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July 20, 2005 /

Is anybody else just fucking creeped out by the American Apparel “Meet Melissa” ads? I’ve seen them a lot on the Onion and a few times on IndieClick affiliates, I’m not sure where else. The ad is a picture of a pretty girl with dark hair in a white t-shirt, smiling under a badly lit shower and looking kind of nervous. The ad has a rollover sidebar. Expanded, it reads:

“Meet Melissa. She won an unofficial wet T-shirt contest held at the American Apparel apartment in Montreal. Her prize for winning was a travel mug from McGill University, and the satisfaction of a job well done.

Melissa is wearing our new ultralight Sheer Jersey T-Shirt, AKA “The Summer Shirt,” available at our stores and online.”

Let’s translate that.

“Meet Melissa No Last Name. We had a party at a company apartment, then piled on the peer pressure and alcohol until we got some girls to pose under a shower. We thought this one was hot, so we’re going to put her face and upper chest on a few billion pageviews. We didn’t pay her shit!

We’re reasonably sure Melissa’s over 18, but hey, no last name and no pay means no paper trail, right? P.S. Go to our site and you don’t even have to look at her face, just her hands over her breasts splashed real big on the front page.”

For a company that’s trying to build a rep as progressive (“Sweatshop Free, Brand Free Clothes”), they sure come off like fratboy assholes there.

Update 1453 hrs: Ashleigh linked me to an enlightening Business Week article.

July 20, 2005 /

Wheeler came to visit us. It was fun! We played a whole lot of video games and some board games and ate high-quality vegetarian foodstuffs. He stayed with Lisa and Scott three nights and me and Maria for two, and did not hold me responsible for making him trudge all over Bardstown Road in the heat. Wheeler is, to quote Sumana, a good houseguest and a friend.

Lisa, Wheeler and I constitute three fifths of our weekly instant-messenger-based Nobilis game. Normally we play from our disparate locations in Louisville, Louisville, New Mexico, Georgia and Connecticut; this time the aforementioned three of us were all in my apartment at different computers, which was a neat if odd kind of synthesis. It’s easier to Laugh Out Loud at a joke when there are other people doing the same within earshot.

July 15, 2005 /

The sword Anne’s holding is also a guitar, and a magic wand.

It’s a sworguitwand.

“We got you surrounded, Moloney!” harshes the cop with the bullhorn. “Come out with your hands up!”

“You’ll arrest me?” Anne shouts back.

“Shit no!” The bullhorn catches the other cops laughing. “We just want an easy target!”

“This is it,” she mutters. “Live by die by, right?”

“Yea,” says Jesus grimly, unholstering his Desert Eagles. “When I was cornered, you gave me to cap.”

“Shit, Jesus.”

“Today I am your vengeance, Anne!”

They blow out the door, fire and bullets, wailing hard on high G.

FIGHT HIM DIE BY THE SWORD IM U

July 13, 2005 /

Mom’s safely in London, doing everything. Apparently a mild bombing isn’t enough to shut down anything cool. She saw Brian Dennehy in Death of a Salesman. Live. My mother has seen Brian Dennehy on stage and I haven’t!

July 13, 2005 /

Overheard from the next cube, on the phone, just now:

“I know! I put a big… oh em gee exclamation point exclamation point!”

Instant buzzword: Boomcasting!

July 11, 2005 /

Why hasn’t anyone started using the Griffin Roadtrip or similar devices as personal pirate radio transmitters? They’d be perfect for coffee shops, student unions, seating areas of city parks–especially places that don’t have free wi-fi yet. All you’d have to do is set out the big LCD screen so passersby can see it, turn on your mp3 player of choice and be the ultralocal DJ. I’m totally going to do this whenever I cave and buy an overpriced hard drive with a stereo jack on it.

It’d be better to increase the gain on your tiny transmitter, of course, maybe by adding bigger batteries or using a higher-watt AC adapter, but I’m not an electrical engineer and I don’t think I know any. Also, I think boosting an FM transmitter above a certain level is illegal, but then that’s half the reason to do it anyway. It’d also be pretty cool to trump the LCD screen by wearing a t-shirt with your band of choice real big on the front. 88.5: ME RADIO!

I wonder if printing up such t-shirts would qualify as willful inducement? I hope so.

July 11, 2005 /

Crystal’s Adventures is pretty amazing. She’s in Asia on a grant this summer (she’s in grad school at Tulane, although I don’t know her degree program); in May she wrote for an adolescent health website in Bangkok, after which she and two friends traveled overland through Laos to Hanoi, where she’s working on a sustainable community development grant proposal.

This sounded a little scary and exciting to me, as somebody whose only knowledge of Laos and Hanoi comes from old Doonesbury comics. Crystal’s account–which is well-written, clear and reasonable–makes it evident that this is a batshit loonball psycho death trip. Also that she is an action hero. Check out the part where she watches a cargo truck flip off a mountain, almost has her own bus do the same, stays in a house that uses old bombshells for dishes and scares a biker gang into carrying her down the mountain for three bucks. Man!

I found Crystal’s blog through her domain-co-resident and fiancee, Clinton Roosevelt Nixon, a name very familiar to indie RPG geeks who don’t read this. My Nobilis ballers may recognize him as the guy who wrote The Shadow of Yesterday (and, ergo, invented Keys).

Rita and the Cold Man Timeline

July 9, 2005 /

Because I promised Will I would. Keep in mind that this is only my personal ordering! If you find another way to arrange these that makes sense to you, that’s equally valid, and probably better.

  1. Part 1
    1. The boy who will be the Cold Man sees people he shouldn’t.
    2. The man who will be the Cold Man is imprisoned and tortured for information. He negotiates his temporary release.
    3. He presumably goes to the Numismata, becomes the Cold Man, and returns to his captors with five of his new friends.
    4. According to one of the Numismata, the Cold Man leaves their order at some point hereabouts.
  2. Part 2
    1. Rita joins an elite squad of operatives composed of Tina, Sandra and Mary, directed by Lou.
    2. On a mission, Rita meets the Cold Man and discovers a little of what he can do.
    3. Rita and her squad go on a different mission, in Chile. At some point, they become separated, and she meets the Cold Man again. Together they hide in a foxhole and end up in a cave. They discover that Rita can see the Cold Man, just as the Cold Man could once see the Numismata.
    4. The Cold Man finds that someone’s learning to counter his abilities.
    5. He meets with an Ad Hoc, who extracts a work agreement with threats against Rita.
    6. Something goes horribly wrong for him, and Rita dreams about it.
    7. The next day she receives a pointless surveillance tape. She investigates, solo, and an Ad Hoc warns her off. She investigates further and discovers the Numismata.
    8. Rita undergoes the Numismatic ritual, giving up warmth and color vision–and maybe more–in exchange for power. She wonders if it’s worth the Cold Man’s life; what she intends to do with that life is ambiguous.
    9. Rita returns to her HQ, which promptly blows up. She avoids death with her newfound abilities.
    10. Rita takes on the Ad Hocs.
    11. Rita kills the Cold Man.

No, Slatt and the one with the Great Zaganza don’t appear in here. Yet!