Cheapass Games is a company built on the philosophy that you probably have all the stuff you need to play games in your house already: pads of paper, dice, counters, stuff like that. So they sell you the bare minimums you need to play a game for only a few bucks. A bunch of their games are just goofs, stuff like zombies making fast food with only one brain between them, but some of them (Button Men, Starbase Jeff, Falling) are actually profound and playable. Most prices range between three and ten dollars, but such is the Cheapass love of the game, a whole bunch of them are free.
Department of Shameless Self-Promotion:
The year I was in England (1998), I wrote a dozen essays on British life. (A strange number of them centered on the local supermarket). Three years down the road, they're still your best source of information on lightbulbs, vindaloo, and Ribena Spark. If you're interested in reading some of them, I've archived them here.
Just as a point of comparison for you yanks--this is an excerpt from my university's drug and alcohol policy (note the lack of harshness):
The University's specific alcohol policy is therefore designed to: reduce demand (through the provision of information and education); to reduce supply (through regulation and application of State and Federal laws); and to provide environmental responses that assist people using drugs to do so in the safest possible manner toward themselves and others (see Rumbold & Hamilton 1998) . Finally, the University will support problem users and those wishing to stop using drugs with appropriate health and social service responses within its capability and authority (see clause 4 below).
Oh yeah: apparently the two finger salute means #4 here in Australia--oops!
Top five meanings of an extended index and middle finger on the right hand:
1. Peace
2. Richard Nixon
3. Two
4. Fuck you (U.K.)
5. Close-quote
To my astonishment, Jack Kerouac created an elaborate fantasy baseball league.
The only newspaper columnist I bother to read on the web is Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle. Remarkably, he writes five columns a week. I know that after a few weeks of that pace, I would be sputtering, pacing around my house, and copying the labels of old pickle jars. But remarkably, he keeps going, with columns both serious and funny, taking in the world of circuses (his daughter's a trapeze artist), cats, and our own surreal behavior. Some columns are better than others, as one would expect, but there's enough good ones to make clicking worthwhile. This one is an interesting, semi-contrarian point of view on Jesse Helms.
Voyage
Off to La Belle Isle. Back in September. Bug Mr. Edwards if you need anything Wombat-related.
Alert
If you're talking about electricity, there's no "e" in "lightning." The lazy editorial staff here creates typos a-plenty, but we have to note a weird increase in the frequency of this particular error. Spotted twice today, once in a Slate roundup of the news (go to the paragraph on shark attacks) and again in this Metafilter post. We're not trying to be Mr. Orthography-pants or anything, mind you. We just don't want our silence to indicate approval.
Vacation Reading
Before the Gotham office goes on its annual Rejuvenative Leave, the editorial staff would like to indulge in our own little desire to emulate her Oprahcity and form a Book Club of Our Own. This startlingly original idea came to us last night as we were finishing up a re-read of Dorothy Sayers' best mystery novel, Gaudy Night (it's fortunate for the editorial staff that we all read at precisely the same rate, so that there was no argument over how quickly to turn the pages).
Gaudy Night, the penultimate novel in the Sayers collection of mysteries featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, is an astonishing demonstration of the ability of genre-fiction's possibilities. It's a love story, a social-issue novel (about the prejudice against intellectual women), a costume drama (not so much for Sayers, but definitely for its present readers), and a well-plotted mystery story with the unusual appeal of having no murder ever committed.
Sayers carries the whole thing off with the trappings of an old-fashioned liberal erudition that could sink a less lighthearted writer, and her habit of quotation and allusion don't come off as pretensions -- rather, they're invitations to the world of reference which her characters inhabit. Of course, this is a Lord Peter Wimsey novel, built around an obnoxiously masterful aristocrat whose superhuman qualities give him the air of cariacature; the fact that Sayers teases out of this chattering demigod a character one can feel for is a feat worth marveling over.
This is partially accomplished through the occlusion of Wimsey in this book by the main character, Harriet Vane, a figure who appears late in the Wimsey series and is given prominence for the first and only time in this book. A more troubled and human-scale figure, she's the focus of the plot until very late in the book. There's some back story about her and Lord Peter in the less-distinguished Strong Poison, but don't go reading that one first: you'll pick it up as you go along.
We don't have a clever way to wrap this up; no kicker; nothing to tie this old mystery-classic to any current memes. But since we had this soapbox, we just couldn't help but jump up on it and yelp "Gaudy Night! Gaudy Night!"
Ghost in the Machine
Heather found something a wee bit creeeeeepy in the ether.
Now that Ironminds is going away for good, I need a new home for some of the work I did there. Here's something trivial I did for them last year.
Followup note: It's not only trivial, but also pretty lamely executed. Poor structure, overlong jokes, repeated words. Now that it's no longer out there on a site I don't control, I really ought to take a knife to it and do a little corrective surgery. It's never going to be elegant, but looking at it this afternoon I felt downright irritated with myself.
Is it wrong not to always be glad? No, it's not wrong; but I must add: how can someone so young sing words so sad?
It's a headachey Friday here at the now-empty Bizness Buzzword Factory. All the live-long day have I stared at e-commerce's finest productions. And it has worn on me.
Gift
You weren't expecting someone else to come up with another brilliant timewaster for you, did you? Don't click. You'll get sucked in pronto.
That's Infotainment
These days when AOL Instant Messenger starts up in the morning, it shows me a helpful little screen with links important stuff like bands it thinks I'll appreciate learning more about. But it's the news links that I think are telling: I can read zippy, just-barely-longer-than-the-headline pieces about Spider Terror, or get the lowdown on vital topics like (actual headline here) "Naked Woman Seeks Sex at Airport".
Those crafty bastards at AOL/TimeWarner/Netscape/Pfizer/Honda aren't stupid: in their massive pyramid-HQ outside of Washington they brood deeply on the zeitgeist. I think we're about to see a new paradigm in the "news" industry. I used to think that coverage of celebrities was going to complete its takeover of national journalism (leaving local outlets the departments of violent crime and the weather), but now, appropriately following the rise of cheaply-produced reality TV, my prediction is that the "News of the Weird" format will make the leap from Internet meme to media dominance:
"Good Evening. I'm Peter Jennings. In tonight's top story, a Tallahassee woman has been raising an orphaned alligator as if it were her child -- and now she's sending it to college! But first, let's go to a village in the Czech Republic where a natural stone formation resembling actress Annie Potts has been drawing international attention."
By this time next year. I swear it.
This Guardian story on how a new piece of software might be able to replace reporters, or something like that, got me thinking about two things:
If Metafilter weren't on a break, there'd already be a gigantic discussion thread combining the programmers who would speculate on how this would/wouldn't work and then it would turn into a discussion about how robots would do a better job than all those hacks working for newspapers now.
Would this have been treated negatively in an American publication? Would we have focused on the idea of making the journalist obsolete? Or on it's technobooster converse, which would see the potential to make every doofus their own news editor? Methinks the latter, methinks, methinks.
Little Nemo in Onionland
While links to The Onion are only justfied by extraordinary developments, check out this slap at Alaska's Sen. Frank Murkowski in the form of a parody of the style of the great Windsor McKay.
Forgiveness is not forthcoming! Wrath rains down from the heavens! The masses hunger for their daily dose of Wombat!
You're going to have to forgive me. Nothing here today. Tomorrow, I swear.
We leave on vacation in one week and three days. Unfortunately I will be unable to produce anything like the travel log-stravaganza that is the Emergency Exit Network.
The good people at Target can help you get off the grid. Do you suppose one of these would work on a fire escape? (Link thanks to textheavy).
Equitorial Mike points us to this instance of justice in action.
Rory Walks NorthWest to his new home in Edinburgh. Go see him there for a lot more sustained thought than you'll usually find at this location.
Rory's travel story mentions a minor car accident caused when a friend had a huntsman spider run across her windshield and apparently flinched. I can sympathize: on our last two meetings with Anne, the woman from the Society for Ethical Culture who will be officiating at our wedding, Theresa and I have been sitting out with her in her garden; a pleasant place to discuss vows and readings and etc., but unfortunately home to a community of intimidating carpenter bees, each approximately the size of Buick Crown Victoria. The males buzz aggressively around one's head, and, although supposedly stinger-free, impart that complex reaction that the poet so winningly described as "the heebie-jeebies." I think I have flinching-induced whiplash.
******
Please note that the air conditioning here at the Bizness Buzzword Factory is not functioning properly, and the resulting interior temperature is coming to bear a suspicious resemblance to the exterior temperature. At some point later in the morning I suspect that the difference between the two will prove to be largely semantic. When the inevitable breakdown happens on this page, please be assured that none of the incoherent, vile expressions that may appear should be cause for alarm. Close your browser and apply a cold compress to the temples and back of the neck.
Under the Wire
A late post for a weary Wednesday, a stifling day of failing commercial HVAC units, of lukewarm Snapple, of a keyboard which felt like it was melting in the sun, of bad news from Australia and, on page 307 of the Oxford World's Classics edition of Wilke Collins's The Woman in White, extremely bad news for Marian Halcombe, Laura Fairlie, and Walter Hartright. Curse you, Count Fosco! Damnable villain!
So you think you had an eventful day? (Scroll down past the "Q" to read the last part of the entry.)
I need to complain about stuff a lot less.
Bummer Shlockbuster
Like Nanette, we went to see Planet of the Apes this weekend. Unlike her, however, I feel inclined to share some of the deep insights gained by our presence at the Union Square Monstroplex 12 for the crowded 6:35 showing. Oh yes, I'd heard in advance it wasn't "good." That it lacked the satiric punch of its famous predecessor. That it was self-indulgently big and long and overblown and silly. I'd heard all that. And yet -- Tim Burton seemed worthy of the bet, after all. His extravagances and indulgences and hobbyhorses and repetitions have always been, y'know, cool anyway.
Like it says on the bottom of all those fancy brochures for mutual funds "Past Performance is Not a Predictor of Future Results." I can't begin to catalog the badness, the dullness, the lameness of Planet. The barely sketched characters, the plot composed by a committee who probably met only via cell phone conference call while driving in heavy traffic, the underwhelming nature of the visual spectacle, and the muddled and half-hearted attempts to gesture at "themes" (particularly stupid, if at least coherent, is the connection made by the Charlton Heston character between guns and human technological innovation). Tim Roth's shrieking version of Richard III (only the end-of-the-fifth-act crazily enraged Richard, mind you, not the appealing schemer) is almost entertaining. But not quite. Mr. Wahlberg demonstrates Keanu-like ability to look intensely and angrily baffled, while Helena Bonham Carter's ape makeup is apparently sufficient to hide the shame she must, one hopes, feel.
Anonymous Juice reviews everything. Everything.
To your left and down a bit: new archive links for One-Stop Wombat Shopping. No more tiresome clicking to a useless archives page!
This is Your Face on Drugs
Ashkan Sahihi gave eleven different drugs to eleven different subjects and and took portraits of them while they were high. What I like about this is that the premise comes from outrage at the "despicable" drug war; but what evolves is more complex. Strange rules, though -- apparently subjects had to sit in the chair for the entire session. Must have been hard on the girl he fed LSD.
Ephemeral Celebrity Redux
MTV snubs Adam Curry, who promptly weblogs about it.
Who'd have guessed he'd become an International Technology Mogul? He's got the helicopter to prove it.
Thanks to LYD for the link.
Your Help Requested
NYC Wombat File readers (all three of you) -- I need assistance for a project. Specifically, I need the names/locations of Bars Most People Don't Know Are There. Sort of like Siberia used to be, only less hip. I have a couple in mind already, one in Brooklyn and one in Midtown -- in both cases the bar is part of something larger, not a typical drinkin' destination. And I know there must be more. Help me out here -- write me and let me know: where's the oddest place you've ever had a drink in the five boros?
My take on Art's Query.
First, I'm glad you're no longer dead. Second, I don't think you behaved inappropriately. I vastly prefer getting actual feedback on articles as opposed to an empty rejection letter (or even empty, but grudging "it's not very good but I don't want to say so" acceptance). Third, in my discipline, really good (as in, good to the authors) journals will send you an editor's summary of a reviewer's comments; I've never gotten the actual things. Knowing nothing more about the case that what you've described, my guess is that what's freaking them out is the shock of seeing the raw comments instead of an editor's summary of the same. So my guess is that forwarding the emails probably caused the ruckus and thus I favor the Brave New World theory. But, if you think about it, it's not really any different in content from what one would want: the comments, dammit! I don't think they should be hurt and angry, but can also see a pragmatic case for summarizing rather than forwarding in the future, as that's what most probably expect.
All You Clever People With Your Computers
Negativeland affiliates Snuggles bring you Dictionaraoke Online. Speaking dictionary meets a weird array of rock songs, which winds up sounding like that one robot-voice from OK Computer wandered off and, well, started doing karaoke. They take a little while to download, but "Walk on the Wild Side" is worth it. Found via
The editorial crisis-management team here in Manhattan spent a long late last night over brandy and Doritos, pondering the e-mail etiquette dilemma raised by the Melbourne bureau yesterday. Members of the marketing department were quick to point out that "no publicity is bad publicity" and outlined a scheme for the good Dr. S to "increase mindshare" as an "academic bad-boy" for whom "rules are made to be broken." Wombat File's legal counsel, joining us by speakerphone from a tax haven she failed to identify, suggested that Art claim an "e-sanity" defense.
Our editorial intern suggested that the whole thing didn't sound like such a big deal, and that the good intentions behind the shared emails would probably become clear to everyone eventually. The editors had an eloquent and complex rebuttal to this youthfully optimistic view, but this morning when we woke up in the conference room next to the empty bag of Doritos, we could not remember a word of it.
Back from the Dead with a Query:
What are the Ethics of Forwarding Email?
I have just been publicly lambasted for forwarding an email with critical comments about a certain article (submitted to a journal that I am currently co-editing) to the authors of said article. The comments were from my co-editor. The article is authored by my former supervisor and one of my former colleagues. I fully supported my co-editor's comments as a preface to the forwarded email (which was not at all nasty in tone). The authors disagreed with the comments and I forwarded their response to my co-editor. She (my co-editor) subsequently sent a "hurt and angry" email to me, the authors in question, and the Editor-in-Chief (who until that point was not involved).
I have egg on my face now (and have mucked up a series of personal/professional relationships)--but I feel that I acted with good intentions (if not good judgment). Perhaps I should have asked whether I could forward the email--or at least represented the comments as solely my own opinion.
Is this problem due to the Brave New World of Email or simply my own egregious lack of tact? Or both?
Respectfully yours,
Art
Write Your Own Humorous Headline
Because of its own successful campaign against water, The Olive Garden® has recently sent a powerful message to the entire restaurant industry - less water and more beverage choices mean happier customers.
Groan. As Matt Haughey remarked, this page provides a good look at how corporations talk to one another when they think we mere mortals aren't listening.
