Month: April 2002 (Page 4 of 4)

My friend Becky sent along to me an urban legend chain e-mail she received recently. She does it because she knows I’m fascinated with them. This one was about women who died after inhaling tampered perfume samples they received in the mail. Of course, the e-mail (which had been forwarded so many times I had to open about six levels of attachments in order to read it) claimed that the government was hushing this up for fear of creating a panic.

Yeah, they’ve really been reassuring us up to now.

Again of course, the e-mail ended with a plea to “send this to all your friends and family members.” It also had someone’s official-sounding name and title below it, just for that added touch of authenticity. (It’s fun to e-mail and call these people, if only to hear the weary-voiced “if you’re calling about the e-mail….” phone message.) As you can tell, I have absolutely no sympathy for people whose names get attached to these e-mails, even if it’s just because their e-mail signature line got attached to it when they sent it on.

My question is, just how stupid are people who forward these things? Do they really believe this crap, or are they just interested in plugging up as many e-mail boxes as possible? When the “KFC is raising headless legless chicken blobs” e-mail went around a year or so ago, people actually argued with me, saying it was true.

Lack of common sense has reached epic proportions in America. What can we do to fix this problem?

Tonight on West Wing, Donna Moss tries to get the President to sign a proclamation honoring her favorite teacher, who was retiring after 40 years. I got a little bit emotional when Donna called her teacher and said, “I’m standing in the Oval Office with the President, and it’s because of you.”

The plotline made me think of Pat Lehman. I transferred out of Spanish class into her Linguistics class (they taught linguistics at West High – amazing), and she changed my life. She got me interested in journalism. She taught me a love of words that continues to this day. She encouraged me to apply to Northwestern, rather than UW-Madison, where most of my friends were going. She tried to teach me not to take everything so seriously – no matter how much I resisted, since in high school I was a grumpy old man before my time. She treated her students like adults, with opinions and ideas that mattered. She had a humor and an intelligence that changed the way I look at the world.

And people say teachers are overpaid.

Hats off to Doyce for having my current favorite weblog tagline:

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?

I repeat it here rather than just let you experience it yourself because he has a randomly-rotating tagline in his page title, so you probably won’t see it when you hit the site.

What’s your favorite weblog tagline?

Panic Room

Good acting and pacing, a creeping sense of dread in the first half, fun camerawork – and an incredibly cool title sequence. But nothing in David Fincher’s home invasion thriller raises it above the average good scary movie. I enjoyed it on that basis. But since Fincher directed “Seven” and, most notably, the masterpiece “Fight Club,” I expected more of a fresh twist on this genre picture.

Still, it’ll probably be Fincher’s most lucrative effort, since it’s safe and marketable in The Age of Ron Howard. Maybe that will give him the momentum he needs to keep surprising and thrilling us in the future.

Dan of Hivelogic reminded me of how much I was fascinated by the bald, gorgeous Persis Khambatta in the otherwise execrable “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.” She was Miss India of 1965 (when she was 15!), she wrote a coffee table book called “Pride of India,” and she wasn’t actually bald. Sadly, she died of a heart attack in 1998.

She was definitely the only reason to watch that movie, and I remember thinking she had the coolest name ever. Persis Khambatta. Say it out loud a few times and you’ll understand what I mean.

My name is Adam, and I still play video games.

[Hello, Adam.]

See, the thing is, I’ve been playing video and computer games for a long time. A long time. (I played PacMan on an Atari 2600, just to give you the idea.) I don’t know if a 36-year-old man should still be playing video games. But I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of them over the years.

Lately, though, I get more frustration out of games (both video and computer) than I do enjoyment. I never was that obsessed with “finishing” a game, like the hard-core players do, and lately it’s escalated to my trying a game, being entertained by the graphics etc. for a while, but soon getting so frustrated it’s not fun any more. I love the wacked-out sensibility of “Alice,” the cinematic atmosphere of “Max Payne,” the sense of speed in racing games like “Vanishing Point” on the Dreamcast. But when my old-man reflexes cause me to have to repeat the same area over and over just to advance, I start to want to turn on “old-man mode” so I can just wander around and explore, without dying every two minutes.

With all this amazing technology in games today, I think at least some designers should concentrate on open-ended worlds – sort of “holodeck”-style games. I know that’s supposedly the focus of online games like Dark Age of Camelot, but aside from the intimidation factor of jumping into the fray with lots of more experienced players, they seem still too focused on relentlessly moving up, slaying monsters and gaining powers. I just want to explore a detailed, alternate universe.

After all, old men deserve to have fun too.

Fascinating pop culture fact of the week

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are not identical twins. (They’re fraternal twins.) Of course, this doesn’t make them less evil.