Month: October 2001 (Page 1 of 8)

With just a few days until launch, reports that Microsoft’s X-Box video game console is freezing up and otherwise behaving like the PCs that bedevil us all make me smile. But the gaming community is much more ruthless and unforgiving than the huddled masses toiling over their Excel spreadsheets, so Bill Gates will have to fix the thing – and fast – if he doesn’t want this whole enterprise to go up in flames.

It’s good that he has a little thing called Windows to fall back on.

I am so psyched to see “Monsters, Inc.” How long has it been since there’s been a really good movie in the theaters? I can think of two really good movies I’ve seen this year – “Mulholland Dr.” and “The Princess and the Warrior.” But that’s it. The previews for “Monster,” especially the “You. Won’t. Believe. Your. EYE!” one, have been so witty and funny and entertaining, I can’t wait. And word is there will be an Episode II trailer before the movie. I’m practically drooling.

Arthur has been writing some eloquent prose about “The War on Someone or Something, We’re Not Sure Yet” (my title, not his). Go there now.

Imagine I call you up, and say that you’re going to die tomorrow.

Well, maybe not die, but you could be seriously hurt. And maybe not tomorrow, but soon. I really can’t say how, or anything about the circumstances – who, what, where or when. I’ve heard this from reliable sources, but I won’t tell you who they are. And yes, I told you the same thing last week, and nothing happened, but I was less sure then. Trust me. You should just really be on the alert, because this is a serious thing. You could die.

How do you feel?

What’s wrong with this picture?
“Vice President Cheney has been moved to an undisclosed secure location. Meanwhile, tonight the President will be attending Game 3 of the World Series.”
-actual news report on NPR this afternoon

“Time can’t just disappear. It’s a universal invariant.”
-Dana Scully, X-Files pilot episode

Scully obviously forgot about Daylight Saving Time. As I took my walk this morning, I was struck by seeing all the municipal clocks around the neighborhood that hadn’t been adjusted, since the time change always takes place over a weekend. It still amazes me that we can all decide, with dubious benefit, that no, it’s not 2 a.m., it’s actually 1 a.m. And poof! So it becomes. Group hallucination. My grandmother was a travel agent in Arizona, and suffered through a double whammy – Arizona doesn’t go on DST, but the Navajo reservation does (!). So dealing with travel times was complicated to say the least. I always feel disoriented and crappy at every time change, and I really wish we would just pick a time and stick with it. This tinkering with reality has got to have some long-term consequences.

P.S. Watching the pilot episode of the X-Files is a great way to be both incredibly entertained and upset about the sad state of TV these days.

P.P.S. Anyone who’s read Einstein’s Dreams (a masterpiece) knows that time is not a universal invariant anyway.

Overheard on the Cluetrain e-mail list:

“I can’t escape the notion that freedoms are more easy to surrender than they are to win back.”

The proof of this is all around us. (Go Russ!)

Do you collect domain names? I’m sure a lot of webheads have registered more URLs than I have, by a long shot. But I recently got two that I really like, even if I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do with them:

mightyforces.net (after I saw “Almost Famous”)
authenticvoices.net (influenced by reading The Cluetrain Manifesto)

I was thinking that I might call my e-mail newsletter “Mighty Forces,” since all the other names I’ve come up with sound too corporate and boring (“Web Success” etc.). And the weblog directory might fit well under “Authentic Voices.” I’m still mulling it over. What cool URLs have you registered?

I live amongst these people every day.

Watched Ellen Degeneres’ new sitcom last week. I have to tell you, I would rather watch her old show at its most strident than this watered-down, let’s-not-offend-anyone-with-a-heartbeat piece of committee-created junk. It’s so mild, it barely registers on your synapses before dissolving into the ether. I especially like the “she’s gay but not in any way a sexual being, please don’t boycott us” stance of the show, which seems to align with way a lot of Americans think of gay people: it’s OK to be gay, sort of, in principle, as long as there’s absolutely no outward sign whatsoever.

To get a new show, Ellen’s given up her voice. And that’s sad.