Double-Post Saturday!

I wrote a post a couple of days ago, and so I'm going to post that one second, which will really mess with the bizarre top-to-bottom reverse-chronology blogs are known for. Besides, I'm still looking for a picture that really needs to get linked. You'll know it when you see it. Found it! The day may proceed. Furthermore, this is my first time fiddling with the new, official Blogger comments system, so if I don't like them, it's quickly back to Haloscan.

*update: I hate Blogger's comment system, Haloscan is back!*

The Saturday Paper = Family Circus

I once read somewhere -I think it was in a Tom Clancy book or something- that they don't schedule newsworthy political events on Fridays because nobody reads the Saturday papers. I usually don't read the Saturday paper, and given today's pile of editorial-page drek and Memorial Day Sale advertisements, I can see why. Even the sports reporters send in the second-stringers to cover the games, leaving this ugly stepchild of an otherwise good paper for one day a week. About the only highlight of today's paper was chuckling at how far off the 52-week highs Atari (not the same one as when we were kids) and Eidos have fallen.

Eidos actually warrants a brief note, because it makes me want to go referencing Edgar Allan Poe works, proclaiming the "Fall of the House of Lara Croft", given that Ion Storm Austin -Eidos' last bastion of quality developers- has all but been dissolved, and the rumors that Warren Spector has pulled a "Masque of the Red Death" and has run for the hills are probably true. After the massive backlash against the dumbing-down of Deus Ex 2: Invisible War (or, as the French port is called, Deus Ex Deux: Le Grande Merde), which would've actually been better if it had a killer-orangutan as the arch-villain, it's not surprising that this week Eidos pulled a page out of the Ritual handbook and canned the majority of its staff as a wonderful thank-you for the critical praise being lavished upon Thief III, just as Ritual had done after shipping the gold-master for Star Trek: Elite Force II.

*the following transition really does a feeble job of disguising the total non-sequitur*

Which brings me back to a bizarre futurist kind of idea I had a while back for designing a front-end for online stores that (get this shit) looks like a fucking store. Now, when trying to explain this bastard cross between Quake and Amazon.com, my friend decried the entire theory because he apparently loathes browsing and prefers search-functions, while I love walking into Best Buy with a wad of cash and wondering what I'll be walking out with. So I had this whole thing figured out, down to streaming in the graphics of, say, a CD case and manipulating it and everything. And he just said nobody who shops online wants to browse and look through things.

And maybe he's right, so why not take the front-end one step further and make shopping fun with the graphics engine by pulling out the BFG and fragging anyone you see taking a Yanni CD to the virtual cashier. "No one-click shopping here, motherfuckers! Pwnzored!"

Anyway, I was thinking about this following trying to access a site Slashdot had on its front-page regarding where the futurists 50 and 75 years ago thought we'd be at this dawn of the 21st century. My mother likes to tell me how her father said to her that by the time she was his age (which actually would've been around ten years ago) we'd all be flying to work in nuclear-powered helicopters. Hell, when I'm that age, in about twenty or so years, I wouldn't rule out the helicopters bit, but we'll surely still be guzzling Saudi oil.

So I think I'll watch Minority Report, read Snow Crash and spend a moment praying for a really good Special-Edition DVD-release of Blade Runner while I wait for that site's hard-drive to stop smoking so I can access it.

Anyway, I'm beginning to think that Ridley Scott's going to do Special Editions for 1492: Conquest of Paradise and White Squall before he gets around to doing one for Blade Runner, leaving me to re-read Future Noir, which is a rather worshipful look at the making of Blade Runner and its various versions, but it's still a good read, sort of like Masters of Doom was, but it'd be a lot better if I had a definitive DVD to watch it with.

Film-Composer Equation Time:
Hans Zimmer = (Vangelis + Philip Glass) - talent

I really was intending on seeing The Day After Tomorrow yesterday at the 11AM showing, but then decided to laugh at my friend's cousin, who defeated my computer prank in about twenty minutes. I then found that he got back at me by cutting down all of my trees in Animal Crossing, which I was planning on doing fairly soon enough, anyway. So, I'll have to catch it on Tuesday, which is the day after the day after tomorrow.

Computer prank of the day: If your intended-victim has a ball-mouse (not one of those optical-dealies), get a piece of clear tape and stick it over the hole the mouse-ball goes through. It's a ten-second prank, and that's about the lifespan of it, because it may be clear but it's not that clear, but the mook knows he's been hit, and is likely to yell, "What the Fuck!" at least upon finding his mouse is unresponsive or when he finds the tape on the bottom of it. And it's that scream that makes the whole prank worthwhile.


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