Preference Personnelle
Ooh, a
weblog about the electronic game business, from an RIT professor.
Via Metafilter,
Chant of the Weed, about jazz and drugs. And a great thread about
urban warfare.
The New York Times ran an article about people
cheating at online multi-player games? Uh, sure, why not?
Fetish map? Wild. And the New York Press named its
50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers. Ooh, and the NYT suggests that
Clear Channel is funding pro-war rallies. Here's a link to Salon's
Clear Channel coverage, too, as they need all the help they can get. Not that I'm offering any.
Here is a list of games that support the
PSX Link Cable. I'm interested in this because I got one of 'em at work today. The list is from
this site. I left in the (incomplete) years of release. I took out the information about who verified what--suffice it to say that every one of these games' Link Cable compatibility was verified by somebody. Most exciting for me:
Destruction Derby.
Andretti Racing 1996
Ayrton Senna Kart Duel 1996
Armored Core 1997
Armored Core: Project Phantasma 1998
Armored Core: Masters of Arena 2000
Assault Rigs 1995
Battleships 1996
Bogey Dead 6 Called Sidewinder in some places 1996
Burning Road 1996
Bushido Blade 1997
Bushido Blade 2 1998
Blast Radius 1998
CART World Series 1997
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 1997
Command & Conquer: Red Alert/ Retaliation
Coolboarders 2 1997
Dead In The Water
Descent 1995
Descent: Maximum Descent 2 1997
Destruction Derby
Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown
Doom 1995
Dune 2000 2000
Final Doom
Formula 1 1996
Formula 1 '98 1998
Formula 1: Championship Edition Explosive Racing 1997
Grand Tour Racing Called Total Driving in some places 1997 Grand Tour Racing '98
Grid Runner 1996
Independence Day 1997
Impact Racing 1996
International Moto X 1996
Krazy Ivan 1995
Leading Jockey Highbred Jpn Only 1996
Leading Jockey Highbred 2 Jpn Only 1999
Motortoon Grand Prix
Motor Grand Prix 2 1996
Metal Jacket Jpn Only 1995
Monaco Grand Prix
Need For Speed 1996
Racing Simulation 2
Racing Groovy Jpn Only 1997
Red Asphalt Called Rock & Roll Racing 2 in some places 1997
Ridge Racer Revolution
R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 (you'll need 2 copies of disc 1)
Rogue Trip 1998
Robo Pit Jpn only 1996
San Francisco Rush 1998
Streak Hoverboard Racing
Syutokou Battle R Jpn Only 1997
Test Drive 4 1997
Test Drive: Off Road 1997
Twisted Metal 3 1999
Toca 2
Tricky Slider 1999
WingOver 1997
Wipeout 1995
Wipeout XL Also called Wipeout 2000 or Wipeout 97 1996
Wipeout 3 1999
Zero Pilot (Origin/Sony!) Jpn Only 1998
Z Gundam Jpn Only 1997
Some very good news: a Game Boy Advance port of
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo is coming out in April. And some random links: a text-based game,
Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die;
Kaillera, which lets you play networked MAME games; Seanbaby's
Ten Naughtiest Games of All Time; a useful metaphor for visualizing how computers work:
the kitchen; and, on the other hand,
stuff about
stupid computer users. Ooh, and some
shoes I want.
Who is
Privacy International, and why are their '
Big Brother Awards' so Anglocentric? Ooh, the U.S. awards are
forthcoming.
Remember that you will die.I started looking, for reasons unbeknownst to me, for 'memento mori' art today. There is, of course, the Esquire story that inspired the Hollywood movie 'Memento' (the title was changed after test audiences didn't get the Latin), and some other movies including a Korean one and a made-for-tv one from the '70s.
There's a metal band of some kind called Memento Mori. A group called Ghosts and Vodka released an album by the name. And there are numerous songs called 'Memento mori,' including ones on Patti Smith's 'Peace and Noise' album, Matmos' 'A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure' and John Zorn's 'Cartoon S&M.' And there's an X-Files episode bearing the title (here's some fan art). There's even a font, and for that matter at least three mediocre tattoos.
And, above all, there's plenty of art. Russian folk prints, rosary beads, textile art (check out the use of the golden mean in Steiglitz' 'Momento Mori'), drawings by Tom Phillips and Hetty Krist and collage/mail art/something from Vittore Baroni. I found sculpture by Carolein Smit in clay and baubles, one from Elsa Mutinelli that evokes 'The Scream,' and one with an umbrella in it. And the paintings--Walter Gaudnek's, based on the work of Hans-Holbein-the-Younger; Paul Rangell, whose Memento Mori series includes paintings of microscopes and gas gauges; and the Mexican-influenced work of SRV superfan Veronica Piastuch.
I found some essays, including ones about collecting gravestone rubbings, death in Roman sculpture, death in old-time American photography, collecting the dance of death and multi-symbolic images and, that's right, death.
A lot of the art, though, seems somehow more personal, from this Lincoln memorial to this art show from cancer survivors. And, in the realm of the very personal, here's some hair art, and a Victorian tear-catching bottle. I kind of want one now.
Searching for 'memento mori' also produced some results I don't understand, including many in languages I don't speak, and some for people only vaguely related to the idea, like these corset-makers and this rpg designer (check out the lj page).
And, not only to save my favorite link for last (um, nearly last) but also to make a half-assed connection to Mike Davis' 'Ecology of Fear,' which I just loaned to Rachel, there's Berkeley's Mori project, which transforms seismograph data into a constantly-refreshing webpage. Oh, and here's an invite to a Karen Finley show from some years back.
I've been working on this post, on and off, for a good while now, and I want to wrap it up. So, here is a link to one of Paul McClure's pendants. I wish I had pictures of the rest of the series.
This ought to be enough
reading about The Band to last me a good long while. Also, I read about this article in James Twitchell's 'For Shame,' and here it is:
The Failure of Sex Education. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead in The Atlantic. Haven't read it yet.
I've mentioned past instances of these
before, but here are Business 2.0's
101 Dumbest Moments in Business, 2002.
Also, here are gargoyles in NYC, an Oscar gift-bag roundup, firecracker labels, Yahoo's most-emailed photos and the very entertaining exactitudes.com.
Ooh, a Sid and Marty Krofft
auction. I wish I had some money. My personal favorites are probably the D.C. Follies puppets.
I'm watching the National Spelling Bee on television. I didn't remember it being paced so slowly, or the commentary so irritating (it's like there's two color commentators and no play-by-play--and wow, lots of home-schooled and vaguely-disabled kids), or there being so many words better known as proper nouns--gallipoli and torquemada, for example. There sure are a lot of words that come to us
from the French. Winning words from the past include condominium ('56), sycophant ('64), therapy ('40) and
logorrhea ('99, and my personal favorite). Ooh, oubliette, pentateuchal, quattrocento, those are good words. And, unlike many of these words, it's clear that they didn't pass into English, like, last week. Whoa, is this kid cheating? There's no way she's mishearing the guy that badly. They did identify her as an 'actress.' Also, they let the kids ask questions about the root words now.
And here's a fairly academic (though not to a Sokal-in-Social-Text level) essay about my man Mikejack, and an article about that Press Your Luck guy, though the documentary airs Sunday. Ooh, and a transcript of a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire episode where someone's been accused of cheating.
I just learned that Dr. Alex Cameron, a classicist at the University of Dayton and the Bert Parks of the National Spelling Bee, has died. May he rest in peace. Sadly, I'm also reminded of Akron resident, home-schooler, alleged child abuser and all-around nutcase Thomas Lavery.
Ooh, regrettable food,
Weight Watchers recipe cards, the decline of Western civilization as told through
Jell-O advertising. Ashley sent me a link to
this game. Also, my pal Sumei hipped me to this card game,
Set. Like many good games, you could make a set yourself. A Set set. Anyway.
Lately, I've been seeing a lot of these Virgin Mobile commercials with Violent Femmes songs in 'em. And it's jarring, every time. One never hears Violent Femmes songs on television or in movies or whatnot. The only other time I can recall hearing one is in a Daria episode.
Ebay and
privacy? Trust me, you don't want to know.
Helen Thomas thinks Shrub is the worst president in American history. How many birds' nests are there in my attic? If you said 'zero' or 'one,' keep guessing. And here's an Atlantic article on Wynton Marsalis and the future of jazz.
Ooh, another
weird-record site, one that I found while returning to an old obsession--chasing
Nutty Squirrels records. Here is something that I couldn't find online--and I mean whatsoever--during the late '90s, and now here it is. I like that a lot.
Bill O'Reilly is going to debate Janeane Garofalo on Fox's fake-news show 'The Pulse'? Interesting times. I hope this Bush press conference doesn't preempt it. I also hope somebody points out to the relevant parties at Fox that their graphics are horrendously ugly and distracting. Though identifying the reporters and their affiliation is a nice touch.
Update: Okay, the O'Reilly thing was such a goddamn letdown. There was no 'debate.' It was an interview, and not a very good one.
Are text ads going to last? I sure hope so.
I had no idea, but I should've suspected, there was so much information out there about
fictional cereals.
Somebody plagiarized your fiction. How do you respond? Here's one possibility.
Yeah, payola never went away. No shit. And CMJ corked their charts. Nicely alliterative metaphor, no?
"My breath still stinks, and I'm on my third Cert."I think this piece about Eminem and brand-name-dropping is among the funnier things I've ever read about him. Alas, it's less than perfectly accurate. They missed, for example, a reference to third-rate hip-hop magazine XXL, on The Marshall Mathers LP. Also, neglecting Em's non-album cuts means missing out on allusions to Chess King, the Nintendo 64 and Snapple, among many others.
