"Consoles are currently missing a lot of the long tail enablers, he continued. Without an Amazon-like recommendation engine, user ratings, ease of search and more dynamic pricing functionality allowing selective discounts and bundling, the long tail on digital download services will struggle to grow." (David Edery, principal of consultancy Fuzbi, and former worldwide games portfolio manager for Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service; article by Simon Parkin, Gamasutra)
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- The Long Tail of digital games? Maybe not
- Dizzee Rascal - "Holiday"
- Sid & Nancy "Kidzz" (aka lastnightparty.com the official video)
- Weezer - "Kids/Pokerface" (I know, I posted this before, but it just rocks)
- Confide - "Such Great Heights" (crank it up)
- eat that, nikeplus!
- Walk It Out (genius)
- Calvin Harris - Ready for the Weekend (very timely)
- Dan Black HYPNTZ
- Beastie Boys' "Ill Comm Earth" (Google Earth Driving Game)
July 2009
Ewan Morrison's "Distance"
"He couldn't watch a video, he couldn't watch TV because of the celebrities and the adverts and the adverts endorsed by celebrities, he couldn't jog or walk the streets because they would be filled with drunks, he couldn't eat because even the though of it made him sick. All he could do was sit before the computer. Yes, lose himself in another world. Take the bottle through. Log on to Second Life.
The waves were crashing. he was back on the beach and surrounded by people. Zed Reeves and Tame De Niro and Devil Huston. The animation was better tonight. When he hit the forward button he moved without delay. When he hit fly he flew, when he hit stop-fly he descended. It was the usual place, the place marked haven. Where people started before him. Tony Schwarzenegger and Tina Bardot were sitting on a bench together. He walked towards them. The icon said they were chatting. He wanted to sit and chat. He went through the menu to find the sit command. A bubble appeared/
'You do not have enough credits to sit here. Do you want to buy credits?'
No. He walked back and approached a svelte woman in a silver jumpsuit. Kiki Kidman. The drop-down menu gave him options: chat, shout. A box opened. Speak: 'Hi, Kiki, wanna chat?'
No reply. Kiki turned black. A box opened. 'Kiki is shape shifting right now.'
Whoever Kiki was. Some woman in Taiwan, or Hong Kong, some man in New jersey or Suffolk. He walked away.
The speech bubble opened. Message from Ziggy Cruise.
'Hi, Dad,' it said. 'What you doing online?'
Tom hit the turn button. Ziggy was in front of him. His son had changed. Ziggy was a fully grown man now, had beard and a black suit. Tom wanted to type: 'You should be in your bed.' He hesitated. Drank another mouthful.
'Though I'd find you here sometime soon,' his son said.
He needed to log off, right now. This was no place to meet his son. He typed.'Nice to meet you too.'
'Did you check out the disco? It's total cheese but they play no bad tunes this time of night. Mum's asleep, by the way. Total fluke meeting you. S'cool through.'
Ziggy was a man now.
'Sean, can't do this, I'm new here. Can I call you?'
'Follow me - show you some good shit. Be cool. By the way you got to do something about your avatar - it's not fully formed. Go to appearance on the drop-down menu and click on change.'
Sean was talking to him. With attitude. Tom could almost her his voice. He followed his son through the park over the beach to this place called Center. Pictures of landscapes floating in the sky, drop-down menus that said 'Go there' - a desert, a snowy wasteland, an infinite city.
'Cool huh, Dad? You wanna fly to the city with me? Watch a movie together?"
Tom was in tears.
'Gotta go'
No escaping anything. When was the last time he'd taken Sean to a movie?
'Gotta go, kiddo.'
'Say hi to your girlfriend for me. Mum says I can meet her Weds. That cool?'
'Yes, OK. nite nite.'
Tom logged off. Minutes staring at the screen, crying. OK, I'm crying I'm fucking crying. Let me be. The glass to the mouth. The trip to the kitchen to refill. Ok, he was a drunk. [...]" (p. 368-369)
Robert Sheffield's Love is a Mix Tape (2 of 2)
From Love is a Mix Tape by Robert Sheffield, Random House, 2007.
"The synth-pop duo fantasy
"Every time I have a crush on a woman, I have the same fantasy. I imagine the two of us as a synth-pop duo. No matter who she is, or how we meet, the synth-pop duo fantasy has to work, or the crush fizzles out. I have loads of other musical fantasies about my crushes - I picture us a a Gram-And-Emmylou country harmony duo, or as guitarists in a rock band, trading off vocals like Mike and Keith. But for me, it always comes back the synth-pop duo. The girl is up front, swhishing her skirt, tossing her hair, a saucy little firecracker. I'm the boy in the back, hidden behind my Roland JP8000 keyboard. She has all the courage and star power I lack. She sings our hit because I would never dare to get up and sing it myself. She moves the crowd while I lurk in the shadows, lavishing all my computer-blue love on her, punching the buttons then shower her in disco bliss and bathe her in the spotlight. I make her a star" (p. 132)"
Robert Sheffield's Love is a Mix Tape (1 of 2)
From Love is a Mix Tape by Robert Sheffield, Random House, 2007.
“I believe that when you’re making a mix, you’re making history. You ransack the vaults, you haul off all the junk you can carry, and you rewire all your ill-gotten loot into something new. You go through an artist’s entire career, zero in on that one moment that makes you want to jump and dance and smoke bats and bite the heads off drugs. And then you play that moment over and over. A mix tape steals these moments from all over the musical cosmos, and splices them into a whole new groove. Walter Benjamin, in his prescient 1923 essay “One Way Sweet,” said a book was an outdated means of communication between two boxes of index cards. One professor goes through books, looking for tasty bits he can copy onto index cards. Then he types his index cards up into a book, so other professors can go through it and copy tasty bits onto their own index cards.
Benjamin’s joke was: Why not just sell the index cards? I guess that’s why we trade mix tapes. We music fans love our classic albums, our seamless masterpieces, our Blondes on Blondes and our Talking Books. But we love to pluck songs off those albums and mix them up with other songs, plunging them back into the rest of the manic slipstream of rock and roll. […] Most mix tapes are CDs now, yet people still call them mix tapes. The technology changes, but the spirit is the same. I can load up my iPod with weeks’ worth of music and set it on shuffle to play a different mix every time. I can borrow somebody’s else iPod and pack it with songs I think they’d like. I can talk to a friend on the phone, mention a couple of songs, download them on LimeWire while we’re talking, and listen together. The hip-hop world now thrives on mix tapes, with artists circulating their rhymes on the streets via bootleg CDs. They’re never technically tapes, but they’re always called mix tapes anyway, just because tapes are always cool. It’s a fundamental human need to pass music around, and however the technology evolves, the music keeps moving. […]
I have built my entire life around loving music, and I surround myself with it. I’m racing to catch up on my next favorite song. But I never stop playing my mixes. Every fan makes them. The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with – nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up the story of a life”
(Rob Sheffield, Love is a Mix Tape, 2007, 23-26).
Nick Kelman's girls: A Paean
Nick Kelman, "girls: A Paean", Back Bay Books, 2004
"And yet tonight when you go to bed, when you lie there awake all night long, your heart pounding like it's going to leap out of your chest as you work and rework your strategy, when you lie there once more trying to figure out how to come out furthest ahead, when you lie there like that, by yourself, she will be sound asleep. And the kids will be sound asleep if they still live at home. And you are happy to give that to them. You really are.
But at some point, perhaps around three of four A.M. after you've gotten up to make yourself a sandwich but have been unable to because you don't know where anything is in your own kitchen, as you return to bed, as you get back in bed and pull the covers up over yourself, you will look down at her and you will wonder what she didn't tell you. You will wonder what other problems you will have to deal with sometime soon, which parts of the things that were supposed to make you happy, which parts of the things that were supposed to fulfill you have gone wrong now. You will wonder what else you will have to deal with on top of the problem that hasn't let you sleep.
And it will occur to you, as you look down at your wonderful, caring, understanding wife, that if she is ever going to really talk at all, if at any point she is going to tell you about her life as she once did so long ago (but how long really - ten, fifteen years?), if she's ever going to talk to you as she once talked to you about her classes or her love of sailing or her desire to join the Peace Corps, if she is ever going to talk to you like that again, she will have to talk to you about those responsibilities that she didn't want to talk to you about when you came home tonight. Because they have become her life. Her whole life now is the responsibilities you have made for yourself outside your job. Her whole life is now the world that used to be your dream, the world you have been doing the work to create, the world that has become a burden, the world that you can't bear to face.
And so perhaps looking down at her, something that not so long ago used to fill your face with amazement, sheer disbelief that you were lying naked next to a woman like this, perhaps looking down at her you will suddenly feel sick. Perhaps looking down at her you will suddenly understand why sometimes when you come home and she opens the door with a smile on her face you can't stand the sight of her, why sometimes when that door opens it feels like you've stepped off an unpleasant ride at an amusement park and right onto another one. And perhaps, just perhaps, just for split second, you will think about how easy it would be to strangle her in her sleep. And then you will wonder where that thought came from" (pp. 61-62)
Frédéric Beigbeder's 'Love Lasts Three Years' (3 of 3)
File under: Books I should have read a long time ago
Parties
"At parties, the art of seduction is simply a process of closing the gap. Inch by inch, careful not too be too obvious, you move closer. If you spot a girl you fancy, walk over to her (about 6 feet away). If she still looks attractive at this distance, start a conversation (3 feet). If she laughs at you feeble jokes, ask her to dance, or offer her a drink (18 inches). Sit next to her (12 inches). As soon as you see a gleam in her eyes, gently push that stray lock of hair behind her ear (6 inches). If she does not protest, talk to her a little more (3 inches). If her breathing becomes heavy, press your lips to hears (0 inches). The ultimate objective is to narrow the distance between you to a negative value equal to penetration (the national average is 6.6 inches)" (p. 254)
Pampered childhood
"Our mistake is in wanting life to stand still. We want time to stand still, love to last forever, nothing to die so that we can bask forever in some pampered childhood. We put us walls to protect ourselves, and one day those walls become our prison." (p. 295)
Frédéric Beigbeder's 'Love Lasts Three Years' (2 of 3)
File under: Books I should have read a long time ago
"[M]iddle class moralists are not the only ones endorsing marriage. It is a massive act of collective brainwashing: advertising, film-makers, journalists and even novelists endeavor to convince every little girl that what she really, really wants is a big white dress and a ring on her finger when without all the propaganda, the idea of marriage would have never occurred to her. Oh, she would have dreamed of love - the emotional roller-coaster that is True Love - otherwise what would be the point of living? But the idea of marriage, the Institution-Which-Makes-Love-Tedious, what Maupassant called 'the ball and chain of endless love and lifelong commitment', would never enter her head. In an ideal world, a twenty-year-old girl would be repelled by such an artificial concept. She would yearn for sincerity, for passion, for unconditional love - not some guy in a rented tuxedo. She would yearn for a man who could offer her a lifetime of surprises, not some bloke who could offer her flat-pack Ikea furniture. She would let nature - by which we mean desire - take its course.
Sadly, frustrated mothers dream that one day their daughters will know the same unhappiness they have known; and sadly their daughters have spent too much time watching soap operas. And so they wait for Mr Right - a pathetic marketing concept destined to turn girls into bitter, disillusioned old maids - when only Mr Right can truly make them happy." (p. 193)
Easy to fall in love, hard to stay in love
"I'm never satisfied: from thew moment I find a woman attractive, I fall in love with her, once I'm in love, I want to kiss her, once I've kissed her, I want to sleep with her; once I've slept with her, I want to move in with her, once I've moved in with her, I want to marry her; and as soon as I marry her, I meet someone else. Men are never satisfied, they are always hesitating between temptations. If women really want a relationship to last, all they have to do is never sleep with us and we will happily spend the rest of our lives chasing them" (p. 196)
Again, remember, love lasts three years
"Love lasts three years. Even if you've been married for forty years, in your heart you know it's true. You remember what you sacrificed, you remember the day you surrendered, the fateful day when you stopped being afraid.
I know that having me tell you that love lasts three years is horrible; it's like watching a magic trick go horribly wrong, like an alarm clock waking you in the middle of a wet dream. But someone has to put an end to the myth of eternal love, the cornerstone of our civilization, the fount of human misery. After three years, a couple must divorce, commit suicide or have children: these are the traditional means of proving it's all over" (p. 198-199)
The fascination of the new
"In life, you either live with someone or you can desire them. To desire something you already have goes against nature. This is why even a perfect marriage can be torn away by any passing stranger. You might be married to the most beautiful woman in the world, but one day a woman will walk into your life and hit you like an overdose of Viagra. And Alice was not just any woman, she was a woman in a tight black sweater. Tight black sweaters have been known to change the course of two lives.
My problem is I have a childlike fascination with anything new, a morbid desire to yield to each of the myriad temptations the future has to offer. I'm amazed by how much more aroused I am by the new than by the familiar, but it's hardly unusual. Most people would prefer to read a book they haven't read, see a play they've never seen, vote for anyone rather than the arsehole who's already the President" (p. 213)
Love is fundamentally flawed
"Love is fundamentally flawed: in order to be happy, people need stability, but love is alluring precisely because it is tentative. Happiness is based on certainty, love thrives on doubt and ambiguity. Marriage is designed not to keep love alive, but to make people happy. And falling in love is not the best way to find happiness - if it were, we'd know by now. I'm not sure if I'm making myself clear, but I know what I mean: what I'm trying to say is that marriage is a mixture of things that don't sit easily together" (p. 214)
Honesty, not perfection
"The first time you fall in love, you're looking for perfection. The second time, you're looking for honesty. The sexiest thing about a woman is her health. I love a woman who radiates health! I want to watch her frolic, and laugh, to stuff herself silly! Her teeth should be white as the whites of her eyes, her mouth as fresh as a newly-made bed, her lips like cherries whose every kiss is a jewel, her skin as taut as a tom-tom, her breasts as round as a pair of boules, her clavicle delicate as a wishbone, her legs as golden as Tuscany, and her arse as round as a baby's cheek. But most importantly she should never wear make-up. She shouldn't smell of perfume and cigarettes but of milk and sweat" (p. 225)
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