(no subject)

A newish podcast I have come across is Benjamen Walker's Theory of Eveything. Short, weekly bits and pieces that this guy and his friends find interesting. So far I'm right there with them. I have downloaded all the shows currently available through iTunes, which only span a couple of months though apparently he's been doing this on the radio for much longer.

---

After a heck of a lot of AJAX hacking today for volity.net (just some sysadmin doodoo to perform with daerr before its first draft is presentable), I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which has been soaking on my TiVo for a few weeks. I liked it a lot and could recommend it to anyone. I think Zarf admonished "Do not see this movie if you've been in a relationship, or if you are in a relationship now, or if you ever plan on being in a relationship", but really, it doesn't reveal anything worse than things you've already spent a lot of time reflecting on in any of those situations. And it does it very cleverly.

Am I a cad for kind of hoping that the credits would roll at the moment that Kate Winslet's character gets kicked out of the car near the end? That would have been stunning, a stunning blow, and I was steeling myself to take it. But as much as I would have enjoyed the shock of a flaming wreck, I did not fail to appreciate the sort of willing pessimism of the given ending. I do like my film romances with a delicate hint of cyanide.

I smiled to recognize some resemblances between me and Jim Carrey's character, the possible existence of which I was warned about. Actually he certainly dresses a lot like me, at least for winter. Though his coat may be a little nicer. And as always I wish my hair would behave like that.

Then again I don't know how I feel that people have twice now said they I resemble the lead character in a Charlie Kaufman-penned mopefest. (The other was "Adaptation", and, sigh, yes. If only for the scene where he types one sentence of his overdue writing project and then has a lengthy internal monologue about getting a muffin.)

(I think I'm going to go to the CVS for a coke.)

(no subject)

BoardGameSpeak is back, more or less. They posted a brand-new show a few weeks ago, but didn't explain where they'd been since last fall, and have posted a year-old misplaced recording since then.

The show is OK, and no better. I actually don't really like the hosts' style too much. I bet they're personally good guys and I'd like to meet them some day, and certainly they have done a great job running the boardgamegeek.com website for many years now... but on-air they come off as a bit, um, off, to me. The lead host seems deeply Libertarian, right-leaning and rather smug about it. Now I'll be the first to say your kink is OK, but he lets this flavor much of what he says, and in their last show of last year he made a terribly unfortunate comment about New Orleans. When the show vanished thereafter I imagined any number of terrible voodoo-related fates that he might have brought down on himself, but here they are again.

Also there are no women on the show ever. This isn't entirely their fault, of course; it's well-known that the game-fan and game-production worlds have gender-balance issues. But they act as if there aren't any women to be found anywhere in gaming, whenever the subject is approached. Once or twice they've had phone conversations with someone's game party and upon hearing a female voice in the background chatter the hosts are all WAIT YOU HAVE A WOMAN THERE?!?! WTF HA HA Other than that the show's a sausage party, which is unfortunate and igry.