Orion slave girl, savage, violent, seductive, like an animal, irresistible to any human male.

Quiet internal meltdown as deadlines approach. I have a poor ability at dealing with these things. I sleep a lot. And curse myself and my paralysis. And watch Star Trek. So much Star Trek. Which seems to have used the same fight choreographer as vintage Bond films, where a well placed karate chop to any area on the human body renders the recipient either dead or unconscious indefinitely.





A friend recently asked me if I wasn't nervous about my habit of copyright violation. In a word, no, not really. I guess I assume that since the blog, and a good portion of the blogs that I nick things from, are just compilations and presentation of fine things (inevitably copyrighted)... I don't know. I guess I should worry. My small fish in a big ocean defense probably won't help much. It would kind of break my heart for Blogger to just erase everything residing here. Hopefully I'd receive a warning and be given a chance to delete the offending material. I guess I should probably investigate how I can back the whole thing up, just in case. [sigh] Sometimes I feel that only my doppelganger Cory Doctorow has got my back.

This video has been making its way around the internet quite a bit lately, but it's just too good to dismiss as over-hyped, especially for those with a design background.



One of the things on my plate for the next week or so is to finish up and print my business and promo card. This is really more of a mock-up. I'm not about to rush out and print up 500 of either. I don't know. Listening to amateurs gush over gaudy display fonts, and the sobering and soothing conservatism of The Elements of Typographic Style (an indispensable typographic bible that is really such a mammoth thing of beauty that it deserves its own post elsewhere) leads me toward a very clean and simple decision in this instance. I bought Solar White cards at Paper Presentation of 120 lb stock (rather light) at both 2" x 3.5" and 2.5" x 3.5. Once I dig through my belongings hopefully I can excavate my ink and nib pen, and I'll just write my name, telephone number, made-up website, and the word "photographer," or some such thing, and that will be all. A rubber stamp with something I designed might be nice at some point, but I certainly don't have the time right now.

A friend of mine recently turned me on to Beast Pieces, which is amazing. (Link can be found in that section of the sidebar, which is growing perhaps a bit out of control, but not enough yet for me to feel the need to do some weeding. Soon, I think.)

Video break? Yes, I think so.











I don't know. It just kind of breaks your heart. Honestly, thank you Lord God, Buddha, and Allāh that I was not on YouTube when I was twelve years old. I mean... fuck.

The promo card is stickier. Basically it just amounts to a postcard with the same information somewhere on it, although some people make them complex enough that they're more mini photo-zines than postcards. My problem; I'm not in love with any of my images enough to think it warrants representing my [shudder] "personal brand," as of yet. (Although I know it is not what budding photo entrepreneurs are supposed to say, I do not believe in individual branding, really. Branding is an attempt to personalize and make intimate a faceless corporate conglomerate. I, as an individual, am simply unsuitable for such action. Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, and that moronic-looking Dali may disagree, I suppose. Oh, No Logo. You've perhaps fucked me up on this.) But this is one of those instances where I'm not losing my head just yet. It's only the end of the AAS program. Baring any financial aid disasters, there's still another two years to get that image I feel comfortable standing behind.

A card inserted in a pack of German cigarettes, a bookmark, and three vintage photo advertisements are what I'd eventually like my business and promo card to resemble in some way. I find these things profoundly wonderful.

Unofficial Channels; and Two pictures of Spock smashing an old woman in the face.

I'm sure no one remembers when I made a brief mention of the November '08 cover story in Wire Magazine called Unofficial Channels. It was a big deal for me. It was the first time I'd seen a publication talk about the type of music I had been becoming interested in, and the unusual methods of distribution that the music undergoes to reach listeners with these particular curiosities and inclinations. Well... I photocopied the article at work. All 14 pages of it. And carried the sheaf of papers around in my bag for months afterward. And mentioned it here while I was on winter break from school, promising that as soon as I got back to school and had access to a flatbed scanner that I would make it available to you, my readers.

I am sitting in front of a scanner right now, friends.

For those that are curious about such things, it was scanned in 16 bit grayscale at 100% into jpegs at 300 dpi, as 72 dpi looked liked shit at full size, and weren't really going to cut it. The jpegs, unfortunately, were unreadable and huge at full size, so I saved them all as png-8s at 50%.

So... yup. That's how much I love my readers, and want to make their reading experience as smooth and painless as possible while reading picture files of scans of photocopies from a magazine.

Unofficial Channels indeed. Read it in your browser below, or if anyone requests I can upload a zip with the high res versions, perfect for printing out and carrying around in your bag for six months or so as I did.

Ugh.

Best acceptance speech ever.



Haircut in Chinatown today while I waited for my lenses to be cut. I forgot how much I like hanging around the Chinese. They were all glued to some shitty soap opera regarding fencing, set to pumping techno, including the guy cutting my hair. Then later I went to my school's health services and had my ears flushed out after a week of putting drops in there and not being able to here a goddamn thing, wondering how I was going to look with a hearing aid. It is amazing the amount of stuff that comes out of there, although the water shooting through your inner ear feels like someone is fucking your brain. Now I have Daredevil hearing. I had to cut my phone's volume in half. If you have insurance, I heartily recommend it. It's really amazing.

I was dancing around to this video this morning, and suddenly started really going for it, as if I were Hammer not touching it or something, to the point where I got a bit winded and had to sit down, just in time for the saxophone break. Nice.



Time for the most self centered post I've yet done. Regular readers know that I don't really post pictures of myself on the site, with only one previous exception. Black Tintin has done well enough. But... well... here goes.

So. Rewind a few years, to me before I got glasses. (That's my old room. A disaster.)


Good times. After glasses.



Not a bad deal. Glasses, a shirt and jacket, and a pack of cigarettes.
So let's see me present day, sans glasses again. (New room. Lurvely.) Hmm, Photo Booth is so boring. I know! I'll throw a fireball. The video will be more fun than actually explaining what I mean. Hadouken!








Blocked.


And then, new glasses.


Goodbye. (I'd say another couple years before I post more pictures of myself. Congratulations, Maggie! I miss you.)

Barkley; or Acts are accomplished, yet there is no actor.

Indie Games; or the bane of my productivity, scourge of my brain.

Games. Where to even start? As I warned about last time, I wrote way too much about PS2 and Game Cube games that I kind of want to play or that I think look interesting, but when I realized that I was going to conclude all of this babbling with an admission that it is extremely unlikely that I'll actually be, you know, playing any of this stuff in the semi-immediate future I realized that it didn't serve much purpose to write about. Indie games have been more than occupying any desire I have for gaming, and in the unlikely situation when or if they don't I have a ton of ROMs that I really wanted to give some time to. My consoles don't look too appealing lately. Expect lists and/or links at some point as I just try to sort of make sense of my notes and folders of interesting links and reviews. (Crikey. That is a bad sentence that I'm too cold, tired, or stupid at the moment to improve, and as such it stays.)


Everybody Dies (Mac/PC)
I'll be honest. Everybody Dies is my first and only excursion into the realm of interactive fiction. My impressions? I like the length of it. The puzzles are simple and logical, which is all that really mattered to me in that regard. The artwork is really great, to the point that I probably wouldn't have even thought to play it otherwise. Is that a trend in IF, art accompaniment? If so, I've got to say I like it. So... good follow ups? Gun Mute looks very cool, even if it is text only. The Onion's AV Club had a nice writeup on Everybody Dies, with a much better description of the game than mine.


Aether (Mac/PC/Browser)
There isn't really a good shorthand term for these types of games, so I'm going to call them single-sitting games, instead of micro or mini or something else that's vague enough to need explanation. Single-sitting is self explanatory. And I fucking love it, by the way. The format. And this particular game. Simple, gleeful exploration. Movement as a form of satisfaction and pleasure. Simple puzzles. Unique, unsettling tone. Smooth execution. It's a short, sweet experience, so I'm going to hold back on giving too much away. I'd download it, if I were going to play it. (Let it download in the Flash player and there's a download link in the main menu.) It ran a little slow and jerky in a browser, and you want to see it better than that.


Maverick (Browser)
I was going to try to keep this one under my hat. I was saving it to use as a handy reference when I wrote my massive love letter to Solar Jetman (as I did for River City Ransom), but at this point there's no telling when and if that will ever happen (I'd want to go back and reimmerse myself in it, and there's too many fresh things on my plate at the moment). Movement in both games is similar in theory, as well as the experimentation with gravity adjustment. I really love Maverick. I think it has a similar humor to it as You Have to Burn the Rope, but without feeling as overt and cheap. It's not embarrassed to be an actual game, or trying to make a loud and yet somehow quite bland statement. You should play it. Careful around the pig. He never did anything to you.




Dwarf Fortress (Mac/PC)
Otherwise known as Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress. I don't know what to say about Dwarf Fortress that hasn't been said better someplace else. Go back and read the PC Gamer write-up in the old post if you skipped it last time. I don't know if I consider Dwarf Fortress a game, per se. It seems more like a hobby. Some kind of digital bonsai. But with dwarves. And booze. And butchers. And minerals. And almost anything else you can fucking think of.

Spelunky (PC)
There's a top tier of indie games. My impressions, from my extremely limited experience; NetHack (I've yet to play it, but it seems like the archetypal indie royalty), Cave Story, N might be on there, possibly Dwarf Fortress (I'm going to go ahead and say yes), and if Spelunky isn't there now, it will be in a few years when people are still playing this game and having their mind fucking blown. It's one of the best games I've ever played. Dwarf Fortress got me thinking about what it means to play a game with no expectation of winning, and therefore no expectation of really finishing. Spelunky allowed that seed of an idea to continue to germinate. As simple as an idea as it is, it seems as if modern big-budget gaming really isn't comfortable with a gameplay formula wherein the act of playing is prioritized over the act of progress. (After putting in a bit more time I might qualify some of this. Spelunky has very carefully controlled progress, but it is there.) Spelunky barely has a written narrative. (In fact, I think it's mostly conveyed with three randomly selected lines of flavor text.) The narrative is the events of the game space. When I bombed my way through a wall to rescue a maiden, and carried her all the way to the exit, only to have her appear on my kill sheet, meaning that my bomb had actually murdered her and I'd unwittingly carried her corpse (quite painstakingly) through the entire level... that's narrative. Not to mention fucking hilarious.

The Space Game (Browser)
This got a few good write-ups around the way. Play This Thing! said it best, and most succinctly. "The Space Game marries the resource extraction component of an RTS with a tower defense game." I think it was Eegra that made me realize that sometimes what a game really needs, warrants, and deserves is a perfect kernel of text to describe it. I gave it a few days, and many more hours than I should have, and sort of backed away, slightly terrified at the thought of allowing a tower-defense virus to propagate itself further in my brain. Still... I want to survive that mother ship attack at the sixth stage. And there's something really satisfying about absolutely strip mining an asteroid belt, and your production is just blasting away full-bore. Too bad it can't save my progress with a cookie or log-in, a la Dino Run. I need to set up at least one more camp, if for no other purpose than one or two nice screengrabs.

You Found the Grappling Hook (and Pro!) (PC)
Again, Play This Thing! really knocked it out of the park. I have nothing much else to add. The graphics, which initially irritated me, grew more lovely as I played. I came to love the music. And the core mechanics control so smoothly and cleanly... it's a joy to play. Then you get the pick and have a nervous breakdown. I love the ending. The Pro edition is fucking hardcore. That flag pole thing was a rotten trick, you asshole. (My fingers were killing me.) But killing myself made up for it. How else could something like that end? Weird. (My advice is don't play the Pro edition without knowing what you're getting into.)




Don't Look Back (Browser/Mac/PC)
This is basically a perfect flash game. All of the elements, which in and of themselves appear quite simple, combine to make something very evocative and poignant. Very nice use of silent storytelling, a technique that games are in a perfect position to explore and exploit. Seriously. It's 10 minutes. Click the link. (You might have more trouble than I did. Maybe 20.)

La-Mulana (PC, with translation patch)
I'm still figuring this one out. I keep dying at the first real obstacle, a simple river. So we'll see. Not very intuitive, but certainly intriguing. (I fucking love Aeon Genesis.)

So as of now I'm playing Spelunky (chipping away at the ice stage), and after that there's La-Mulana, Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden (aka Tales of Game's Presents Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa), and Yume Nikki. In other words, indie games are doing me very right.

Just over the line.

Oy. Honestly, you're all excused. I don't really expect anyone to put themselves through this. Some of these are fuckin' fucked up, you know? But I think they're mostly obvious. And there's some good stuff in here too. Maybe I'll continue blathering on about some in the comments, if that seems prudent.

I will leave you with my favorite video description yet found on YouTube. This is pure poetry.

britney spears paris hilton jordan capri honeymoon hollywood lindsey lohan girl woman lady sexy man hot stud s murder maim kill rape hurt pain cartoon anime naruto bleach dragonball DBZ eyeshield21 lesbian porn pornography video game hate love xbox 360 PS3 PSX playstation sony microsoft nintendo wii ebay note adobe final cut apple premiere news bush republican o'reilly reilly spin factor liberal clinton iraq iran war news topless bottomless tits boobs cunt pussy cats dogs mice rats crocodile hunter australia tits vagina sex nude boobs japan tokyo america new york old 9/11 trade world center grand theft auto horror comedy drama romance ninja shinobi cosplay titties boobies breasts bouncing beach bitches bikini a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z hi bye rachel amanda sarah tony dad mom aunt uncle grandma grandpa college film production drums nuke osama saddam k.fed fed chicken popozao po po zao concert guitar hero music cds cd method man men group jay-z ashanti myspace google aliens UFO conspiracy government denial explosion mission impossible tom cruise scientology re: reply jefferson lincoln logs ren stimpy chinese korean electric computer stopmotion stop motion go traffic cars chevy ford california south dakota texas florida michigan canada mexico mexican spanish translated games parties party drunk makeout kissing religious scandal truth real fake reality tv television game show blooper accident tag team wrestling WWE WWF NWO hulk hogan pamela anderson king of the hill david letterman jay leno late nite show dance revolution bemani drummania beatmania maniac 70s 80s 90s 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 70's 80's 90's 60's 60s 50's 50s 40's 40 pearl harbor tsunami enron money cash bling seal cat dog bird parakeet editing edited editor world earth open prix turismo asian martial arts painting graphics 3d landscape rude gore guro chan prank funny joke soda ad advertisement ritual origami original unique old common pre-marital modeling play dress clothing wear formal outfit buddah christ savior band musician otaku slutty stripper pole dancing guitar hero freaks j-pop j-rock movement revolution revolt spanish inquisition fallacy community communist revolver gun shotgun hunting deer bear dick cheney condoleeza late nite early morning hell retribution heaven free hacks cracks hax litched glitches tricks cheats cheater cheated unfair code codes programming language languages tongue eye heart ear foot toe medical medicene doctor hand finger leg arm shoulder elbow wrist knee cap bone pelvis skull brain nose cartilage mortality mortal coil spring object everyday lord king savior emperor story segue van automobile automatic country hick redneck hillbillie hillbilly stockton sacramento dallas san francisco diego jose puto taco bell border patrol food network oils cooking vine garden peaches fruits apples pears grapes banana infamous murderer killer victim historian history historical darkness scene the cd chip micro mini macro quantum warp space drive disk star trek pizza hut dominos GSN scrapin rapper chains mine yours my hers his everyones everybody starlet diva awards red yellow orange black blue white green purple violet ultra spectrum speculum plug one two three four five six seven eight nine ten ichi man absolute fast slow snail sonic mario crash bandicoot hedgehog metroid tasvideos bisquit speedruns tool assisted aishwarya rai lamborghini Murcielago LP640 Ferrari f40 Enzo G4 Olivia munn The Prestige The Good Shepherd The Pursuit of Happyness godfather Flags Of Our Fathers Grudge 2 Saw III Saw 3 Star wars oldboy An Inconvenient Truth The Illusionist Little Miss Sunshine Grey's Anatomy Stargate Atlantis Devil Wears Prada Casino Royale Pirates of the Caribbean 24 Season Two 24 Season One 24 Season Three 24 Season Four 24 Season Five Battlestar Galactica Prison Break King Kong Lord of the rings Brokeback Mountain dream girls Mission: Impossible Mission Impossible MI3 Spiderman Spider-man Spiderman 3 Spider-man 3 Transformers movie Ghost Rider 300 Ipod goldfields Pulp Fiction Kill bill The Matrix Sin City Jaws Batman Begins The Game Plan Alien VS Predator 2 Kala National Treasure 2 I Am Legend Alvin & The Shipmunks The Warlords In The Name Of King American Gangster ronaldinho david beckham ronaldo football family guy oscar pele wayne rooney Eminem Hail Mary Feat. 50 Cent & Busta Rhymes (Ja Rule diss)Eminem, 50 Cent and Busta Rhymes diss Ja Rule over a Hail Mary Beat...Emienm 50 Cent Busta Rhymes Hail Mary Ja Rule Diss : eminem THE REAL SLIM SHADY Porn erotica teen nude pornography vagina anus sex make love stripper panties bikini hot nude boobs tits camel toe amateur upskirt raven riley kari sweets ass 69 adult porn star girl hardcore lesbian shaved pussy sexy blonde horny asian fingering little april ariel rebel bad girl naughty masturbating xxx creampie gay brassiere tanga panty panties softcore breast tender clitoris hymen vulva anal oral webcam bitch

We will eradicate Spies and Diversionists.

So updates:
I bought those frames I'd linked to. There was a bit of last minute agonizing, as I'm sure most glasses wearers can attest to, and I was briefly tempted by the Shuron Ronsirs they had in stock (even with the tapered temple), which are shockingly difficult to find in any opticians you care to walk into. But, despite these temptations, no, I went with my original impulse for bizarrely shaped gold aviator wire frames. Not particularly Paul Newman in The Color of Money, but as a co-worked pointed out, "Yeah, but he's Paul Newman. Anything looks good on him." Besides, I wouldn't have the chutzpah to get green tinted lenses, which I think would be incredibly annoying anyway. So now just to get the lenses put in, which Fabulous Fanny's has a Chinatown optician they recommend, with free eye exams and lenses in the $50 to $60 range. (I have a pretty light prescription. They might just turn Vern away at the door. Optical 88 at 116 Mott St, just North of Canal, in case anyone can avail themselves of inexpensive lenses as well.) So I'll try to swing down Monday before work, maybe, and see how it goes. And then sometime this week everyone can start telling me they're weird and they liked the old ones. But at least I won't have to be told I look like Drew Carey anymore. That never got old, did it?

I've caught myself studying that Newman screenshot with a bit more regularity and intensity than I find appropriate.


One of the Fabulous Fanny's owners seemed a bit surprised by my current Cutler & Gross frames. "Nice. Too expensive." Yeah, tell me about it. Also, they weren't interested in buying my atrocious pair of Versace sunglasses, purchased from a mall in Connecticut when I was still in high school. He actually seemed to blanch slightly, which I understand. They're hideous. Ebay, they said. Collectors. Original case. Etc. Maybe I can ask Shannon if she'd want to put them up for me and divvy proceeds, as I have zero Ebay experience, outside of once buying my two Wing Shya photo books, one from Happy Together and one for In the Mood for Love, from a presumably very pleased seller in Hong Kong. They were insanely overpriced, and are two of my most prized possessions, along with being perhaps the rarest as well.

On my way to go frames shopping I happened across the new (and last) Kim's Video on 1st Avenue. Impressions from my quick tour? Meh. There wasn't much to look at, although admittedly I didn't have time to trawl through the used CDs. If I had seen a cheap copy of Little Murders I might have briefly forgotten my rock solid embargo against ever giving another cent to Youngman Kim, that cube-headed douche, but alas I was spared the temptation. Conclusion? If you'd never seen an actual Kim's Video before you might be impressed, which I suppose could constitute a good review of sorts. I didn't get a chance to walk down St. Marks and scope out what business was squatting in Kim's old spot. Anything? Nothing? Just a huge For Rent sign? Who knows. There's nothing like the East Village to make you feel like five years ago was ancient history.


All of this could be edited away. See? If I don't post minutes after writing, it always turns into this.

Random note: there's a characteristic of light in videotape recordings from the mid 1980's that I rather like. It might just be the harshness of the lighting, but when there's a reflective surface that catches the hot lights it almost burns into the image, leaving slight, quickly fading streaks. I've grown to like many features of videotaped recordings; the dull colors, the greasy, unglamorous sheen of the actors' skin. It elicits an odd sort of comfortable nostalgia. Television nowadays is all either Hollywood-lite or hand-held Digicam pseudo-documentary. What happened to Jack Tripper's testicle? Where's Zack Morris's gargantuan cell phone? Is episodic television an embarrassment to networks these days? Fuck new TV. (Not really. Milch has a new series pending, and I quite enjoyed watching the second season of Flight of the Conchords.)


Been watching some small amount of Sandbaggers, a great dry bureaucratic British spy series (with exteriors and location work shot on 16mm film, lovely in its way, and interiors and studio work shot on videotape, with perfectly abrupt and indifferent transitions between the two), and nightly drifting-off-to-sleep sessions of Lovejoy, a ridiculous dramatization of a series of what I'd take to be rather trashy novels following the titular Lovejoy, a broke gallivanting antiques dealer in the English countryside. He investigates, forges, scams, wheels and deals, beds not terribly attractive guest actresses (none of whom ever appear again), and drinks almost constantly, large scotches, sherry, and gallons of tea. It is very, very good.

Photographs

Recently I've found myself wondering where the work of the photojournalists in Afghanistan has been. Surely I'm just not looking in the right places. Well Time magazine is one place I should have been looking. Photo essays here, here, and here. There's an article on the subject of operations in the region as this week's cover story as well.

My only complaint is that we are still in a transitional period where not everyone is utilizing Flash gallery presentation to optimize slideshows for the web. There is no good reason why I cannot click a button to cause these photographs to fill my screen. Let me show you what I mean.

The New York Times magazine did a mostly candid celebrity portraiture series shot by Magnum's Paolo Pellegrin. The results are, frankly, rather stunning. The accompanying audio commentary is also quite nice, and has given me a lot to think about in terms of how web presentation is blurring the lines between still photography and cinematic methods of display and pace of viewing (in this case in the viewer's control). The issue had full articles discussing each performer as well that I'm still working through.

And saving the best for last. I haven't really linked to anything on Burn before. Burn is another Magnum related project; a website curated by David Alan Harvey as a showcase for emerging photographers. Like Foam magazine I observe the work there and am rather awed. I have a long way to go. They post single images, and photo essays. There's almost nothing on the site that couldn't be effusively recommended, but Michael Christopher Brown's Sakhalin, a series of pictures from the Russian island of the essay's title is one of my personal favorites. Really staggeringly great work, as is almost routine on the site as a whole. Check it out.

Seriously. Last one.

I'm fucking exhausted. I need to stop drinking so much coffee at work.

Aw hell. I told someone I'd blog about this. Okay, real quick. So I'm thinking of getting a new pair of glasses soonish. I want something like these, and have done so for about the last four years.


These seem fairly close. So yeah. That's it. Jesus. Goodnight. (New front page! Yes!)

Aperitif; or This is what Tron should look like.

Eefemera; or Jaa!

Here's an incredibly interesting article about Freeman Dyson regarding our lack of understanding about the effects and seriousness of climate change. This was last week's cover story of The New York Times Magazine, which now seems be be a regular thing for me, along with the Sunday Book Review. I've read this piece twice now. If you enjoy reading opinions of those exponentially more intelligent than your average person, and trying to determine how much weight you'd like to give this person's views, then you will enjoy this. I did, at least.

Yoshihiro Tatsumi of Push Man and subsequent volumes, gekiga pioneer etc, has a new autobiographic book being released soon. It looks like it could be very, very good. I will probably be breaking my newly imposed book-buying ban to pick this one up, when available. You may want to as well, depending on where you sit with regard to these things. It's really a question of good versus evil, when you break it down. (Manga equals good, for clarity's sake.)



Kan Mikami's album Barking Practice /// White Lines. I just listened to this. It's... sort of... fuck. He sings, and it's gravelly. He squeels, sometimes, like a baby bird. He plays the guitar. It's hard to believe that I call myself a DJ when I'm so inept at describing music, eh? (This is one of the only sharity albums I've listened to over the last few months. Mostly it's been plugging away at my vinyl collection housed at WHFR. All of those shows are available, right now, in the sidebar. I'm kind of thinking that I need to start making and retroactively creating playlists if I actually expect anyone to go through the trouble of dealing with Rapidshare. Man, I really know how to make work for myself.)

I try not to comment on the videos too much if I can help it... but I wanted Tony Jaa to smash these giddy weirdos after about 5 seconds. "That's right. See-dom, motherfuckers."


Oh, and another thing that I kind of wanted to do, if I can manage to do it well enough, is to maybe comment on the nudes. Although why I feel obligated to do so is perhaps unclear to me. I mean, yes, I am spending hours trawling through horrible erotica and soft-core pornography and things to find and present to you photographs that I feel are interesting and even, dare I say, important or significant in some way... so what's my problem? (Plus, I need hits, and the tits seem to do it, oddly enough.)

It burns; or it burns.

This entry has gone through the blog wringer. It's never beneficial for me to plug away at them incrementally. It becomes this massive, unwieldy thing, which inevitably I start critiquing, before eventually labeling most of what's been written safely editable away from human consumption.

So.

Time for a quick and simple post of a few things of interest. I'm working on something slightly more substantial, that just needs a bit more fine tuning, so hopefully we can expect that shortly.

Firstly, via Fort90, a perfect palette cleanser after our recent bout of unpleasantness:

Via Auntie Pixelante; someone finally did it! I was kicking myself for missing the two free screened episodes of Game Center CX at the NY Asian Film Festival. Seriously, hit those links. Done? Okay, so getting this show with subtitles, uncut, has been a mild obsession of mine for a while now. It's seemed like something of an inevitability for a little bit, the only question being was it going to be an agonizing labor of love by obsessive fans, or was somebody going to step up and try to localize. Word seems to be that localization is in the works, but with all of the supplementary material cut out, which is one of those, "C'mon, seriously?!" kind of things. Regardless, for whatever reason, there are some, just a few, uncut and subtitled episodes available for streaming at this here link. This is sure to get pulled eventually. (Man, I have to finish watching these.) Honestly. This is kind of special, people. It's stuff like this that sometimes excuses my almost fetishistic Japanomania.


Shigesato Itoi's photo blog is one of the other things. I know it's mostly pictures of his dog sleeping. It just gives me an incredibly warm feeling. I really like the Japanese blogger's habit of photographing their meals. I sometimes think of trying this, but I worry that most of what I eat is rather grotesque looking. I've been trying to get some use out of my digital camera lately, in the hopes that I can 1. get some nice pictures for the blog, and 2. wear it out enough to justify me splurging on a G10, which is basically what my camera was trying to do, with slightly different emphasis, a few years earlier. Digital cameras are a fucking pain in the ass. The ones you'd like are insanely expensive, and are made to look like pieces of shit in about one to two years. My film camera is cheap, without collectors losing their shit over it or anything, and it basically kicks ass. Anyway. Sorry about that. For the most part I've curbed my camera-porn impulses in subservience to my desire to take good pictures, something almost completely unrelated to camera models. Format is relevant (as in 35, 4 x 5, digital, etc). The camera, after that, has to function. Which is all artsy bullshit, anyway. Anyone making money shooting shit for corporations rents a Phase One, apparently, which costs more than a car, and needs a staffer to babysit it (at about $300/hour) in case anything goes awry.


Can you tell I'm terrified at where I'm going to fit in after graduating? I should have gone to school to study fucking soil erosion, or baking, or whatever the hell lobbyists study when they go to college. (I'm actually mostly contemplating, if I can't get assisting work after graduating, trying to teach English abroad in either Japan or South Korea, depending on opportunities. Not sure if it's the best idea I've come up with, but I think it might manage to keep my student loan payments at bay, which is better than anything else I can think of.)

I bought a new mouse. It's the cheapest, most basic Microsoft mouse available. $10.95. That's about four bucks more than the individual rolls of 3200 ISO B&W film I was buying at the same time. Should I start a pool on how long before it craps out? I'm happy, though. I plugged it into my keyboard, and it worked! A functional scroll wheel, a right mouse button, and no more buying the cheapest AA batteries I can find. ($1 Chinese two pack at my old bodega, which I kind of miss. My new bodega is run by actual Latinos instead of the Lebanese. It reeks of bleach and, I think, cat shit. And it closes at 23:00, which is garbage. To me, you are not a bodega if you close. I don't know what you are, but you aren't a bodega.)


Sexy Beast is available, for now, on Hulu. Please go watch it, and purchase whatever is advertised while you do, and help our poor, tired, threadbare economy. (Unless it's an Axe Body Spray commercial, in which case you are excused. Perhaps from buying anything ever again.)

I've been buying way too many books lately. Once I get my bookshelf arranged, which could take anywhere from an hour to much more than that, depending on how nerdy I want to get, I'll take pictures of it, and we can look at the spines together, and then hug.