu, and no holes barred, I’m sharing my two sense worth, a treasure cove of eggcorns. Although many of the “eggcorns” on the list seem like mere malapropisms, see this wicked pedia entry for more on why they’re not. I sometimes fall, pray (ha) to spending more time talking about language than actually using it purposefully. I routinely have to defend the word “Dissociated”, for instance; for some reason, college-educated people consistently think that there’s no such word, and chastise me for corrupting “dis-associated”. I’m also on a mission to clarify what Americans mean when they say “empathy” vs. “sympathy“. The more educated you are, the more likely you are to get it backwards! Although I spend a little too much time on this, at least I don’t sit around reading dictionaries. But I’m glad that fellow did, because that piece led me to this piece: 50 of Your Favourite Words, which led me to an un-freaking-believable word. Tmesis. Now I just need to find a word that describes phrases like post-traumatic cheesesteak syndrome.

Can I Have My Spider Back?

[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 7, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion

I do not have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead

I haven’t found something this funny since the Bob & Tom radio show pranked a telemarketer by making him think he had called a murder scene. 27bslash6.com had an hilarious e-mail thread posted yesterday (if the site’s down here’s a screen grab or a text copy) that begins with “Dear David: Our records indicate that your account is overdue by the amount of $233.95. If you have already made this payment please contact us within the next 7 days to confirm payment has been applied to your account and is no longer outstanding”. To which David replies: “Dear Jane, I do not have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead. I value the drawing at $233.95 so trust that this settles the matter. Regards, David”. It only gets funnier as it progresses.

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