6:30 PM  
So, in case you missed yesterday's Celebrity News du jour, former Beatle George Harrison passed away after a long battle with cancer. I bring this up not because I think you haven't heard, but because I noticed that it caused a spike in Amazon's music sales charts; currently at the top of the chart are Harrison's All Things Must Pass and The Best of George Harrison.

I'd like to propose an alternative for you, one that I have coicidentally been listening to in my car for the last few days, The Travelling Wilburys, Volume 1, my reccommended disc for the month of December.

The Wilburys were a side project of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison, all working under Wilbury nom de plumes like "Muddy Wilbury" and "Boo Willbury". It's a lot of talent to stuff on one album, and they mesh together surprisingly well to make some really great tracks, especially the third track "Rattled"--a rockabilly masterpiece with Roy Orbison fronting the group and at the top of his game.

Apparently the disc will be harder to find than I suspected--I can't find it on Amazon--but it's definitely worth the trouble. Next time you're in a used CD store (or, for those of you who have piratical leanings, when you're online), keep an eye open for Volume 1 (there's also a Wilburys Vol. 3--no, there's no Vol. 2--but it's not as good in my opinion.)

11:24 PM  
Still at work, late on a Friday night, some random thoughts:

* I've been having an internal debate over the last few days over whether I'm happily dissatisfied or unhappily satisfied with my life.

* My MP3 archive has now reached a sufficient size (especially of obscure songs and songs downloaded on impulse) that loading it up and setting it on random creates a truly terrific radio station.

* The more I play, the more Simpsons Road Rage is proving that, gameplay-wise, it might actually be a better game than Crazy Taxi 2.

* Got my external hard drive working again, connected via a cheap Firewire card to my work PC. Should be a handy backup for my MP3 archive. Anything that protects me from the major pain in the ass it's been rebuilding since the Great Hard Drive crash.

* I feel a novel starting to form deep inside me...

* Already I'm wondering if the first thought above was too e/n. Don't want to lose any of the few folks who might actually be reading this. Of course, who knows; reading other blogs, it seems like e/n is par for the course. Maybe I should open up. I dunno. Tell you what: email me with any question, and I'll answer it, right here on this page.

* Went to the bookstore for a few minutes tonight, always a good time. Saw that the book A Beautiful Mind has been given a new cover featuring Russell Crowe just in time for this month's movie. Movie photo re-covers of books really annoy me. I was in publishing, I know about cross-promotion, and I know that Maximus the Mathematician will (for the nonce) sell more copies than the old one (happily, still shown on the Amazon page linked above) featuring John Nash. But the whole idea still annoys me, probably because the movie-based covers are usually so ugly. Even if they aren't (the movie cover to The Talented Mr. Ripley comes to mind), they're usually not as good as a well-designed cover that isn't (quite) as constrained by the Laws of Publicity.

(Incidentally, why does "Rifle Shooter Magazine" come up when I search for "Talented Mr. Ripley" on Amazon? EDIT: Link removed because it didn't work; you'll have to do the search yourself.)

Okay; enough abuse of the semicolon. Have a good weekend, everybody.

12:30 PM  
Now that they've finished playing it, Penny Arcade has taken its own swipe at the ending of MGS2.

12:36 PM  
Remedy's hypergritty take on New York City is the home of dilapidated tenements, frostbitten alleyways, and humbling neon, and you'll feel like you're right there.
--from GameSpot's review of Max Payne for the XBox

Why do writers reviewing Max Payne feel like they need to do it in the same style as the game's dialogue? "Humbling neon"? What does that mean?

Next thing you know, we'll see reviews of Civ III backed up...BY NUCLEAR WEAPONS!

3:48 AM  
My need to test the will of others forces me to post this link to a positive and incredibly spoiler-laden review of Fellowship of the Ring.

Are you strong enough?

(By the way--I quite obviously did not spend the night at home. Damnitall.)

12:59 AM  
On SA, Lowtax posted a newspaper graphic of Osama Bin Laden's mountain hideaway, perfect Photoshop fodder.

I couldn't resist.

Neither could many others, though my gaming geek friends will probably like this one the best. Next to mine, of course.

Added bonus: my new SA sig, taken from this week's hilarious Christmas issue of JLA.

2:55 PM  
For those who were wondering, I haven't picked up a DVD player yet. It's just too darn expensive a purchase until I've at least picked up Christmas presents. Not having one should also allow me to wrap up the couple outstanding freelance projects I'm working on, so I guess there's an upside.

Last night I went down and visited Don Perrin down in Lake Geneva. I picked up a bunch of stuff on deep discount at the Game Guild, now preparing to close it's physical storefront. Who ever thought we'd see the day when Lake Geneva, Wisconsin--birthplace of TSR, home of the Dungeon at the Old Hotel--wouldn't have a game store? Sigh. Picked up a bunch of stuff on deep discount, including an old Call of Cthulhu supplement and some new dice to begin replacing my lost dice bag (Sigh again, on that last bit.) Got to go and visit Don's miniatures company, too, run out of an old storefront near his house. All in all, a good, fun night--even if it did mean four more hours on the road between getting there and back.

I think I'll spend tonight at home.

11:47 PM  
IT LIVES.

2:53 PM  
Well, I looked at DVD players, and it looks like it'll cost a couple hundred bucks. Sony has changed their remote design too, which annoys me a bit; they put the special feature buttons in more prominent places, but they took off the Channel up/down button--I have been using my DVD remote as my primary TV/DVD remote, so that'll be an annoying change.

On the plus side, a new DVD player will be able to play CD-Rs, which my old one couldn't. So that's something.

11:57 AM  
Oh--and an update on the Buckaroo novellization; I'm about halfway through it, and you can stop being jealous now. Man oh man oh man, is it badly written! Partially I think that's because it's an homage to the old pulps, but mainly I think it's because Earl Mac Rauch is just a shitty writer. Hardcore fans of the movie will still want to read it to discover previously unknown details (it was Hanoi Xan that Lizardo was speaking to on the phone at the asylum? Pecos is female?), but everyone else should go back to their normal lives now, or maybe go play some more games at Orsinal.

11:54 AM  
I admit it--on more expensive pieces of electronics I play the sucker and buy Best Buy's Product Replacement Plan. It's saved me a couple times when equipment has mysteriously broken down.

Like today, when my DVD player suddenly began treating DVDs, CDs, and peanut butter sandwiches the same--nothing happens when I close the tray. I monkeyed around with it for a half hour or so, then went digging through my "Warranties and Receipts" box (I'm not hyper-organized, but at least I have my jumbled messes labelled.) Found the receipts and replacement things for my receiver, my PS1, my speakers...but not my DVD player. I found the receipt, but discovered that I had apparently been stupid and not purchased a plan. Damn it.

That's all I need--another expense. But having shitty reception and no cable, I really don't have much of a choice but to at least go price out a new player. Knowing me, I'll probably just buy one anyway. I really need better impulse control...

6:07 PM  
Wow.

I can tell that I'm going to have at least a few hours of fun playing these. Cute, simple, fun gameplay. They're a nice alternative to the frantic in-your-face Console Wars games that I've been playing lately, and I just wanted to share the link.

4:00 PM  
The reprint of the Buckaroo Bonzai novel is in my hands. You may now all poop your pants in jealousy.

3:01 PM  
If I employed my typical blow-by-blow narrative style to cover the events of the last three days, you'd get bored and my fingers would hurt. So allow me to sum up the high points (apologies for spelling errors in advance; I'm too tired to edit right now.)

Thanksgiving:
Good food. Thanksgiving is also the only day of the year when I sit and watch a football game on television, and this year's matchup (the Packers versus Detroit) had both the Wisconsin angle and good humor value--the only way the hole the Lions are in could be any funnier is if they actually won (personally, I'm hoping they just decide to secure a place in the record books with an 0-10 season.) We usually go to my mom's side of the family for Turkey Day, and it's been interesting to watch them mellow over the years from a noisy crowd that would go through four cases of beer to a group debating whether to open a third bottle of wine.

Friday:
Went to visit my sister at work; she's an assistant manager at a suburban Target store, and it was fun to hassle her on the busiest shopping day of the year. I also took advantage of her ten percent discount to pick up my second PS2 game, SSX Tricky; I've been having a good time playing it at work, and it'll be a nice multiplayer game to have around when friends visit.

That night I got to hang out with Jeff Nowak, my good buddy since the days I worked up at Tomahawk. We had dinner, then went back to my folks' place and messed around on the PS2 for a while as we waited for web pages to load across my dad's hideously slow Net connection. I showed him this page, SA, and a few other pages, so we might be seeing more of him online soon.

Saturday:
Okay, I only watch one football game on television, and there's only one I care to see in person--the only one all year that I care who wins: the annual Gopher-Badger football game. Both of my parents are U of M grads, and my sister and I both went to UW schools, so this is how we play out our intergenerational rivalry. For the last five years, things have gone Wisconsin's way, but Saturday....well, follow the link for the details. Suffice it to say that we lost. Oh well--I guess the Badgers have to give up the Paul Bunyan Axe once in a while so that we get the pleasure of winning it back the next year...

There. Football commitments out of the way until next year. Now resuming normal levels of geekitude.

Saturday night, despite an encroaching illness, I went over and hung out with one of my best friends, Brian Schomburg. We grew up next door to each other, wrote Sketch! together, and I'd love to see him come down and work at Humanhead (which could be a possibility); but he does have a pretty kickass job with Fantasy Flight Games, so I understand his hesitance. We talked about that for a little while, had some dinner, went over and saw FFG's new digs (already packed to bursting with LOTR boardgame stuff), and poked around on the web, watching trailers for Episode II and for City of Heroes. Then we went back to his place, where I showed him some of the stuff I'd been screwing around with for Monkeyfan Records and he showed me a completed prototype for Boozeland, a board game he and some other guys had come up with while working out at West End Games. Brian said he was hoping to make some poster-sized playable copies of the board; I'll be first in line, 'cause it's damn hilarious--think the Tick as drunken serial killer.

Sunday:
Blasted two hours south to see my grandparents in Albert Lea, MN, then back to my folks' place. (For those keeping track, total time on the road since Tuesday 7AM, 21 hours--almost one day in five. Yow.) I was still feeling a little sick, so I spent the evening on the couch collapsed and taking advantage of my parents' cable TV. I had hoped to just lay there until I fell unconcious and then drive down Monday, but the ten o'clock news threatened snow by morning rush hour. So I quick packed my bags, took a shower to wake up, and left the Twin Cities at ten-thirty. Just as I was leaving, Jon gave me a call on my cel phone, and I talked to him a couple times until my battery died. (That's what that was when I got cut off, Jon--not a horrible car wreck or anything. Just so you know.)

Traffic is slow on the interstate after midnight, and I now have a new theory for while I hate late-night interstate driving: IUL. But I need to go do some work, so I'll let you guess what that might stand for until I get around to posting again.

Hope everyone else had a good weekend. Now get those noses back on the grindstone. (Ouch.)

By the way: no snow yet, either here or in the Twin Cities. Damn meteorologists.

Edit: There is now, however, snow at the Mitchell Corn Palace. Thanks to Lampshade for the link.