In my previous entry, I made a throwaway reference to “blogging community standards.” I just want to make a clarification: I believe in no such thing.

First, “standards”. Some people believe that to “properly” blog, one must link copiously to other bloggers and provide permanent links to all your entries. For example, recently some blowhards decided to give Andrew Sullivan a hard time for violating these precepts. Sullivan had no time for such nonsense:

But can I say a word about the notion of a “blogging community” to which we allegedly owe obligations, deference and respect? Phooey. The reason I’m a blogger is because I’m a pesky individualist who simply wants to write what I think and have a great interaction with readers in real time. Every time I hear the word “community,” my bullshit detector goes off. And when I hear about “obligations to the community” blah blah blah, I wanna retch. I have nothing but respect for my fellow bloggers. I read them; I’ve encouraged others to blog; I link whenever I find something I find interesting; I believe in the genre; I’ve lost lucrative jobs for the medium. But please don’t start creating some sort of community of bloggers, and calling us on our dues. This is the Wild Web, buddy, not a condo association. Don’t tread on me.

Some blogs are totally link-happy, with just a few sentences of commentary. Some blogs are essay or journal-oriented, and have maybe one or two links at best. Some blogs, like this one, are somewhere in the middle. Is any one style better than any other? I think not.

Second, “community”. If there really is a “blogosphere” out there, its sole unifying characteristic is the compulsion to rip to shreds any article that dares criticize the blogging phenomenon even a little bit. Several months ago I was monitoring two groups of bloggers: a somewhat lefty group centered around Silicon Valley programmers such as Dave Winer, and a somewhat righty group, the “Warbloggers”, centered around people such as Glenn Reynolds. To my great amusement, neither group seemed to be aware of the other. In fact, at one point both groups were having simultaneous conversations on the question, “Where are all the [right-wing|left-wing] bloggers?” Each group even proposed its own theories on why their superior, cutting-edge ideology made them more hip to the whole blogging phenomenon.

Here’s the deal. At best, the “blogosphere” is fractured into thousands of subcommunities, because people don’t link randomly; they link to blogs that they like. There are political blogs, blogs about science fiction writing, blogs about the Macintosh, blogs that are entirely about personal sexual confessions (and God help you if you find yourself dating one of those people). All of these communities reinforce each other and tend to shunt away blogs that are not of interest. And you know what? That’s the way it should be. As for imposing your local community standards on everybody else… well, I believe there’s a Supreme Court case revolving around that very issue, but that’s another story.

We had ourselves a wee little earthquake earlier this week. It started out as a 5.2, but it’s since been downgraded to a 4.9. Either way it was about two magnitudes too small to relieve any significant fault stress and make “the Big One” less likely… but it was kind of cute, as quakes go.

So at 11:30pm last night, I found myself waiting in line for a midnight showing of Star Wars, Episode II. I had not been very enthusiastic about the Attack of the Clones in the first place, but Nancy was very insistent that we see it. So there we all were: Me, her, Pat, Sam, Sue, and Nancy’s dad. Nancy’s mom, however, was missing. I do not want to shirk my duty in pointing out that Nancy lost her disabled and elderly mother in the crowd.

But I digress. Here’s a quick take on the movie, with only one very indirect spoiler:

• Special effects and scenery: superb
• Dialogue: adequate to wretched
• Future Dark Lord of the Sith Anakin Skywalker: pouty and whiny
• Interesing hint of moral ambiguity regarding the bad guy: raised, and then casually thrown away

Lucas has always been a prodigy with technology… and the few interviews I’ve seen with him make him seem like an awfully nice, sincere guy… but why oh why can’t he write? Or trust others to do it for him? Very frustrating.

In Other News: Shari, a friend from my MOTWM class, set me a note about Jonathan Safran Foer, a young Jewish writer whose last name differs from mine by only one consonant. Foer has just published his debut novel, he’s three years younger than me, he’s getting rave reviews from the likes of Joyce Carol Oates and Kirkus Reviews, and he can apparently get away with referring to Nietzche multiple times when talking about his own writing.

But heck, forget Foer — at 24, he’s all washed up, isn’t he? If you want a real prodigy, there’s Aaron Swartz. Aaron is the member of several web standards committees, he co-authored RSS1.0, and he writes clearly and concisely (with a wicked sense of humor). And he’s fifteen years old.

On the other hand, things are going quite well for me these days. For example, at Tuesday Night Poker, this old man won ten dollars this week. I even got a natural Royal Flush in a seven-card stud hand. Unfortunately, as Page points out, I’m still seventy dollars in the hole, lifetime.

Well, that which does not kill you makes you stronger… or something like that.

An anonymous reader writes with a suggestion for a punishment for Enron employees: make them serve time on treadmills that are hooked up to little turbines, in order to repay Californians for the mess they caused last year.

Now that’s the kind of innovative, dynamic thinking that we need these days. However, while the idea is on the right track, it’s a bit… inefficient. I mean, how much power can you get out of a fat, sweating, Houston energy trader anyway? No, for a truly clean and efficient energy solution, I think we would need to mulch the employees and use them as biomass fuel. Get some power back and lighten up the job market a bit to boot.

Speaking of Thinking Different, I stopped by the Apple Store in Palo Alto this evening. By some bizarre coincidence, Charlie Clouser (the synth player for Nine Inch Nails) was giving a presentation on how he uses his Mac to do professional songwriting and remixing. He took us through a song he developed for the band Opiate for the Masses. I didn’t understand any of the technical jargon, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. As he constructed the song in the synthesizer program, Reason, he showed us that the CPU usage was negligible, no matter how many effects he piled on. He also claimed that most electronic artists could record an entire album with Reason and Ableton alone. In fact, according to Clouser, there is no sonic reason to use expensive dedicated equipment — the only thing that the “traditional” method gives you is better ergonomics and a few extra features for the hard-core professional.

I wonder if he’s right? Well, unfortunately, I don’t have hundreds of dollars to drop on the software — never mind my tin ear.

For the last thirty years, Harvey Mudd has had a class called, “Media Studio“. The purpose of Media Studio is to help scientists and engineers use technology to uncover their artistic sides. Every year Media Studio culminates in a public show that, by now, has become encrusted with traditions. These range from jokes the emcees are supposed to tell (“The Rope Joke!” “Razzle and Dazzle!”) to recitations of the privations endured to produce the media projects (“We’ve gotten three hours of sleep this week!”) to… interesting diversions (“The Pickle Trick!”).

Now, in the Days Of Yore, the technology consisted of a weird slide projector that had nine slide carousels. You could synchronize the slide show with music or voice. You could also do various tricks like fading in, splitting the screen, and and displaying slides in rapid succession. Primitive stuff.

The best shows were usually the silly ones. For example, there was the “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” spoof that had park rangers sneaking around Claremont, anesthetizing various residents and “taking them away to a new hab-i-tat.” There was also “Penguin-Man” (written long before the rise of Linux), wherein our hero is bitten by a radioactive penguin and acquires the appropriate superpowers (the ability to survive when locked in a freezer, the ability to instantly change from street clothes into a tuxedo). Aside from these occasional demented works of genius, most of the shows were, to put it gently, pretty lame. But in a good way.

Anyway, two years ago the college got a huge grant that enabled them to switch everything over to digital video. New G4 Macs, Final Cut Pro, the works. Sounds good at first… but the new technology comes with its own set of problems.

For one thing, the old technology masked bad acting. Media Studio projects always starred students and professors — non-actors. That was OK, because the old system involved shooting still photos and adding voiceovers. This allowed the mind to fill in the gaps, so acting ability was almost irrelevant. But with digital video, everything’s out in the open. For example, one of this year’s shows revolved around a woman who was supposed to be a serious runner, an athlete. Unfortunately, when this particular person ran, she didn’t look very athletic at all. With the old slide-projector system, we would have seen just a few still shots of her running, which would have conveyed the idea just fine.

For another thing, the new format encourages computer animation. Computer animation is cool… but it is a serious technical challenge to implement, and I think that the focus on getting the code to render makes it hard to focus on telling an actual story. For example, there was a piece that was about some starfighters battling in outer space. The guy who did it spent the entire year working on it. The piece was maybe at the level of the animation in Babylon 5 — pretty darn impressive for just one kid with a desktop. However, when the audience asked the student about the story behind the space battle, he said, “Well… there’s these organic-looking ships, probably the bad guys, and these metallic-looking ships, probably the good guys… and they’re fighting over this warp gate.”

The student spent a year working on this, and that’s all he had for his story? I don’t know whether to be astounded by his technical proficiency, or just profoundly depressed.

I suppose the jury’s still out on Media Studio 2.0. But so far it doesn’t look good… and to cap things off, the emcee forgot to tell the Rope Joke this year. I just don’t know what they’re teaching the kids these days.

So I’ve given up on my PC. This weekend I broke down and bought a Mac — a 933 MHz tower. Perhaps this was an irresponsible purchase… but I am very, very happy, and I think that makes everything all right.

People have had varying reactions to the news. Nancy was very excited. Pat and Sam were excited too, although they were somewhat nonplussed by the fact that Heroes IV wouldn’t run on the Mac. And Nancy and Mike’s friend Jonathan grinned and said, “Ah, still loyal to the end, eh?” No, damnit! Not “still loyal”! I’ve actually switched teams! (Ummm… wait, that didn’t come out right…)

As for my brother-in-law Adiv (a longtime Mac user), he informs me:

In Hebrew, we have a special phrase used on an occasion such as this. Most Israelis would say, “Titchadesh!” Which means, roughly, “Enjoy your new thing/acquisition/haircut/whatever.”

Amazing — all those millions of words in English, but it’s Hebrew that actually has the perfect word for this kind of situation. “Congratulations”, “I’m very happy for you”, and so on are all too overblown for something like a new computer. Maybe a house. Definitely a marriage or birth of a child. But not something as petty as this. Anyway, Adiv also managed to find the closest English equivalent: “Cool!” So thank you, Adiv — much appreciated.

One nice thing about the Mac is that it came with a DVD drive, which I have never had before. Coincidentally, I even had some DVDs this weekend — Nancy had let someone borrow the 1st and 2nd season of Sex and the City, and I was playing errand boy at the moment. So I figured, why not test out the DVD player? Big mistake. I watched pretty much the whole thing in a weekend.

The thing is, even though I know intellectually that Sex and the City bears as much relation to modern urban life as Leave it to Beaver did to 1950s suburban life, it was still quite a lot to absorb in such a short period of time. Basically, I came away thinking that I was unattractive, poor, badly dressed, not going to exciting parties, not eating at good restaurants, not accomplishing anything in my career, and not sleeping with enough drop-dead gorgeous women. But of course, I shouldn’t let this bother me. After all, only the last five on the list are true.

“But that’s something that you only discuss socially among physicists or ex-physicists (right, Evan?)” Absolutely right, M’ris.

So I was having dinner with Mom and Sarah, and they are slightly at odds over Mom getting a new computer. Mom wants a Mac, because she’s tired of her PC crashing once a day. Sarah doesn’t, because, well, she knows how to use a PC, so the hell with Macs. Ordinarily I would side with Mom, but after doing a little research, my sympathies lie squarely with Sarah. You see, “the truth has finally come out: Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism“:

This company is well known for its cult-like following. It isn’t much of a stretch to say that it is a cult. Consider co-founder and leader Steve Jobs’ constant exhortation through advertising (i.e. mind control) that its followers should “think different”. We have to ask ourselves: “think different than whom or what?”

Think different than whom or what indeed! But Steve Jobs isn’t the only Satanic danger lurking out there. As Objective Christian Ministries warns us in their “4 Kidz” section:

Atheists such as crotchety old Mr. Gruff think they’ve got it all figured out… but then why are they always so sad?
If you find an atheist in your neighborhood, TELL A PARENT OR PASTOR RIGHT AWAY! You may be moved to try and witness to these poor lost souls yourself, however AVOID TALKING TO THEM!
Atheists are often very grumpy and bitter and will lash out at children or they may even try to trick you into neglecting God’s Word.
Very advanced witnessing techniques are needed for these grouches. Let the adults handle them.

Unlike the overly scatological Landover Baptist website, this site appears to be entirely sincere. At least, I think it’s sincere. Maybe these guys are just more subtle. But look, folks: I knew that the one about the cigar-smoking lawyer who tried to collect under his arson policy was false. And I knew the one about Oliver North warning about Osama Bin Laden back in 1987 was garbage also. Even Mike admits that my “eye for the hallmarks of internet tomfoolery is as sharp as ever.” Yeah, that’s right! My Internet Bullshit Detector is set at hair-trigger level — so just try me!

Now the really unfair thing is that I’m picking on easy targets. So ok, let’s see… who else is there… well, there’s the National Review, of course. Long ago, our grandfathers and grandmothers were forced to endure humorless lectures from windbag Communist intellectuals on the inherent superiority of the Russian economic system. Today we are subjected to the same… the only difference is that the lectures come from windbag Republicans. And since we’re on the topic of the National Review, take a look at a recent article by Rich Lowry which I think is pro-Francisco Franco… or at least not-very-sorry-Franco-won, anyway. It’s a good thing I’m a moderate liberal, and I don’t have to read the National Review. No, I get to read The National Republic, which in one article claims that Israel’s military is destroying Hamas, while in another claims that Israel is really destroying the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, while Hamas is getting away. In the same issue, no less.

Easy targets! I hear you cry. Ok, I’ll stop. I won’t even mention the fact that Jenny Jones’s show has been saved from cancellation. Nor will I pick on George Lucas for being a “Galactic Gasbag“, when his only real crime is being too chicken to stand up and say, “I like pulp science fiction, and I made the Star Wars movies Just For Fun!” After all, who among us has not quivered in fear at the onslaught of the lit-crit establishment?

Besides, maybe the next movie will turn out to be all right. “Attack of the Clones”, eh? I’m not holding my breath.

I’ve been listening to NPR religiously in the morning for at least three years. This worries me. This is a real sign of fuddy-duddiness. I’ve even gone so far as to become a member, although I am too chicken to put the bumper sticker on my car. Even worse, I don’t watch TV anymore. No, I’m not one of those people — the main reason for my TV celibacy is because I’m too cheap to get cable. I believe that I deserve to get my network television the way my ancestors did before me, through a roof antenna, and the hell if I’m going to pay for network television + the basic cable channels. The Discovery Channel? Woo-freaking-hoo!

But like I said, I’m getting worried. My poker buddies are talking about this great new show on MTV, “The Osbournes“, which is kind of a reality show about the travails of aging rocker Ozzy Osbourne. (Sample exchange with his manager (and wife): “Sharon! I can’t have a bubble machine at my concert! I’m the bloody Prince of Darkness!”) The point is, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m losing touch. Missing out. I can compare and contrast the various hosts of “Talk of the Nation” (Ray Suarez 4ever!!!!!) but I have no clue what’s happening on Buffy this season. This is not good.

So yesterday I tried going through some of the other stations on my drive up to work. Here is what I discovered.

• 105.3 (“Live 105”): Long ago, 105.3 FM was a “Modern Rock” station. They played Depeche Mode, The Cure, New Order, and so on. Nearly all the DJs had fake English accents. In the early 90s, they switched to an “alternative rock” format and lost the silly accents (well, except for the one real English DJ). Everything was going swimmingly. But eventually 105.3 got bought out by the corporation that owns LA’s KROQ. The music took a change for the worse, and after a few months they got rid of my favorite DJ, Big Rick Stuart. I wasn’t exactly surprised — while 105.3 was still independent, Stuart had said some very choice things about the KROQ folks. So that was that.

  Anyway, in the mornings Live 105 syndicates Howard Stern. Howard Stern is just so mind-numbingly bad, I can only listen to him if I make a game out of it — how long can I stay tuned before changing the channel? It’s like holding your palm over a candle flame, or clutching an ice cube in your fist. I suppose only Michael Savage gives Stern a run for his money in that department. In any case, not my cup of tea at 8am.

• 97.3 (“Alice”): Bay Area pop radio is pretty straightforward. Live 105 is the boy station, Alice is the girl station. There is some overlap (Nickelback, U2). But simply put, Alice is your Jewel/Alanis Morissette/Sheryl Crow channel, and Live 105 is your Fred Durst/Tool/System of a Down channel. For what it’s worth, I can’t help listening to Alice on occasion. They play Shakira every once in a while, and God help me, I can’t get that woman’s songs out of my head.

  In the mornings — ah, they’ve got the “Sarah and Vinnie” show. Unlike Howard Stern, Sarah and Vinnie are merely inane. (From a recent discussion on religion: “I dunno, you’ve got to, like, believe in something…” “No way, man. Goin’ to church sucks.”) I can actually handle them for thirty minutes or so… but really, we can do better. Can’t we?

• 104.9 (“Channel 104.9”): Channel 104.9, owned by Clear Channel Communications, is Live 105’s competitor. We’re all not supposed to like Clear Channel — Eric Boehlert at Salon.com says so. But I don’t worry myself too much over this. Whether the giant corporation that owns 104.9 crushes the giant corporation that owns 105.3 or vice versa makes little difference to me. The two stations almost have the same format, but 104.9’s is just a little more mediocre, and their ads and promotions are significantly more insipid, so I generally root for 105.3 (despite what they did to Big Rick Stuart).

  However, 104.9 is the only station that plays music in the morning. I have to give them credit for that. What a concept for morning radio — shut up and play the music! I don’t understand why this hasn’t caught on more.

• 101.3 (“Star 101.3”): What a tremendous disappointment this station has been. Also a Clear Channel station, they started out just a few years ago playing all 80’s music (on a different FM frequency). I was driving down the road and I started hearing old Madonna songs, Oingo Boingo, … whoa, what was this? For a while I was very happy. But then they moved to a new format (“your upbeat listen-at-work station!”), which meant that in addition to their lovely selection of cheesy 80’s music, they also started playing the dreck from the 90s and today. Not appreciated, not one bit.

  The 101.3 morning show involves Don Bleu, who has been a Bay area radio personality for… a really long time. His show involves the standard morning DJ hijinks. Prank calls, inane banter, a couple songs sprinkled here and there. I have listened to Don Bleu a number of times, and I have arrived at only one conclusion: he is a deeply cynical man. He could not possibly care less about the music he plays on his show — it could be rock, country-western, classical, death-metal, whatever. He would announce it in the same fake-enthusiastic wacky DJ voice, make a few prank calls, collect his paycheck, and go home. One thing to be said for that frothing right-wing nutcase Michael Savage — at least he seems to care about what he’s doing.

• 98.5 (“The Classic Rock Experience”): 98.5 claims that they’re the only station in the Bay Area that plays the Beatles. They might even be right. I don’t listen to 98.5 all that often, but every once in a while I tune in and just cruise down the highway with “Sweet Home Alabama” blaring, and I feel good about life.

  The 98.5 morning guy is Greg Kihn — yes, Greg Kihn of “Our Love’s in Jeopardy” fame. He might be an old, fat, washed-up rock star, but at least he seems to be happier and healthier than Ozzy Osbourne. As I’ve mentioned before, Kihn can be absolutely hilarious. Sometimes. My favorite absurd-Kihn story was the one where he had the bright idea to hire a classical orchestra — for some reason. I forget why. Anyway, he calls up a friend who has some orchestra connections. “How much are you willing to spend?” the friend asks. “200,” Kihn replies. “Oh, for that you could get the LA Philharmonic! Or the New York Symphony!” gushes the friend. “Great!” says Kihn. Well, no… it turns out that $200 would have been per musician per hour. “Well, who can I get for just $200?” asks Kihn, indignant. Kihn then plays a demo tape of said $200.00 orchestra. Imagine “Thus Spake Zarathustra” in the wrong key, with every wind instrument and screeching violin playing just a slightly different note, just sort of melting into total incoherence during the crescendo. I was driving on surface streets at the time, and I just pulled over and cried laughing.

So I suppose there are some alternative possibilities out there in Bay Area morning radio land. Greg Kihn. 104.9 in a pinch. Or maybe I should just pony up for a CD player in the car. Or learn Italian on tape or something. See what drastic measures they’ve forced me into?

Edit: I’ve just remembered, Roland West was not the lone English DJ at Live 105 back in the early 90s. I don’t know what I was thinking. Also, I’ve added a small example of Sarah and Vinnie’s inanity. You’re welcome
Edit 2: M’ris points out that 99.5 FM has “Beatles Wednesdays”, where they deign to play a few Beatles songs, anyway. So ack! I’ve been lied to. Greg Kihn should be ashamed to be associated with such rat-bastards.

So things at work are kind of a drag recently.
Fortunately for my morale, I did a little task (some editing) for one of my
German colleagues last week, and he was so pleased, he made a certificate
for me:

Held der Arbeit — which means, as best I
can translate, “Hero of Work”. I think this is one of the coolest things
that’s happened to me all year.

Now some of you running-dog capitalist lackeys might be wondering,
“Hey! What’s the deal with the
hammer-and sickle?” Well, there’s a story behind it, of course.

According to Stefan, my colleague (comrade!), back in East Germany they
would award the title, “Held der Arbeit” to anyone who exemplified the
socialist ideal. Someone who put in extra hours at the factory, promoted
the state philosophy to friends and family, and so on. Now that communism
is over, the younger generation still uses the term and passes
it on to people who go that extra effort, but it is
said “with a twinkle in the eye” as Stefan puts it.

So you see? Germans are just as hip and ironic and funny as we
Americans. Maybe even more so. Wouldn’t that be awful — the one
thing we pride ourselves in, and maybe the Germans have us beat.
Anyone remember that Beck’s beer commercial, with the bad German
stand-up comedian? “Thank you, I’ll be here all the week,” he says,
in a thick accent. The tagline was “Germans don’t do comedy — we do beer.”
Well, first of all, Beck’s isn’t very good beer. And second of all, the “humorless
German” stereotype is totally unfair. In my limited travels, none
of the Germans I’ve met have been dour and serious… they all have had
great senses of humor.

And it’s not just the Germans.
All the English I’ve met — they’re hilarious. They have that dry,
self-deprecating wit — and they have always left us in the dust
when it comes to wordplay. Italians — definitely. An Italian professor I
worked with during my ill-fated internship at
Lawrence Berkeley kept
me in stitches all summer (although our boss was an
easy target.) I’ve even
discovered that the Swiss are funny, at least a little bit.

Heck, I would like go so far as to say the entire European subcontinent
is funny. Unfortunately I can’t.
The French? Not funny. Sad but true.

And that’s The World According To Evan. Next time: Asia! Thank you, I’ll
be here all the week.

Overheard between Diane, an attractive New Yorker who is about my mother’s
age, and Mike, who has
(unintentionally) crashed Diane’s dinner party:

Mike: Come on now, Diane, I’m sure you have young men wandering through your house all the time.

Diane: Well, not with their clothes on.

So basically I had a great weekend, all things considered. No, really.
A party on Friday and on Saturday. And then a reading of Hamlet on
Sunday afternoon, where I read the part of Laertes. In my considered
opinion, Laertes is basically the man.
His first line is to the evil Claudius, “My dread lord…” and it just
gets better from there.

His first real speech is to his little sister Ophelia, where he lectures
her to be good and not to fool around with boys. (Meanwhile he’s off
to France to drink, fight, and wench.) I love this guy already! A
man after my own heart. (You paying attention, Sarah…?)

Then Laertes heads off to France, and there’s a lot of boring stuff
with Hamlet. Blah blah blah father, blah blah blah woe is me, blah
blah blah oops! I stabbed Polonius, by the way mom you’re a shameless
hussy, blah blah blah. Fortunately
Bill cut a lot of that nonsense out.
Stanford doesn’t just pick their professors out of a hat, folks.

Then in Act IV, Laertes is back. He wants answers about his father
and he wants them now. “How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with!
To hell allegiance, vows to the blackest devil, conscience and grace
to the profoundest pit!” Damn straight.

Well, you all know how it ends. Hamlet leaps into Ophelia’s grave,
like the snivelling copy-cat that he is. (“I prithee, take thy
fingers from my throat…” — wimp.) They duel, Laertes stabs Hamlet,
Hamlet stabs Laertes, they both die. Exeunt.

There were only two bad parts.
First, Laertes agrees to Claudius’s plan to use a poisoned blade. I
mean, that was just dumb. Laertes is fencing champion of France.
He could have wiped the floor with Hamlet if he hadn’t been told
to put on a show. Second, Laertes begs Hamlet for forgiveness right
before he dies. I mean, c’mon. I can only chalk this up to the
potent neurotoxin that was ravaging his acetylcholine receptors,
causing him to twitch uncontrollably and blurt out, “Exchange forgiveness
with me, noble Hamlet,” in some kind of last-second Tourette’s-like spasm.

Like I said, a good weekend. Also, I taught Nancy
HTML (see, kid, that wasn’t so hard) and watched the first two episodes of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD. Not a bad pilot — although it sure
has gotten a lot better. Not that I would know, this season. I have no working
TV, and besides, Tuesday is Poker Night. I think the guys thought I was
a little off when I insisted that we watch the “Buffy: The Musical” episode,
and I’m afraid to expend any more political capital on this issue…
assuming I have any left.

As you might have noticed, I haven’t been updating my journal recently.
Well, I’ve fallen off the wagon again. That’s right — I’m back to playing
computer games.

I had been so good for months — no TV, hardly any computer games (well,
an occasional round of Titan).
But last week
3do released Heroes of Might and Magic IV. Let’s just say I haven’t been getting
much sleep this last week. I’m totally geeking out. But look — if
Pat, Nancy,
and Mike can quit and then come back to
EQ, surely
I am allowed my small vices? Remember kids:
EQ kills…

Honestly, it’s a good thing that I’m buried in this computer game, because I was really
starting to worry about my geek credentials. It started when Rachel called me a “jock”
back in Santa Barbara (indeed!) Then my physics and mathematical knowledge
started fading away. And just the other day I stumbled across the old Wired Magazine
article about the relationship between
Asperger’s Syndrome and mathematical aptitude.
The article included a
test to see if you might have
Asperger’s. Yes, I know, the test has about as much validity as an
“How hard do you crush?” test in
Seventeen magazine
(my score: “It’s Just…A Little Crush…”). But I took the stupid Wired test anyway.
I scored a 16. I’m perfectly “neurotypical”. What a disappointment.

M’ris
took the test and got a 19. Like me, she answered with extremes — she likes math,
likes focusing on problems, but she also likes people and social chit-chat.
I suggested that maybe we were some kind of hybrid advanced super-nerds. Math
skills and social skills. Like Blade!
“All
of the nerds’ advantages, none of their weaknesses.” M’ris demurred, however,
saying that after all, she had 20/200 vision. And I have my computer game thing, of course.
Ah well, another perfectly good theory spoiled by the facts.