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Give Grumpy Gamers What They Want
I've intentionally covered a lot of ground in my columns so far (not so much in terms of topic as in terms of approach) trying to get a feel for what works and what doesn't work. This is probably my most "normal" humor column so far, using the standard approach of taking my actual opinions on a subject and exaggerating them for ostensibly comic effect.
If you have Half-Life 2 for the PC, it's worth checking out the free beta of Half-Life 2: Capture the Flag. I ended up playing it with a few Ruffiani pals last night for hours and I wish I was still playing it now, in spite of the fact that the adrenalin is likely to send me into a flu relapse.
I should say here that I'm no CtF connoisseur, due in part to an aversion to public servers, so I can't really compare it to Unreal Tournament 2004 or whatever else is getting people to spend a thousand dollars on a video card, but I did have a lot of fun.
I think I've got TypeKey registration working properly now, so your posts should come up without going through my e-mail if you're registered with TypeKey.
I've been really pleased with the level of discourse in comments here, overall. Let's hope opening the floodgates a bit more doesn't wash that away.
I'm rounding out my steady writing work with a part-time gig at Kotaku, contributing to their video game blog. It's really nice, I must say, to have finally reached a certain level of reliable writing income. Thanks, those of you who have read, linked to, and otherwise supported my work.
In related news, Bad Gods is continuing to get short shrift as I adapt to my new, ever-changing schedule. My current plan is to finish up the last five I need to do to have a full six weeks of updates, then run them as a sort of mini-series. What then? I don't know.
Before I got into the mug and shirt business, I often thought it would be fun to make my own mugs and shirts with my own personal designs on them, for me. Since I've started selling them, however, I don't usually find time to do custom stuff. However, when a friend of mine moved into a new apartment, I decided to make her some mugs as a housewarming gift. As a reader of Boing Boing, I have been made astoundingly aware of the aesthetic potential of subway maps, so I made a set of four mugs with the maps of the London, Paris, New York, and San Francisco subway systems. I can't sell these because of copyright restrictions, so I thought I'd just share a photo of them:
I was really hoping that Snakes on a Plane would be a blockbuster, simply because I think there aren't enough action movies aimed at topologists. I was hoping it would be followed up by such sure-fire hits as Snakes on a Sphere, Snakes on a Torus, and the mind-bending thrills of Snakes on a Möbius Strip.
Then I saw the trailer.
Dammit.
Ghost of Gaming Rip-Offs Past, with pictures!
So I not-very-recently talked about the Lost Coast Brewery's Downtown Brown Ale and how it compared favorably to my favorite beer for some time now, Newcastle Brown Ale. After I got home I bought some in bottles, and while it's still a fine ale, I found in bottled form it didn't quite hold up.
However! There's a nice brewery-with-restaurant around here, the Pyramid Brewing Company, that serves a variety of excellent beers and some decent food as well. It even has Thomas Kemper soda on tap -- which is awesome -- so you can invite your teetotaler friends along with you. I've enjoyed pretty much everything I've tried there, and so I bought some of their unfiltered hefeweizen in bottles at my local grocery and I am here to say that it was most excellent. Colette recommends it with a slice of lemon but I find it incredibly satisfying straight from the bottle. I've pretty much switched over for as long as the rainy season lasts; wet weather and hefeweizen just belong together as far as I'm concerned.
This week's column: Taking on the Text Adventure.
It's about World of Warcraft.
I'm reviewing D&D Online for Wired News. (Yeah, I'm a bit late out of the gate. Long story.) I thought I'd see if anyone else has a server, guild or whatnot they'd like to recommend and/or invite me to. I can't say if I'll be playing past the time needed to adequately appraise the game, but it'd be fun and interesting to play the game with a ready group of adventurey types. Feel free to post a comment or mail me at loretmp-ccz@lungfish.com.
So Steve Berlin-Chavez, who among other things contributed to The Brunching Shuttlecocks, told me he and the other Brunchmae have put up a Comedy Wiki. (That is to say, a wiki about comedy, not a wiki which is itself comedic.) And he asked me to spread the word. And I said "okay."
On a lighter note, Ben And Jerry's has added to their line of ice creams named after people and groups with Vermonty Python.
I had this last night and, sadly, it's not as good as it sounds. Don't get me wrong, it beats a sound beating with outdated stereo equipment, but it tastes kind of like their Dublin Mudslide, only not quite as good.
So, it looks it was actually two lunches.
I wrote a post that started out talking about Table of Malcontents and ended up, several paragraphs later, talking about fair use and the history of copyright. It might be a good post, but I don't want to go off without doing the research necessary to minimize the talking out of my ass. So let's make this shorter.
Table of Malcontents, at least as I originally envisioned it, isn't just links to funny things on the Web. It's supposed to be about the people who make those funny things, and the community and culture that supports them. I've discovered, in the scant two days that I've been working on this thing, that that's not as easy as it sounds.
The reason for this is that, on the Web, art is increasingly becoming unmoored from its origins. I came across a couple videos on YouTube and Google Video that I enjoyed. Who made them? Are they clips from a television show or something a couple guys put together using a digital camera? Where can I find more by the people who made it?
I think of it as the Commons of Indifference. While some people are working on building a Creative Commons -- or a number of different Creative Commons -- within a fairly strict interpretation of copyright, others are taking the attitude that they'll put something up, and as long as nobody complains, it stays up. There are lots of cease and desist orders flying around, but for every reposting, repurposing, or parody that gets the C&D treatment, literally hundreds stay up with no comment from the ostensible owners.
Now, there's lots to say about this from a copyright point of view, and that's the part I'm avoiding for now. My keyboard-thumping on either side of the issue isn't going to change the way things currently work. On a personal level, though, it makes my job hard, and it makes me wonder if I'm working from an outdated paradigm. Is there any point in talking about indie versus corporate if it's all going to end up on Google Video? Should I care whether a joke on You're the Man Now Dog was actually made up by the poster or if it's a gag by a professional comedian with "Tarzan Boy" added on top of it?
That's just the stub of my thoughts, but I'm going to post it. I'm also enabling comments. I figure if my other blog and my column are up for commenting, why not just go with it?
I'm blogging today to tell you that I have a blog. Another blog. A separate blog. A blog -- and this is the important part -- I'm being paid to write. It's called Table of Malcontents and it's about the sort of things that people put on the Web. Plus it has links.
Seriously, though, so far it's like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Blog. The very act of adding links to it is making me change my mind about what it's about. If that makes any sense. More after lunch.
This week's column, You Can Play With Your Food, is a sequel to last week's.
It's funny to be on a schedule with a delay. Last night I wrote the first draft of next week's column. By the time a column actually goes up, I'm thinking "Oh, yeah, I wrote that, didn't I? I kinda remember that."
Very different from the "Hey, it's 11:45 pm, I'd better get started on tomorrow's piece" schedule I've generally worked on with my own projects.