A day might come when I’m regularly in bed by 10 p.m. And when it does, I will quickly lose the will to live.
Good night.
Dec 072005
Dec 072005
I feel a 19th Floor redesign coming on. I’ve been wanting to experiment with a three-column design that might give the site a more streamlined appearance. I also want to try adding a background image to the title bar. I don’t pretend to have much in the way of stylesheet kung foo, but there are tools like the Movable Type Style Generator that can make me seem, at the very least, competent. My plan is to tackle this project in the next week to ten days, so let me know if you have any ideas on layout or color scheme.
Dec 062005
I had a date last week with someone I met on-line. Those of you have followed my blog for some time know of my ambivalence regarding on-line dating and this latest experience reinforced those feelings. She was a perfectly nice person, but we didn’t seem to click when it came time to sit at a table with each other. The lack of context that you have going into these dates is one of the things that frustrates me about the whole on-line scene. All either of us has to go on are a few e-mail messages that occur in a sort of digital vacuum that is devoid of mannerisms, body language, all of our subconscious ways of describing ourselves to the people around us. Of course, that’s probably also the biggest advantage of on-line dating. Another person’s impression of me might be dramatically different if they meet me first through e-mail rather than in person. And I’m not just referring to my disability, although that’s definitely part of my personal context that doesn’t really come across on-line. Whether or not that part of me is significant when another person is forming an opinion of me, I’m still not sure.
But I do know that if I ever get a new iPod, I’m totally loading it up with Knight Rider episodes! Now if only iTunes would start distributing reruns of Manimal, all would be right with the universe.
Dec 052005
When I renewed my MPR membership, I received a subscription to The Economist as my thank-you gift. I have a sinking feeling that I’m going to have to devote entire Sundays to keeping up with my magazines. But at least I can speak knowledgeably on voters’ recent rejection of Kenya’s draft constitution. You never know when that sort of thing might come in handy at a dinner party. Of course, there’s always the risk that I might come across as an insufferable bore.
Thanks to everyone who has identified themselves on my Frappr map. I find it fascinating to see all of the places my readers call home. If you haven’t done so yet, I hope you’ll consider adding yourself.
Dec 042005
Today’s NY Times has an article about a pending class-action suit against BAR/BRI (registration req’d) for possible antitrust violations. BAR/BRI is the only game in town for most law students who want to take a review course for the bar exam. And nearly every law student takes a bar review course after graduation. The bar exam, at least in Minnesota, is a grueling affair. It spans two days and covers roughly a half-dozen subject areas. If you don’t take a review course, you’re on your own as far as figuring out what material will be on the exam and how to prepare for it. For eight weeks in the summer of 1998, I dutifully attended BAR/BRI classes, listening to professors who were either quite engaging or duller than Soviet architecture. This privilege cost me $1,000 that I didn’t really have at the time, but I also didn’t have much of a choice. To the best of my recollection, there wasn’t an alternative available. Now, I’m toying with the idea of joining in on the suit as a class-action member. I don’t have a problem with this company making money on bar review classes, but I do have a problem with them positioning themselves as the only choice for students who are already heavily in debt.
Dec 032005
I think I’ve been a pretty good boy this year…well, other than that one night in Paris with those two women who were students at the Sorbonne. I still can’t look at a jar of honey and keep a straight face. So I’ve been relatively good. But let’s overlook my moral lapses and talk about what presents I want for Christmukkah this year:
Books
Woken Furies because Richard Morgan writes kick-ass noir SF
Ex Machina: The First Hundred Days because who can resist a comic about a civil servant with superpowers?
A Feast for Crows because the first three books in George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy got me hooked and it’s required a supreme act of will not to buy this myself
On Beauty because I never got through White Teeth and I feel like I owe Zadie Smith a second chance.
DVDs
Star Wars: Episode III because seeing Anakin Skywalker get his legs sliced off makes up for the previous two films.
War of the Worlds because those alien tripods are way scarier than Tom Cruise.
Sin City: Recut and Extended because it stars Jessica Alba’s navel
MST3K: Volume 5 because it’s got Time Chasers (“Matt, it’s time for you decide if you’re gonna be one of my team players or not”) and A Touch of Satan (“This is where the fish lives.”). None of this will make any sense to you unless you’re a MST fan, so just move along.
Assorted Geek Goodness
Civilization IV because if I’m going to spend all this time in front of the computer, I might as well do something productive.
I’m blogging this T-shirt because I want to put everyone on notice.
Sapien Bookcase because it’s oh-so-mod.
Darth Vader mini-bust because it would just look so cool on my desk.
A Movado watch because you want me to look good, don’t you?
Of course, you should feel free to get creative and stray from this list if you think it’s appropriate. I trust you to exercise good taste in expressing your affection for me through material things.
Dec 022005
I need your help with a little audience participation experiment. Frappr is a cool little tool that lets you pin your location on a Google map, along with an optional comment and a photo of yourself. I’d like all 19th Floor readers to go to this website and show me the place you call home. Make the world seem a little smaller for me.
Dec 012005
A late entry tonight because I was out for most of the evening. I’ve been messing around with Firefox 1.5. Nothing too revolutionary, but I do like being able to drag and drop tabs in the browser window. And pages seem to load a bit faster. I toyed with the idea of switching to the Thunderbird e-mail client, but Outlook does what I need and it integrates nicely with some work-related tasks. So I remain, in many respects, a loyal Microserf.
Nov 302005
The longlist for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award is out. Here’s my personal favorite, from Winkler by Giles Coren:
And he came hard in her mouth and his dick jumped around and rattled on her teeth and he blacked out and she took his dick out of her mouth and lifted herself from his face and whipped the pillow away and he gasped and glugged at the air, and he came again so hard that his dick wrenched out of her hand and a shot of it hit him straight in the eye and stung like nothing he’d ever had in there, and he yelled with the pain, but the yell could have been anything, and as she grabbed at his dick, which was leaping around like a shower dropped in an empty bath, she scratched his back deeply with the nails of both hands and he shot three more times, in thick stripes on her chest. Like Zorro.
Zorro? This whole passage conjures up some kind of perverse Three Stooges movie. I’m going back through my manuscript to make sure I haven’t written anything quite this embarrassing.
Nov 292005
Genre television has undergone a resurgence in popularity this year. Network executives are frantically searching for a formula that will give them a ratings success on par with Lost. I’ve checked out a few of these contender and my impressions are less than favorable. Surface is generic and a little too cutesy. Invasion has potential, but I might be collecting Social Security by the time the plot gets to wherever it’s trying to go. I never even bothered with Threshold or Night Stalker. What makes Lost so good (and what these other programs lack) is its deft character development. Once you take away the back stories of each character, all you’re left with is a rehashing of Gilligan’s Island.
Good genre television puts character first and uses the standards of the genre (whether it’s spaceships, vampires, or monsters) as tools for exploring the light and dark aspects of those characters. Yet this concept seems to elude the creators of most of these shows, who think it’s sufficient to slap some new computer-generated effects on stories that were already stale ten or twenty years ago.
Over the weekend, one of my nurses persuaded me to elaborate on my usual holiday decorating (which typically consists of one string of lights). I have these paper snowflakes affixed to each of the windows in my living room. At first, I was worried they would look a little…well…girly. But I kind of like how they capture and reflect the light.