WBFO, #2

A slightly-less funereal version of the Aunt Mickey post is my latest WBFO listener commentary, which will be aired on Tuesday AM at 6 and 8:30. Further updates as events warrant.

Only a Matter of Time

For some time now, my brothers have been my pathway to true geekiness. For example:

• It was my desire to understand their ways that introduced me to Magic: The Gathering, with long-lasting results.
• Pete gave me his copy of Record of Lodoss War, which was a first for me in many respects -- first time owning a full TV series, first anime in my collection and the first with subtitles.
• It was at Morgan's apartment that I played my first round of 8-man Halo, prompting me to buy the Xbox and leading to a few of the geekiest things I've ever done, including holding a video game tourney as fund-raiser, manning Halo at a bachelor party, and participating in a game-inspired improv show.

It should come as no surprise, then, that when I learned that Pete is currently playing World of Warcraft, I decided to try out the demo. We're not really letter-writers, but we are certainly gamers -- perhaps this will give us a chance to hang out, right?

Well, let me tell you this. PA has it right once again. From what I can tell so far, the game is mainly a steady stream of tasks involving killing X number of Y monsters. Snooze.

Now, I assume that once the tedium of grinding is done and you actually team up with people, some coolness can occur. Except that people are a pain in the ass. So, we'll see.

Croakers

Here's a snippet from His Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin.

There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one then lived in Philadelphia.... This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopt one day at my door, and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing-house. Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half-bankrupts, or near being so; all appearances to the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge fallacious; for they were, in fact, among the things that would soon ruin us.... Had I known him before I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it.

This man continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he first began his croaking.

Sound like any towns you know?

Link-love

A bit more link-love for you tonight.

Stumbled across Wordcount recently, a little app that list words by usage. And yes, I did contact the creator to see if his tool could be used to trend data for use in my continuing offensive against the word "iconic" (sorry Eric), but he replied in the negative. #47267, FYI.

reCAPTCHA is awesome. Take one of the more annoying aspects of modern life and use it for the advancement of mankind's great work.

See Me

A few videos for the lot of you.

If you haven't been over to The Humanist yet, you should really watch this. A bit more impassioned than the approach I would take, but then isn't that always the case? The passage of proposition 8 in CA is yet another blot of the record of America, proving once again how far we have fallen from the immutable ideals laid out by our forefathers. For shame, California.

The complete Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello has been posted in excellent quality.

And most importantly, turn it up, man!



_________________

P.S. -- I just ran across an old favorite. I've watched about four minutes of West Wing in my viewing life, and this just happened to be a few of them.

And Good Luck.

Looks like Obama beat me to the punch in becoming the first internet president. Change.gov sounds like a fine plan for doing what the nets were built for -- getting info from one person to another. I'm all for it. Also, seems like a fine way to tag people who might try anything untoward. And then, of course, it's only a matter of time before people start getting arrested for things they email to the President-Elect. And once some evil overlords take over, an extensive digital record of people's opinons can easily be scoured for dissenters. We'll have ourselves an old-timey central-government-fueled witch-hunt based on these emails.

Or blog posts.... dang it! Well, I've assumed since age seventeen that once the new order of hyper-christian dictators begins I'll be among the first on the block.