xbox name change

Yeah, so I dropped a sawbuck to change my Xbox gamertag (username) away from my real name. (If I understand correctly, current Xbox-friends needn't adjust anything to compensate.) While the tag now points at my domain name, it adds just enough abstraction-distance to make me comfortable while staying within a global namespace I don't feel silly or false in using.

After buying "gold" Xbox Live memberships for myself and classicaljunkie, I quickly concluded that having my full legal name being my handle wasn't at all like using a full name in an internet forum. Basically, when I would sit down to play Uno with XxHiReDhItMaNxX, WLD BLDOG 1980 and BLOODYSTOOL69 - or whomever - I would essentially be inviting them all to address me by my real name (out loud, via their headset mics) while their pulsatingly macho American handles kept me from doing the same. This made me feel more than a little creeped out, and reminded me of nothing so much as the time I lost my official plain-red Cohasset Youth Basketball League T-shirt, back when my parents had signed me up for basketball, and so I played a game wearing a red T-shirt my mom found that had my name on it, making me the only kid on my team wearing his name. This would be the last game of basketball I would ever play, my friends.

Farewell, Pattersons

Hey look it is the final For Better or for Worse strip. WIth its continuing, shifting storyline about a family whose members aged and matured (and occasionally gave birth or died) in real time, it was one of my favorite comics when I was a kid.

It grew increasingly treacly over the years, and I stopped being able to read it maybe halfway through its run. (Or maybe it was always quite treacly, and I became too cyncial for it as I got older.) For all that, it was a fine, tightly scoped soap opera with believable stories and characters, and I have always loved Johnston's loose but warm art style.

On the minus side, it looks like it's about to go into reruns, rather than step aside and let a new talent in. Once this would have made me growl and moan about the continual morass that is the North American newspaper comics page, as it clings to yet another corpse rather than try anything new, but honestly I stopped reading the funny pages so long ago that it's really not my place to say any more.

Edit Hmm, some people are interpreting messages at the strip's website that Johnston is not putting the strip into reruns, but manually rebooting the whole enterprise and starting a fresh story with newlywed (and rejuvenated) John and Elly. Which would be... well, interesting. I bet we'll get the full poop at Weingarten's chat next week.

Bad news

The gravity of Gustav is starting to get through to me. (As is the possibility that we can now expect "100-year storms" every couple of years or so.) It looks like it could be worse than Katrina.

On the off chance anyone reading this lives on the northern Gulf coast: what can I say? Be safe. Consider leaving. Like, now.

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In other news, if you're buying that shit about Palin's baby (which I won't even dignify with a link), please put it down and back away from it. You do not want that; it is beneath you. There are so many more legitimate (and far less creepy) attack angles, if you wish to make attacks. Leave the kerning for the wingnuts.