Demosthenes has an interesting post about the intersection of politics and marketing. It’s quite a problem, and I have no handy solutions to offer except to note that for Democrats, constant hand-wringing about how this isn’t the way it should be is a sure ticket to losing early and losing often. Democrats really need to start playing the cards as they’ve been dealt, instead of playing as if they had the hand they wish they had.
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SDB (he of the muchly-appreciated link — thanks for the hits!) posts some screen-grabs today from a Lara Croft game. I don’t know the first thing about Lara Croft, really, but I do notice something in those screen-grabs. (OK, I notice two things, but I probably shouldn’t discuss the first one.)
Why is it that, in movies and apparently in video games, when someone is at a corner in a corridor and they want to peek around the corner to see what the baddies are up to, they stand with their back to the wall and then crane their necks wwaayy around to the right or left to do the appropriate peeking? Wouldn’t it be better to face the wall and then slightly lean sideways and extend one’s neck to the side so as to get the look one’s trying to get? I mean, is there a genuine advantage to be gained in standing with one’s back to the wall and then twisting one’s neck past the point where it’s really supposed to be twisted, or is this just so as to indulge that other thing I noticed in those screen-grabs?
Oh, and Steven also wonders who we Yanks have who is of similar iconic quality of Ms. Croft. I assume what he’s getting at is, what complete babes do we have who also kick substantial amounts of ass. Well, since I really can’t get tired of looking at this image, I offer this one:
Sigh….
(UPDATE: SDB wonders if Wonder Woman counts because she’s actually an Amazon by birth. I say, yes, indeed! After all, Superman came all the way from the planet Krypton and still wears red, white and blue and fights for “Truth, Justice and the American Way”. Wonder Woman’s wearing red, white and blue as well, albeit with some gold highlights. Besides, that picture….I’ll stop here, because I’m probably creeping out some of my readers.)
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In news from the old stomping grounds, the big DestiNY USA project ran into a big roadblock this week, as the New York State Legislature failed to pass a bill that would have given DestiNY the tax breaks that it says were necessary to get construction funded. Now, the DestiNY people are looking over their options, including packing up shop and going someplace else. Like, say, Massachusetts or Pennsylvania.
I liked the idea of DestiNY. I like gigantic shopping malls, believe it or not. And I suspect that there really is no long-term hope for the Syracuse economy outside of finding some way to encourage tourism there — the town’s manufacturing base just isn’t coming back, high tech isn’t big there, et cetera. But there’s something “fuzzy” about DestiNY, with its constantly-shifting plans and size. The project never seemed to come into focus, and no one could ever really say, “This is what it will look like” — instead, there was a constant stream of “Here’s what we want to build” and “We’d like to have this” and “Wouldn’t this be neat” statements.
I don’t know if DestiNY is dead or just slightly wounded. But they need to make a decision, soon.
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The Buffalo News reports today that opposition to a casino in downtown Buffalo, which would be run by the Seneca Nation of Indians, continues to mount. The proposed casino would theoretically generate something like 2000 new jobs, which is no small thing. But it’s far from a given that the casino would do what it’s promised to do: help rejuvenate downtown Buffalo by luring people there to gamble. I find it unlikely that people going down there to blow their money are likely to do much shopping or dining elsewhere, especially since casinos are invariably designed so that one does not have to leave the place. There’s a reason why, when you enter a casino, you don’t walk in the front door onto the gaming floor. This fact, coupled with the fact that the casino’s revenues would be almost entirely pocketed by the Seneca Nation, makes me wonder just how much economic stimulus this thing can be likely to produce. And in a city where the ever-dwindling tax base is a big source of trouble, is it really a good idea to take a prime chunk of downtown real estate and remove it from the tax rolls, so the Senecas can have a casino?
And I note that public support for these “juggernaut” projects never seems to be that strong around here, and yet our politicos keep proposing them and they never seem to get defeated at the polls no matter how bad things get here. The City of Buffalo is about to have its finances taken over by a State Control Board, and yet, just last November, the Mayor of Buffalo was elected to a third term with no opposition. Oy!
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I was done blogging for the day, but there are two important notes I need to pass on to my loyal band of lunatics readers:
:: Digby is back on the air. Let there be rejoicing throughout the land.
:: Anyone spoiling the new Harry Potter book on his or her blog, without giving due warning for folks like me who don’t want to be spoiled until I’ve read it, is a boob. Anyone spoiling the new Harry Potter book in MY COMMENTS SECTION will have their IP address forwarded immediately to Senator Orrin Hatch. That is all.
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Courtesy Scott McCloud, a couple of blog entries — this one first, followed by this one — about the relationship of comics to prose. The posts are interesting meditations on the sometimes troubling relationship between the two, and the way creators of one view the other. I’ve sometimes thought it would be fun to write comics, as a different kind of storytelling to explore. Occasionally I’ll hear a prose reader sneer at comics with a comment like, “I stopped needing pictures with my stories a long time ago”, to which my usual response is, “So you never go to movies or watch TV, then?” If not, fine — some people genuinely don’t — but visual storytelling tends to be held on a lower rung by a depressingly large segment of society, with comics being held to the lowest expectations of all. My take has always been that stories are stories, and everything else is just mechanics.
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Empty nest syndrome, literally: We awoke this morning to discover that the robin’s nest in our hanging ivy plant is now empty. At some point since last night, the robin family left for nicer digs somewhere else.
I’m keeping an ear open for a chorus of tiny voices singing, “C’mon, get happy!”, for that would mean that the nest is being taken over by a partridge family. [rimshot]
(Empty nest syndrome, revisited: the people living downstairs moved out this morning. Thus, tonight I will be watching something with lots of explosions and the volume turned way up. Or maybe I’ll rent Heat and play the gunfight over and over and over….)