Does it bug you when song lyrics make no sense? And when they don’t, do you try to figure out a meaning for them?
Return to Earth
This is a bookshop!
Sentential Links!
It’s time! For Links! And overuse of Exclamation Points!!!!!
Part of the trepidation comes from the inevitability of The Big Reveal, in which a secret that I’ve hidden clues to throughout the campaign is unleashed, leaving the players hopefully with minds blown. Pretty much the entire game has been leading to this moment from level one all the way to level twenty. How does one reveal a game changing secret without making the players feel betrayed or cheated, and how does one end a campaign three years in the making? (One question I’ve considered over the course of the “video games as art” debate is: what about non video games? The story beats of a really well-run and well-designed game can become a HUGE part of one’s story DNA.)
:: Yankee Candle is overrated. (Ayup. But then, I pretty much like candles more for light than for scent.)
:: Sidebar #1: Did you see where Melissa Joan Hart is trying to get a project funded on Kickstarter? And here’s her big incentive: She’ll follow you on Twitter for a year. Oh, be still my heart! You and Melissa will be BFF’s! Every day she’ll go on Twitter to see how you’re coming on that dress you’re making for the prom. OR… she agrees to follow 20,000 people and never once looks at her Twitter page. Which do you think is more likely? (Huh? Of what possible use to me would be having Melissa Joan Hart as a Twitter follower? But then, I’m incredibly ill-attuned to things like who follows me on Twitter or on the blog. When people unfollow me, it often takes me months to realize it, if I ever do. So as an incentive, I…simply do not get this, at all.)
:: I was asked to write the following quiz up by my boss, to distribute to the new hires. (Note to self: do this quiz.)
Good things are on the way, and the only way out is through. (I love that: The only way out is through. I’ll need to remember that.)
More next week!
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This man can NOT be allowed to return to Earth.
Sunday Burst of Weird and Awesome
Oddities and Awesome abound!
:: The video may be funny, but believe me, kids — there’s nothing funny about Bitchy Resting Face. I am a sufferer of the male equivalent, “Angry Resting Face”, in that my facial features seem to default to an expression that society has decided is equivalent to SMOLDERING RAGE. I wish I had a nickel for every time somebody walked by when I was just standing there and said, “Wow, you look like you’re ready to rip someone’s head off!”, when what I’m actually thinking is, “Do I want turkey or roast beef on my sub today?”
There’s a very odd societal thing we have going on right now where any facial expression that’s not a grin is interpreted to indicate a negative emotional state. It would be mildly annoying, but that gonzo assumption can have some unfortunate effects in the professional world.
:: I always wonder just what we’ll do in Buffalo if we ever get the waterfront developed, because that will eliminate one of the three major topics of discussion around here, leaving us stuck with the Bills (ugh) and the Sabres (double-ugh). But, over the last couple years, things are really starting to happen down there, which is nice. And in addition to the actual development that’s underway, we have also seen a very welcome reduction in the amount of gonzo ideas being tossed about for the waterfront. I, for one, am thrilled to see the Era Of Goofy Buffalo Waterfront Proposals come to an end!
Only…not everybody got that memo, because someone cooked up a really detailed idea for cable cars on the waterfront. And not San Francisco-style cable cars, either — we’re talking about the little ones that hang from an overhead cable. Like this:
What’s more, this isn’t envisioned as a tourist attraction or ‘something to do on the waterfront’. This person actually wants this cable car system to be part of Buffalo’s commuter infrastructure. People who work downtown would drive to the cable car station and ride the cable car to their downtown job, or to a Metro Rail station so they might then get to their job. Cable car systems of this type — or ‘aerial trams’ — aren’t the fastest moving of transportation systems, so how they’d be embraced by commuters is hard to imagine.
The article concludes with this: “Even our long-held hopes of rapid transit to Niagara Falls and the Airport might one day be possible for far less money than expanding MetroRail!” Did I read that right? An aerial tram from Buffalo to Niagara Falls, which is 25 miles away? Aerial trams don’t tend to go much over 30 mph, so are we really expecting people to sit in an aerial tram for an hour to get to a place they could drive to in less than half that?
Now, I like cable cars/aerial trams. I like riding the ones at amusement parks. And I’m sure I’ll have a thrilling time riding one if I ever vacation in Switzerland. But as a major part of a city’s transportation infrastructure? A flat city like Buffalo that already has tons of roads, surface parking never more than a block away downtown, and declining population?
Oy.
Oh well. More next week!
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It's all her fault.
If my mother hadn’t instilled in me a freakish love of books, Casa Jaquandor wouldn’t look like this.
(Well, that’s not entirely accurate…it’s not her fault that my filing system is based on the age-old concept of the “Teetering Stack of Doom”. That’s all me. But believe me, the first thing I’m gonna buy with the money from the inevitable movie deal for Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title)? Shelves!)
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Everything I need to celebrate John Scalzi's birthday!
Happy birthday to a guy of whom I am eternally jealous and for whom I wish a swift, swift descent into madness and doom! (But not for a while yet. I do enjoy his writing, after all. So I hope he gets another 6-12 books done…but after that? DOOM!!!!!)
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Tales in the Photo
OK, there’s a photo making the rounds on the Internet via various sports fansites and gossip whatevers. It’s of a nicely-dressed blond woman making an effort-filled obscene gesture in the face of one of the opposing team’s players at an NBA game. (I’ll put this below the fold, because it is an obscene gesture.)
Here’s the photo:
I really don’t have anything much to say about the act she’s committing, other than this is yet one more example of why I am less and less interested in sports fandom, seeing as how it often leads to this kind of classless rage that’s just ugly and useless.
What gets me about this photo, though, isn’t the lady. Nor is it her date, who is also apparently shouting things whilst holding her to keep her from falling over the rail. Nor is it even the player who has his head down and just wants to get off the floor. What gets me is the black fellow in the suit. I’m not sure what he does there, but he’s clearly an employee of some sort; he has a lanyard ’round his neck. Maybe he’s stadium security or an NBA official or something like that. But with this going on right in front of him, he’s paying attention to none of it. He’s just kind-of staring off into the space between the player and the extended middle finger being offered, and his expression is so blank and hopeless that he might as well be a middle-manager in the office of some company that’s having low-to-moderate sales growth this year.
So in the middle of “I just wanna go the locker room” and “I HATE YOU SO MUCH AGGHHHHH!!!”, there’s this guy apparently thinking, “When this is over, I gotta finish my TPS reports.”
