everything's been done

Ultima Online is a Tolkeinesque videogame, the playing of which takes place in an enormous online world called Brittania populated by wizards and elves and such. Apparently, building a powerful character takes tremendous time and effort, and so some experienced players had taken to selling their well-developed characters online for real-world money. I soon discovered you could also buy gold pieces on eBay - that is, you could buy an amount of the coinage of this virtual world in exhange for legitimate currency, and the gold would then be transferred to your character inside the virtual world. And this was how I discovered that, in the late summer of 2000, Ultima Online gold pieces were trading against the US dollar at about the same rate as the Vietnamese dong.
This could easily be one of those slice-of-life stories that TV newscasts slap on at the end of the bad craziness of the rest of the news so that the anchor person can turn to the camera and smile and chuckle in a what'll-they think of next? sort of way that tells everyone watching that life is really pretty grand and light-hearted after all. It could easily be that kind of story, but I think its a particularly ugly kind of lie to treat it as such. Because what this fact means - what it means that the Vietnamese dong and Ultima Online gold pieces were worth about the same in the summer of 2000 - is that the triumphant liberal West had by then reached a point where in some real way it saw the nation of Vietnam and the virtual world of Britannia as roughly equal. That one is an actual place with real people and the other a fantasy world created for the amusement of affluent people with tremendous amounts of leisure time - this is still understood, yes, but not as clearly as it once was.

-Chris Turner from the chapter Homer's Odyssey in his book PLANET SIMPSON first published by Random House, 2004

i couldn't have put it better myself. get some perspective

me, myself and i

Advanced Global Personality Test Results Extraversion 73% Stability 80% Orderliness 50% Accommodation 70% Interdependence 90% Intellectual 63% Mystical 36% Artistic 23% Religious 43% Hedonism 16% Materialism 10% Narcissism 50% Adventurousness 63% Work ethic 50% Self absorbed 56% Conflict seeking 63% Need to dominate 10% Romantic 36% Avoidant 23% Anti-authority 10% Wealth 56% Dependency 23% Change averse 30% Cautiousness 43% Individuality 16% Sexuality 30% Peter pan complex 10% Physical security 90% Physical Fitness 30% Histrionic 23% Paranoia 30% Vanity 23% Hypersensitivity 30% Female cliche 23%

Stability results were high which suggests you are very relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic.

Orderliness results were medium which suggests you are moderately organized, hard working, and reliable while still remaining flexible, efficient, and fun.

Extraversion results were high which suggests you are overly talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the expense too often of developing your own individual interests and internally based identity.

trait snapshot:
social, outgoing, worry free, optimistic, upbeat, tough, likes large parties, makes friends easily, rarely irritated, open, enjoys leadership, trusting, dominant, thrill seeker, strong, does not like to be alone, assertive, mind over heart, confident, controlling, feels desirable, likes the spotlight, loves food, social chameleon, hard working, concerned about others

on this day

On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. Suspected gunman Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president of the United States

a fact i was sadly unaware of, today

i just saw the best part

We're sitting in my back garden on a hot summer night, eating barbecued chicken and listening to Todd Rundgren, when a friend suddenly explodes into a rant about pop music. His argument, as far as i could follow it, went as follows: it's crap because the words are crap, pathetic adolescent poetry rather than lyrics, and so if it's all crap then you might as well listen to music that performs a function and has no pretensions whatsoever...Which is why he only bothers with house music. House music doesn't bother with words very much, and has an express goal, namely making you dance when you're off your face. That, it seems to me, is like saying that because most restaurants are very bad, one should play the percentage game, forget about trying to find the good ones and eat at McDonald's every meal."

-Nick Hornby from his critical essay on Ben Folds Five's "Smoke" found in the Penguin publication 31 Songs

beautiful oblivion staring at the barrel of a gun under a blue sky on mars

in memoriam of dearly departed blogging brethren;

q: what do you get when you put your heart in a blender?
a: a crush

also, how do you spell that word that axl rose sings before "sweet child of mine" in the guns 'n' roses song sweet child of mine of which there exists an excellent cover by dean wareham's (ex galaxie 500) luna?

and another thing, who do i have to talk to to get some bananas around here?
and another thing...shut up!
president clinton, i figured if anyone knew how to get some bananas around here, it'd be you.

riddle me this: personal, obtuse or sleep deprived? impenetrable complexity or nonsense? additionally, could this post confound your mother who, as we both know, is ... je ne sais quoi? and finally, when did you become anonymous? or, perhaps, when did i?

instead of running, stay and keep it coming

"there are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... i dream of things that never were and ask why not"

"There's a war on imagination at the moment, led by the US government, a war against imaginative and complex responses to things. There were imaginative and complex responses to the Iraq situation from everyone from church to academics, but they chose to ignore them and go to war. Mind you, in one way you have to admire Bush. He is actually himself a radical and imaginative president. He's imagined the world as a worse place and made it that way."

-Matthew Herbert aka doctor rockit aka radioboy aka wishmountain

in the Guardian on Saturday May 27 this year

mmm....contemporary

'cuz there's nothing else to do

there are nights when i think that sal paradise was right.
boys and girls in america have such a sad time together.
sucking off each other at the demonstrations.
making sure their makeup's straight.
crushing one another with collossal expectations.
dependent, undisciplined, sleeping late.

she was a really cool kisser and she wasn't all that strict of
a christian.
she was a damn good dancer but she wasn't all that great of a
girlfriend.
he likes the warm feeling but he's tired of all the
dehydration.
most nights were crystal clear but tonite its like it's stuck
between stations
on the radio.

the devil and john berryman took a walk together
they ended up on washington talking to the river
he said "I surrounded myself with doctors and deep thinkers
but big heads with soft bodies make for lousy lovers".
there was that night that we thought that john berryman could
fly.but he didnt so he died.
she said "you're pretty good with words but words won't save
your life"
and they didn't so he died.

he was drunk and exhausted but he was critically acclaimed and
respected.
he loved the golden gophers but he hated all the drawn out
winters.
he likes the warm feeling but he's tired of all the
dehydration.
most nights were kind of fuzzy but that last night he had
total retention.

these twin city kisses.
sound like clicks and hisses.
and we all come down and drown in the mississippi river.

we drink
we dry up.
we crumble into dust.

we get wet we corrode
we get covered in rust.

-lyrics by Craig Finn on the Hold Steady track "Stuck BETWEEN Stations" from their third album boys and girls in America