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What the hell, B button.

September 16, 2005 /

Everyone’s a-tizzy about the controller for Nintendo’s next console. By “everyone” I mean “all my friends are nerds.” In case the article I linked is still down, allow me to summarize for you:

  • it’s a TV remote
  • with a thingy that goes in it

The general reaction is positive. It’s new and different! It’s not the ten thousandth attempt to recreate the Dual Shock! You move the whole controller to move things on screen! (Yes, lovely, and check out the front end. That’s an IR panel. Want to know what happens when you point it straight down?)

My reaction is not positive, and this morning I remembered why: I am one of a rarefied set of humans who have actually played a video game with a remote before. That’s right. There was, for some time, in my living room, a Philips CD-i. I tried to swing a katana with it. I directed a claymation man through an Egyptian sewer. And, though I’m not ungrateful to Bruce for letting us play his video games, the fact of the matter is that its user experience

STOP READING HERE, MOM

sucked a dog’s penis.

Metaphorically.

You didn’t stop reading, did you, Mom? Sorry.

September 15, 2005 /

Yesterday the grumpy man who came to install new software on the spare workstation at my cube asked me “when was the last time you rebooted this?”

“Monday,” I said, “I haven’t had a reason to touch it all week.”

“That means you left it on overnight,” he grumped. “That leaves our network vulnerable. We take a dim view of that.”

Imagine that the italics represent anger. And I was like, yeah, okay, he’s probably right and I should have thought of that. I apologized. A few minutes after he left, I realized:

  1. That workstation has no Internet connectivity–it’s only on the intranet here, and has to dial out for anything else.
  2. There is no lock on my cubicle.
  3. There is no lock on the computer’s power button.
  4. The username and password are written on a note taped to the monitor, which I did not put there. The procedure for dialing out is sitting on a piece of paper right next to that.

And I was like, how exactly is leaving it on a threat, grumpy man?

September 15, 2005 /

Am I the only one who keeps conflating Killers lyrics with Strong Bad lyrics? Like

Cause heaven ain’t close in a place like this
I said heaven ain’t close in a place like this
Bring it back down, bring it back down tonight
Never thought I’d let a rumour ruin my moonlight
Well somebody told me
That you were so stupid
But I didn’t believe them
But now I believe them

or

Coming out of my cage
And I’m doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because IT’S MID-NITE!

(The answer is: yes, I am definitely the only one.)

September 13, 2005 /

David Flora VERSUS the accordion! I want to see a human trying to play the background part that starts about ten seconds before the end. I imagine him or her sweating, off-kilter, arms flapping as if about to be pushed out of a nest.

September 13, 2005 /

Lisa has invented a Euro-Japanese pastry, by which I mean that she learned how to cook nikuman dumplings and then replaced the meat with Nutella.

I am not normally a huge fan of Nutella, but damn. Damn.

No, I mean DAMN.

September 13, 2005 /

Hey, guys, I was thinking about fucking with Wu-Tang Clan. Any advice?