If you use my screenname "euphoriafish" as a promo code, you can get 20% off a t-shirt at www.designbyhumans.com until July 6th. I know at least one or two of you have considered ordering a Design By Humans shirt, so I thought I'd tell you that this week is a good time to do so.

It's some contest they're doing where the past customer who refers the most friends wins a laptop, and all the code-using friends would get a $10 iTunes gift card, but I don't really care about that. I just think their designs are on average more interesting than the ones at shirt.w00t, maaaaaaayybe even better than Threadless. They also pay up to $5,000 for a winning t-shirt design, if you're into that sort of thing. And I love my Squid Count and Forbidden Platypus shirts.

I found this Japanese blog meme type thing where you type your name and according to your name you are presented with a map of what is supposedly on your mind. Here's mine:
テレサの脳内

If I'm reading it correctly, the outer ring is 休むの休, which would mean that relaxation/holiday is occupying my surface thoughts. This is accurate, since it's almost the 4th of July, I have a family reunion next week, and I've been enjoying not being in school anymore. I can't read the red character at the center, but I'm betting it's something more negative.

My full name gives much more interesting results, with friends and money as well as the relaxation and mystery character.テレサ ディレイシーリーの脳内

And if I type Tracey instead of Teresa, I get the same red character in the center but the outer ring changes to food. On that note, I think I should eat some pizza now. My stomach is in fact rumbling.

http://io9.com/5013724/five-reasons-why-aliens-will-make-contact-with-the-japanese-first

Summary of the blog's points:
1. The Japanese government has already made some official plans in the event that extra-terrestrials contact Earth.
2. Japanese scientists sent a message to Altair 16 light years away and could possibly receive a reply as early as 2015, which is definitely in our lifetime.
3. There aren't nearly as many observatories looking for optical signals as there are searching for radio waves, but Japan has one of the few labs searching for optical frequencies.
4. Advanced AI technology in Japan might make it an interesting target for intelligent alien life.
5. If North Korea is really talking to extra-terrestrials already in real time as they claim, Japan might intercept their signals.

Weird, weird stuff. I hadn't heard about any of this. I would hope that first contact would be with Japan though, since out of all the world's cultures, the Japanese seem to be on average the most insightful and calm about interpreting and reacting to the behavior of other people. And they value scientific exploration. At least, they would be anything but impulsive and trigger-happy. And if the situation turned hostile, I'm sure the USA would step in with bombs and stuff later. Yay.

Of course, all this speculation assumes that an alien culture could tell the difference between the different cultures of Earth and they wouldn't just view us as we view hamsters or cats or something else with barely significant behavioral differences by breed. To say nothing of political borders. Or history, or varying attitudes about Japanese treatment of people who are not Japanese.

I designed a bunch of favicons for the Cinematic Titanic website, and they chose this one to actually use on the site:

You can see it in its favicon context at http://www.cinematictitanic.com. I am tentatively listing this on the activities section of my resume. Since I did this for free, I'm not sure where else I can list it. I feel like I should mention it somewhere though.

This picture popped up as a Riff a Picture thread on the CinTan forum. I made my riff in the form of a Lolcat.


If you feel so inclined, you can vote for it here:

http://mine.icanhascheezburger.com/view.aspx?ciid=1440031

I hate the movie I Am Legend. It wasn't just a "meh" like I thought; it actually made me angry. Not so much that the zombies looked stupid, but they weren't even supposed to be zombies! The original novel was about a world full of vampires. I haven't seen The Last Man On Earth, which was the first adaptation and I think had Vincent Price in it? But I have seen Omega Man which was based on the same novel. Omega Man didn't really get the vampire point across either, but it had a great atmosphere and perfectly expressed the feeling of hopelessness and despair of being the last man on earth. And what's not to like about violent people wth afros and Charlton Heston waving guns around? The lone survivor would have to be tough-- I'm just not buying sweet, goofy Will Smith as a badass survivor. And they killed the only truly lovable character off -- Sam the dog -- halfway through. The movie becomes boring and unwatchable after that. Not even RiffTrax could save it.

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And in life news, I scraped my knee today after I got out of the shower. There was gore on the level of Kill Bill but in a very small area. It looked awful but the blood clotted and I'm not getting stitches. I dunno if it was a sharp piece of plastic on the floor or just my knee hitting the floor so hard and sliding across it that fast, but something broke the skin and the cut was about three-quarters of an inch long. I hadn't eaten, and the blood loss made me dizzy for a while so I lay down and called home while waiting for the buzzing in my head to stop and for the blood to clot. I pulled a bag of Swedish Fish off the table to tide me over til I was ready to get up again, get dressed, and clean up the mess.

Instead of going out for lunch, I had an olive loaf sandwich here and stayed in to watch Signs while I was recovering. I didn't like Signs either but I'm not going to bother reviewing it. It re-ignited my fear of aliens and was successful at being scary, but M. Night Shalalalalalalalalalala-teedaa's cameo was hella pretentious, Mel Gibson was hella annoying, and I wish there were a RiffTrax track for this movie. Ok, world? I have been giving mainstream studio movies a chance and they suck just as much as I thought they did while I was ignoring or avoiding them. Being a hipster wasn't my choice, it is just where my life has led me and I can't change that.

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And I am still waiting for my Doomsday Machine DVD from Cinematic Titanic. I don't think anyone was prepared for the rush on launch day, and even though I ordered the disc as soon as it was available, it's taking a little more than a week to get here. On the forums, the people who have seen the movie are quoting their favorite lines, and those of us who haven't are inquiring as to where the people who got theirs live. But I haven't figured out the formula yet. I'm assuming the discs ship out of either Minnesota or California, or maybe both. Fans in Minnesota and Wisconsin have theirs, people in New England don't, people in California do.

Trace Beaulieu (Crow/Dr. F of MST3K fame and Hector Lacovara of Freaks and Geeks fame) addressed me in particular on the forum today, to reassure me the disc is on its way:

" Your order should arrive tomorrow, or Monday. You’re in Kentucky right? Maybe Monday. Or tomorrow. Monday more like it. Or… tomorrow. Hmmm, Kentucky…. Maybe Monday. Hmmm… Oh here it is. I was using it as a coaster. No.. no.. sorry that’s an old box of… nope, no I was wrong. That’s a coaster. Gee, what did we send out?

TB "

So I feel much better :) Also, rumor has it there is a special surprise included when the disc finally gets here-- a Trace Beaulieu autographed trading card (his part of the cast photo, signed). This makes me think the disc is coming from Minnesota, and maybe Trace is packing them himself :) Or else they have hired help and an office he could stop by to oversee things and sign a stack of cards. Either way, yes, I accept that as an apology for their slow service, and I know they're filling the orders as fast as they can.

E - >}}}*>

So, if you're like me (and I know I am), you have been dying to play the Spore Creature Creator demo but your only working machine is a Macbook running OS X Tiger v. 10.4.11. Your hopes were crushed when you tried to run the installer anyway and were told your computer (which still *feels* new) is outdated. Grrrr...

Today, I found an article that claims it is possible to run the game on Tiger after all

The explanation was a bit vague, but I was able to at least get the program to start on my machine after:
1. Downloading the installer.
2. Copying the installer to the Mac HD (not the Applications folder or home directory).
3. Ctrl-clicking the install app and choosing Show Package Contents in the menu.
4. Editing the tginstall.plist file like the linked article says to do to the demo app.
5. Running the installer.
6. Editing the plist of the demo app like the linked article says to do.

But alas, although the game starts up, it still isn't playable. Here's what I see: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3259/2614709887_aa5e2a3366_o.jpg
and if I click on anything it takes me out of the game program and loads the EA Store/Customer Service site in Firefox. Sigh.

So I'm posting all this here in hopes that someone who knows more about OS X than I do might muck around and figure out how to get the thing running on a pre-Leopard Macbook. Or at least that you guys can commiserate with me until I go home to my parents house and can download the PC version of the demo.

It followed me home from the Internet, can I keep it?


I found it on http://rising-hegemon.blogspot.com/, but I have no idea where its true point of origin is. And I can't help but feeling late to the party and wondering why didn't I think of that?

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I got the car fixed today. It was a loose hose in the cooling system and a bad battery cell that prevented the thing from even starting this morning.

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Oh, and also, it brought me much joy today when I mentioned to an online friend that I was watching Glitter and he had no idea that that was a movie. Sometimes the short cultural memory and short attention span of my generation is a good thing.

For the record, I am not brave/stupid enough to watch Glitter in the raw. I paid $2.99 for a RiffTrax mp3 to make it watchable and soothe my morbid curiosity. But I need to stop there so I don't become addicted to the microtransactions. This is pushing the Movie button in the same way that visiting the Papa John's website is pushing the Pizza button. But I kinda want to watch one more terrible/pretentious movie that I would never ever pay to see in a theater. Like maybe Saw. Hated Saw. Took pictures of Japanese classmates being scared/depressed/bored by Saw. Or the Wickerman. Avoided that one like the plague when it came out, but that's exactly the sort of movie that makes for a great RiffTrax.

I also watched X Files: Fight the Future, which was waaay more mockable than I remembered from the past decade when I saw it in the theater and bought the action figures. It was still a complex plot, but now I realize that it was complex in a boring and stupid way as opposed to a clever and insightful way. As a two-hour season finale for the TV show, it works ok, but it could never stand on its own as a movie. And it *is* easier to call both agents "Mulder." And they *do* mumble a lot so it's hard to make out their lines. And there are a lot of cheap deaths. Especially the bomb scene in the beginning.

I am already realizing the benefits of being both a Cinematic Titanic fan and a RiffTrax fan. Cinematic Titanic is more creative, and still funnier in my opinion. They make references to older things, which makes it the homeschool equivalent to film school for me. I always try to look up the jokes I didn't initially get, and I usually learn a new bit of pop culture trivia in the process. RiffTrax, on the other hand, is a bandage for box office shlock. It makes terrible movies like Glitter less of a waste of time, and it puts huge successes like Jurassic Park in perspective. Though I am less likely to watch the ones for the movies I liked when they were originally released. You *can* make fun of good movies too, but it's really not my style. Additionally, RiffTrax could potentially make things better when one of your friends wants to put on a movie you really don't want to watch. You could listen to the RiffTrax together or just you could put on a headset to hear the mp3 so no one's good taste has to be compromised and both people can have a good time.

And on the blogs, the writers in both camps are talking to the fans occasionally. The RiffTrax team is inviting the Titans to collaborate too. So of course all the fans are hoping for a Joel vs Mike riff off.

It's a good time to be a MSTie.

I started an art game on the CT forum. It's moving kinda slow since only three people are playing with me. I was hoping I could encourage more people to play with art, but the CT fan community is older on average and rather picture-challenged. (I've written several tutorials to help people upload profile pictures or insert images in their posts. And some of them still don't get it or say they can't edit pictures...) I included links to freeware picture tools like Picasa and Skitch, but that's still too much work for most people.

Still, occasionally a good bit of collaboration emerges. Here's our first composition:



Well, he’s armed. Too bad he’s facing the wrong way, the poor sap. -- Captain Hygiene

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/garden/12puzzle.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin

This story has been linked to by several blogs that I read, and I finally got around to reading it today. Aaron might be interested, since it's very much about architecture.

Psycho is still a great movie, but it just isn't scary anymore. Especially not when you're in a room full of people who are in on the film's secrets and are laughing during the taxidermy conversation and during the thrilling conclusion. I was thinking to myself, "That Anthony Perkins is such a nice and handsome young man," because I wanted to convince myself that Norman Bates wouldn't hurt a fly. I was trying to forget that I'd seen the movie before, see? So it would be scarier on the big screen? And that's kind of hard when everyone else in the room is laughing.

More of them screamed during the second murder though. It made me jump too, even though I knew what was coming. There aren't as many cliches built up around that part of the film.

I only shill for those I love. And as such, I made this banner from images in their promo trailer:



Actually, you can buy it on June 19th. And this is the trailer:


http://www.youtube.com/v/Y375LhFGDds&hl=en

GTAIV gives you imaginary friends? And they have stupid names like Brucie and Packie? And you have to maintain the relationships because they have special items that you want but if you accept their invitation for a date and then call them back five seconds later and tell them it's off, they won't mind?

Seriously?

It sounds like GTAIV could either be my favorite game in the series, or it could be annoying as hell.

Rats, I'm out of Ugly Betty episodes. I hope there's a new one soon and the show isn't actually on summer hiatus or something. It's a total female fantasy, and all the characters are stereotypical except possibly for Betty and her sister Hilda. But it's refreshing to see every kind of woman there is all in one show. There's a normal girl, a brainy geek girl, a powerful career woman (actually two of those, but one is a post-op transsexual), a mother, a slut, a crazy bitch, and a wise old woman. The plot is a typical soap opera, but I'm hooked because I like the people so much. Did I mention the voice of Manny in Grim Fandango plays Betty's dad?

And the present cliff-hanger has left Betty with two cute guys who want her, Henry the accountant with amazing muscle tone who wants her to marry him and surely it could work out and he could be both a husband to her and a father to his ex's child, and then Gio the sandwich boy with his mischief and lust for life. Sigh... if only life were that simple, where you only have two good scenarios to choose from and there actually isn't much likelihood of screwing it up. Meanwhile, they've introduced a child from France to complicate Betty's boss's life and get him kicked off of his magazine. I really hope this doesn't mean that the show just jumped the shark at season 2.

I want it to go on to season 3 and to keep getting better, but it seems almost like things are too perfect for too many of the characters right now, and the negative plot elements aren't a big enough deal anymore since they already sent Claire Meade to jail and later cleared her name, brought in the transsexual sister and had her take over, Betty's been through two and a half boyfriends, Daniel's been through multiple girlfriends, Bradford Meade died, the villains stole his sperm before he died and blackmailed a surrogate mother into carrying it, said surrogate mother was reunited with her ex-husband... it's all very silly and dramatic, and I don't know what else they can do to the show at this point.

I guess running out of TV to watch means I have to get back to work. There's art to do, books to read, manga to translate, and articles to write. And for one of those activities, I might actually get paid soon. (Not a big deal, less than $20 per article, peanuts, but it's pizza money I guess.)

Edit: Double rats. It really is on summer hiatus. Oh well. At least there are still new episodes of Weeds and Doctor Who that I haven't seen. And a new Cinematic Titanic in the mail.

BEST
T-SHIRTS
EVAR!!!
Another fine example:

It's a really weird feeling to hear about a mass murder and know that you stood at the scene of the crime a couple of years before it happened.

Details and video report here: http://community.livejournal.com/japanese_news/9794.html

This was right outside the train station. When I studied abroad, I went to Akihabara with some friends to buy video games. We stood right by that intersection to take a smoke/food break. I remember Dino and Tom talking about how they weren't really supposed to be smoking there but that Japanese people break the rule all the time and it's only foreigners who get hassled for it.

And two years later, seven people died at the same intersection. Goes to show, just because no one has a gun doesn't mean that crime won't happen. You can still do a lot of damage with a truck and a knife.

Oh, Japan. One of the lowest crime rates in the world, but when it happens it is really greusome, and more frequently people jump in front of trains because they are "tired of life."

I like to carry the following items on my person at all times:

* Wallet
* Camera with SD card in
* Checkbook
* Card reader
* Cell phone
* iPod nano
* Small notebook for To Do's and brilliant ideas
* 2 pens and five pencils
* Eraser
* Sketchbook
* Laptop
* Glasses, when I know where they are
* Nintendo DS with generally 3 games but more than that if I'm on a week long trip or longer
* Bottle of Aleve
* Possibly a lipstick.
* Possibly a paperback book on longer trips
* Misc. papers and the occasional napkin or Kleenex
* Two emergency tampons
* My anvil collection

Today I found the perfect bag that could comfortably hold all these things:
http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5278601

I think the design was originally intended as a daiper bag but was modded into the ideal laptop bag. This lady really knows her young mommies! There are sooooo many pockets! It makes up for fashion designers never putting proper pockets on women's pants anymore, and eases the pain I feel at only owning one pair of cargo pants and not seeing them in stores anymore. And she builds them with comfortable straps and will also waterproof them for a small extra charge. OMG I want one of these bags like whoa. Even though most of her fabrics are a level of ugly found only in Texas. There are at least two or three that are both functional and beautiful though. And she asks for the size of your laptop when you order so she can custom fit the bag.

The price is more than I personally have paid for a bag before, but still considerably less than $100, and a much better price than a less functional Luis Vuitton bag. At least for once it would be paying a fair price for high quality.

Ok, girlie moment over. Carry on, Citizen!

I have a confession to make. I really like Fritz the Cat. The movie as much as the comic, even if Robert Crumb really didn't want it to be made. Ralph Bakshi is an awesome animator and even though the movie's plot was incredibly stupid and wrong, there were several moments throughout that made it worth watching. Like Duke's death scene with the pool balls, sure, but also this moment halfway through the film where all the action stopped for a musical transition:




Sure, the rainbow rotoscoping has been done a lot, but putting it with Bo Diddley's music felt fresh and new to me somehow. This was a trip I definitely wanted to be on.

I love Bo Diddley, and I just found out that he died recently. He will be missed, but I'm glad his music lives on in a horribly written miracle of animation and drugs.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!! This week's Doctor Who was soooooo good but it was a two-parter and I won't find out what happens next til next Saturday!!!!!! Seriously, it's a three way tie now between Silence in the Library, Blink, and Gridlock for my favorite episode. And wtf happened to Donna???

Shut up, Wesley, and spin the Wheel of Fun.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JfhKkO1fbq4