Published October 31st, 2006
in Uncategorized.
Must remember to buy David Byrne’s Arboretum at some point (look inside). But today the signed Scott Pilgrim 3 was too tempting to pass up!
Also on the David Byrne tip, I liked his blog post about the genetic tendency for self-delusion:
I would maintain that a healthy (i.e. substantial) amount of denial is therefore genetically heritable, that it allows us to blithely go on (despite reading Beckett) and to ignore the basic sadness and desperation of life. We can live in an illusion — in fact we are genetically predisposed to do so. These illusions can be small — I am just as good at catching game as Bob, my rival, for example — or they can be very large — that death is not the end and that I will be rewarded for my faith and Bob, the apostate, will rot in Hell.
Published October 31st, 2006
in Uncategorized.
I had an idea for a reviews-based website tonight, but that’s another story. This one is about Monkey Nuts. After I checked on domaindirect.com to see whether the domain name I was considering for that reviews site was available (it wasn’t), I was amused to notice that not only was the site suggesting alternate top-level-domains like .ca and .cx, but that it had also done a thesaurus lookup of the words in my proposed domain and was checking for the availability of sites based on those as well. I’d noticed this before, but some of the ones it was coming up with tonight were particularly humorous, so I looked around my room for some other random words to type in… just for a laugh. I settled on “Monkey Nuts,” which is, believe it or not, the title of a short story by D.H. Lawrence in a collection I bought recently. So anyway… In goes “Monkey Nuts,” and out comes the funniest shit I have seen in awhile! Examples…
- apemad.com
- apeloopy.com
- gorillanuts.net
- monkeywithnuts.com (nice!)
I figured I was on to something good, and started thinking about what other words might have good thesaurus entries. After considering a couple options, I decided on “Sexy Nuts” and here are some of the results that generated…
- eroticnuts.com
- sexualpeanuts.com
- sexyloopylady.com (wha?)
- sexualcrazies.com
At this point, I figured I’d go back and work the funny animal angle for a few more laughs, but this time I went with “Donkey Nuts.” Evidently, there weren’t very many synonyms for “Donkey,” because it started kicking out stuff like…
- buydonkeynuts.com
- dodonkeynuts.com
- donkeynutsusa.com
- prodonkeynuts.com
- donkeynutsltd.com
On a roll now, I tried “bad nuts” and “good nuts” in quick succession. Some notable outcomes…
- bad-crazies.com
- poor-pecans.com
- badmadcash.com
- badnut.info
- coolnuts.org
- nice-nuts.com
- coolcoconuts.com
- thankful-psycho.com
So anyway, I’m no business guru, but looking at all of these *available* domain names, I can’t help but think that are some viable business models lurking in there! I mean, come on… BadMadCash.com! How is that not taken (by some sketchy banner-ad network)??? Or coolnuts.org? That would make a great brand name for a line of moisture-wicking underwear! Nice-nuts.com could sell stickers that say “Nice Nuts!” that you could stick on mannequins or statues (or hell, even people) that had their nuts hanging out. At the very least you could start a place that sold adult-themed gourmet nut gift baskets on the web at eroticnuts.com. In conclusion, the possibilities are endless. This shit practically writes itself. I rest my case…
Published October 30th, 2006
in Gaming.
I was just reading this article about the hip, new ads for Sony’s hip, new console, and I was getting pretty much the puff piece I expected from the CNNMoney/Fortune/Time/Warner school of tech and/or business journalism. You know, it’s the kind of article where they say things like “the agency had begun an intriguing viral campaign that was resonating with hard-core gamers” with a straight face. But, I kept going regardless, until I got to the ugly core of the sloppy reporting and I decided that I couldn’t go on reading this article, and that I would rather spend my time stabbing myself in the forehead with a pair of scissors. Here’s the part that makes my brain hurt, see if you can figure out why:
TBWA concluded that the target audience for the PlayStation would be put off by a traditional ad campaign. So it decided to play games with them instead. The agency sent trucks to raves and concerts emblazoned with the slogan “ENOS lives!” (“ENOS” spelled backwards is a phonetic spelling of Sony.) There were living rooms in the trailers where people would kick back and try the new machine.
The agency also embedded codes in television spots that fans could use to advance to higher levels in games. But they could be seen only if gamers taped the commercials and went through them frame by frame. The campaign worked: The PlayStation became the No. 1 gaming console in the U.S.
Published October 25th, 2006
in Uncategorized.
Interesting survey on wasting time (at work) from Salary.com. (via peerpole.com).
Music: Biirdie covering Waste (via Phish).
Published October 16th, 2006
in Uncategorized.
A recent post at MetaFilter contained some some of the painstakingly beautiful time-lapse photography I’ve ever seen. Not only that, but all of it is available for download as high-res, super-well-compressed QuickTime movies. Way to go internet! (Of course, just because they’re well compressed, doesn’t mean they’re “small” =) Enjoy…
So… I know they’re huge, but go ahead and download them anyway, dammit! That’s what broadband is there for! You don’t even really need sound to enjoy these; in fact, the second one doesn’t even have a soundtrack. (However, the music attached to the other two is definitely worth listening to…)
It’s strange, I know that the millions of lights on display in these clips are symbolic of all kinds of ecological and systemic overload, but seeing them like this, removed from all the honking and jackhammering and smog and engines revving and people blasting farty-sounding-bass in their cars, makes these cities look so fantastic that it almost makes me forget about the environmental disaster that we’re allgedly hurtling towards.
Like The Velvet Underground said:
Ride into the sun
Where everything seems so pretty
When you’re lonely and tired of the city
Remember it’s a flower made out of clay
To the city…
Where everything seems so ugly
When you’re sitting at home in self pity
Remember you’re just one more person
Who is living there
Published October 14th, 2006
in Gaming.
My post recently about the scale of our own self-perception was on my mind as I read this awesome and exhaustive Will Wright piece from the NY Times. Some favorite quotes:
“I wanted to make a game that would recreate a drug induced epiphany,” Wright told me. “I want people to be able to step back five steps, five really big steps. To think about life itself and its potential galactic-scale impact. I want the gamers to have this awesome perspective handed to them in a game. And then let them decide how to interpret it.”
And also:
Hecker pulled up a new lineup to demonstrate a clapping animation that included a creature whose cranium is so inconveniently located that clapping forces him to slap both his hands against the side of his head. It looked like slapstick comedy of the highest order — vaudeville meets “Monsters, Inc. ”
“Our philosophy is,” Bradshaw said, “if it’s going to break, it should break funny.”
What a coincidence, that’s sort of my philosophy, too! =) What’s super humorous about this whole article to me is that it’s all about galaxies and huge sweeping vistas of time and space and all that, and yet the interview takes place at “an anonymous-looking complex in Emeryville, Calif.”
Anonymous-looking, perhaps. But I will say this. They make damn good sandwiches there.
Published October 14th, 2006
in Uncategorized.
People have probably seen this risque witch-hunting game that SNK is making for DS and Wii via sites like Gizmodo or whatever, but it’s still worth a link here, if only so that I can quote this description of it, “I’m no expert in witch trials but according to the screenshots working out if someone is a witch seems to mainly involve stripping her off and doing wrong things to her.” All the blog comments I’ve seen about this game are pretty negative, i.e. “A training program for rapists and perverts.” So perhaps if SNK is interested in bringing this out in the US, they should replace the word “witch” with “terrorist” and replace actions like “touch” or “rub” with something like “electrocute” or “waterboard.”
Published October 14th, 2006
in Uncategorized.
Just got a letter from United Airlines that’s all “Hey, your frequent flier miles are about to expire. Better use ‘em soon!” Which I initially took as sort of a kick in the balls, b/c I don’t have anywhere near enough miles to go anywhere on United. But then I turned the letter over and realized they had helpfully printed up a list of free magazine subscriptions that I could exchange my miles for on the back! So instead of being a useless “Your business is important to us” form letter, this was actually a welcome bit of info (especially considering that I have just enough miles to get a free 1 year subscription to everyone’s favorite magazine, The Economist!) Thanks United… Thunited.
Published October 13th, 2006
in Uncategorized.
From a recent Malcolm Gladwell speech:
We think of precociousness as an early form of adult achievement, and, according to Gladwell, that concept is much of the problem. “What a gifted child is, in many ways, is a gifted learner. And what a gifted adult is, is a gifted doer. And those are quite separate domains of achievement.”
Published October 13th, 2006
in Uncategorized.
This awesome article from NewScientist reminds me of some old Douglas Coupland writings:
It’s interesting, I’d never actually seen the second of the two Coupland stories before, but I found just now when I was Googling for the first one. Looks like the second one predates the first one by a couple of months.
