Category: Uncategorized

The blogs giveth and the blogs taketh away. With the temporary sabbatical (is that an oxymoron?) of Royal Toybox, the web world has offered up Dad May Have Been Right. Get over there, you content-hungry freak.

I was sick a couple days ago. As the day wore on, the question of whether I was feeling well enough to go to the bar came up. Fully aware that Her Worship’s sanity’s edges were starting to fray a bit from seeing no one for five days other that Yours Truly and a reportedly handsome plumber, I felt the risk/benefit analysis tipping toward a night out. Still I waffled, knowing that I should stay home and watch bad TV under a blanket. Eventually, a very old marketing campaign found its way to the front of my consciousness: Guinness is good for you!

Several hours and two pints of the black stuff later, I was right as the mail. Obviously, the only conclusion possible is that the adage, first revealed to me in 1986 on a postcard sent to my grandmother which now hangs on my refrigerator, is indeed true.

If the last post wasn’t cloudy enough, check this out.

Download this and play it. Especially if you don’t play videogames with any regularity. So… chill…

It took me a while, but as promised I am back on the topic of identity and anonymity in the modern digital world.

Made-up factoid: the average American visits a new website and creates a new log-on and password for himself once every four days. I have lost count of the number of websites which have asked me the apparently innocuous question of what I want my log-on name to be. It’s maddening, the constant requirement to define myself. What do you choose? The name your parents gave you? An old nickname? A reference to something you’re all geek about? What you want to be? What you want others to think you are? As if defining oneself in the anarchistic vacuum we know as modern life wasn’t difficult enough.

Here’s a follow-up to the recent business about intelligent design. Since I do truly believe that the rounding-up and ‘re-education’ of non-Jesus-freaks is becoming more and more likely, I feel like I should skip town. My fanaticism for the US, on the other hand, dictates that I should move to the bible belt and start a life of vigilante rationality. Which will I choose?

I think I may stage a Constantinian mass conversion. I’ll go Protestant, get elected President, go to war, and then receive a vision from the spirit of Newton which will tell me that I will win the battle through the mighty influence of the mysterious and sacred powers of physics.

Geek pride continuously surprises me. How did we get to this point, the point at which reveling in one’s social ineptitude has become a viable social action? This product in particular I find amazing. Hilarious, but amazing.

A direct relationship can be drawn between the broad acceptance of the Geek Nation and the realization of Uncle Bill’s dream of a personal computer in every home. All of a sudden these kids have a purpose in their families. Computer acting up? Call Mikey. Thus a place in modern society, and thus respect and endorsement.

I want to know what the hell geeks did before computers went mainstream. I know they read Dune. Ham radio? Model railroads? What did groups of geeks do before the Playstation? Chess club?

Don’t miss the hot flipbook action over at outgrabes. I recommend John Williams with mine.

Now that was one crappy week.

Here are my New Week’s Resolutions:

• Actually take Wednesday and Friday off, as scheduled.
• Get fairly drunk at some point, preferably not in front of family. But only preferably.
• Buy some Christmas presents. ‘Tis the season to take one look at the mall’s parking situation and gain true understanding of the value of the internet.
• Don’t ruin Thanksgiving for everyone.

What are you doing here? Go watch one of these.