Recent travels and reflection have led me to realize that I have friends who are way cleaner than me and friends who are even messier than me. I mean… Duh, yes… of course this is totally obvious, I’m just saying that I just realized it. There is so much shit in my room. Empty boxes of Sudafed piled on top of instruction manuals for my Bluetooth headset (that I wrote a phone number on), on top of PSP game boxes. Two slightly different bottles of cold medicine. Clothes… Lots of clothes on the floor. And it doesn’t seem to bother me much. That is, not enough to clean it up anyway.
Meanwhile, I visit other people’s homes from time to time and it’s like a different universe, in a lot of ways. I mean… I am always so taken aback that people actually vacuum, or like, even dust, for fuck’s sake! (Which I really have been meaning to start abbreviating to “FFS!” btw, after I’ve seen it that way on some forums) And not taken aback in a bad way. I mean… I totally appreciate a clean house, especially a bathroom! I just can’t seem to make *myself* do it! =P
But on the other hand, I’ve also spent time in places that make mine look straightened-up as fuck. I’m talking mops and half-filled buckets of weird stuff sitting in the bathtub, windowsills full of cigarette butts and etc. and while I definitely like, notice it and everything… it doesn’t really faze me at all. I’m just all… “Hm, gotta move these cardboard boxes off the chair before I sit down. Whatevs… Oh cool, there’s a yo-yo in here!”
Anyway, I kinda lost the point of exactly what I was trying to say here. Mainly, I guess it’s just that I’m glad I can be friends with all these people, in spite of our differering opinions on the subject of cleanliness and organization. I think it’s good that people have different perspectives on things. It’s like… important and shit. =)
Even before I heard these 4 Spiritualized acoustic tracks from a KCRW session a few years ago I have been wanting for J. Spaceman to do a stripped down record a la Springsteen’s Nebraska. It seems like he may finally be getting the same idea and my only complaint is that there are no US shows on this tour!
Chuck Klosterman is at it again, biting off more than he can chew and posing the question: “Why are there no video-game critics?” As usual, he begins by doing a half-assed bit of research and then spends the rest of the article ranting about how frustrated he is that his investigation didn’t turn up anything interesting. Sample sentence:
“It’s hard enough to figure out why something does exist, but it’s even harder to figure out why something doesn’t exist.”
In the end he somehow comes up with pretty much the right answer i.e. that games can’t really be critiqued in the same way and with the same analytical tools that we use for film and literature because the narrative structure exists only superficially in most games and the player’s interaction with the environment becomes way more important than any “story” elements. He even starts to dance around the really interesting questions of free will and “potentiality,” going so far as to suggest that *these* are the issues video-game critics should focus on, before declaring that, “I can’t see how such an evolution could happen, mostly because there’s no one to develop into these ‘potentiality critics.’” Dude, what? Have you never read Lucky Wander Boy? Also, how do you even write an article like this without making at least a passing mention of the term “Ludology?” There are plenty of blogs on the subject.
[UPDATE] In the course of my research for this post, I found out that D.B. Weiss (author of Lucky Wander Boy) has been hired to do a rewrite of Alex Garland’s original Halo screenplay. W00T to that! =)
I just got this weird sort of deja vu feeling that it is somebody I know’s birthday today but I am totally blanking on who. (And no, it’s not Ernest Hemingway). So anyway, Happy Birthday to everybody who was born on July 21st! And if you know who I am thinking of, let me know! (Of course, I may have this confused with another month, or even the Summer Solstice or something. Anything’s possible…)
This guy is at Microsoft now, but he used to work for The Scotsman, which is the most erudite paper in Great Britain (illegibly) and quite “fussy” about type as well.
1. The RZA - N.Y.C. Everything (featuring Method Man) (4:17) 2. Phoenix - Everything Is Everything (3:00) 3. Elliott Smith - Everything Reminds Me of Her (2:37) 4. Casey Deinel - Everything (3:30) 5. Elliott Smith - Everything Means Nothing to Me (2:24) 6. Of Montreal - Everything Dissapears When You Come Around (2:35) 7. Radiohead - Everything In Its Right Place (4:12) 8. Underworld - Rez / Cowgirl (11:47) 9. Moby - Everything Is Wrong (1:14) 10. Coldplay - Everything’s not lost (7:14)
