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September 30, 2005
Plotnik? Plimpkin? Punkin?
Everyone knows that good ol' Richard Plotkin is getting married, right? There was something apropos in him registering that cumbersome URL for the wedding. I saw him this summer, and he is in fine fettle. His wife is gorgeous. Good on ya, Plotkin, and many happy returns!
He registered for the same spatula/spoonula set from Williams-Sonoma that Casey asked for, oddly, so what was I gonna do? Hopefully this one will not also have tooth marks on it. Remember that? Weeeiiird. I think for consistency's sake I will also have to register for a spoonula. (SPOONula?!?!? wtf!!)
Posted by me at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2005
Warcraft Diary: Reporting Live From the Emergent Plague
Jess IMmed me a second ago telling me there was an outbreak of an emergent plague on World of Warcraft last night:
so Blizzard came out with a new dungeon in the patch
in the dungeon, there is a boss who gives you a disease which does 250 damage every second for three or four seconds
and the disease spreads to ANYONE of your own faction who is near you
so some moron fought the boss and then hearthstoned into ironforge while still infected
and there was mass death and dstruction as the disease leaped from person to person, then back again
basically no one survived!!!!
I believe this was yesterday
[have they got it under control?]
not exactly, but it's only on a couple of servers
it kills really fast so it tends to wipe everyone out, then disappear
no, no, it hasn't come to Silver Hand
evidently under level 20, it kills in the initial infection
after that it's a bounce-around-reinfect thing
And she sent me to look at Ironforge calls out for healing (Windows Media file only, sorry), a bit of documentary machinema about the phenomenon. (The title refers to the line of text your avatar will produce if you type /heal at the prompt.)
What a document of the culture of the people who live together in this space. The footage is by turns awkwardly framed and brilliantly captured, with an elf on a Sabre careening by the camera at the end, spurting out gobbets of gore like some stylized recreation of ebola. It has some of the urgency of an Indymedia protest video -- eyewitness testimony, chaotic crowd scenes, periodic explosions of light (from healers and resurrectors), panicked avatars running around gouting blood -- and some of the heavy-metal-soused overdrama of a pro-wrestling star's entrance to the ring. A moustached gnome stands on a pile of skeletons facing the camera, gesturing madly, and says "Ya man/I saw some guy run by/POW/He blew up!/Blood brains and snot..."
It closes with text from the machinemographer reading "Only a hero can save us.../Someone brave... And that Hero,/Sure as hell aint me./If you need me I'l be in Undercity."
In world, as on Earth, disasters define community, eh? And remind us how small and ineffective we are against the whims of the programmers and the emergent dangers of nature.
Posted by me at 4:22 PM | Comments (3)
September 12, 2005
Further Adventures in Booze Literacy
I have invented a drink! (Yes, this is the academic section of the blog, but I only started drinking cuz you have to in graduate school, so this is thoroughly appropriate. And how can I be fully fluent in Booze if I don't learn to write as well as read?) Here are the ingredients:
White chocolate syrup
Half and half
Seltzer
Malibu or other coconut rum
Serve over crushed ice.
Not quite sure of the proportions. I know it's only a shot of the syrup, enough h&h to make the drink at least opaque, and a significantly higher proportion of seltzer, but I started it off as a non-alcoholic drink and I only like a little alcohol so I'm not sure how much to put in.
I have a name for it though. I live in Washington Heights and go to school at Columbia, so it's a Gentrification. Mostly cuz you're putting inappropriate shit in a fine Caribbean beverage and making it taste like Bailey's.
Top with a copy of Bob Marley's album "Legend."
(p.s. very sorry to everyone who posted a comment which I did not approve til now! I lost track of things for a few weeks there.)
Posted by me at 10:10 PM | Comments (1)
September 10, 2005
George Bush Don't Like Black People
Look, let's just try to clarify that. It's not just that George Bush doesn't like black people. George Bush doesn't like poor people. The Republicans, in general, don't like poor people. You think any of them would offer their homes to Katrina refugees who were already on Section 8 or in shelters? You think even you or I would fail to have second thoughts about offering your house to someone in persistently desperate circumstances? I just think we're going to get farther with a critique of this administration which talks about how it screws poor people than one which isolates black people in their struggles.
Nevertheless, that's an awesome song. Sarah reports that it is by a group called The Legendary KO. Usually when someone forwards you a link to rap on the Internet it's, like, MC Stephen Hawking or MC Frontalot or something. It's nice to get a forward of rap which doesn't appear to come from well-educated white people. (does research) OK... so the group appears to be... two black guys and a white guy... and one of their blogs lists a post about how one of them is giving up a life as a banker to be a musician.
sigh. this is what I get for being so concerned with "authenticity." I'm going to go crawl back in the Ignernt Hole now.
Posted by me at 1:21 PM | Comments (2)