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Daily Blah for... Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Riddle of the Missing Clothes
During a There session last Saturday, Purple Platypus and I were inside the tower of Tyr when we ran into this avatar in his underwear. I mean, he was wearing naught but what I would call a vest (which I believe you Americans call an undershirt?) and heart-covered boxer shorts for pants (underpants to you). We started a conversation, and he said something vague about having his clothes stolen by some unidentified robbers. It sounded fishy. PP, who has logged many more hours of There-play than just about anyone on the planet at this point, told me a lot of avatars have been hitting him up for clothes and Therebucks -- offering nothing in return, just blatant begging situations. Was this a slightly more elaborate ruse along those lines? Was this guy out looking for sympathetic suckers? I think PP and I both imagined so. We wished him luck, bid a hasty retreat out of the tower and went buggy racing.
Imagine my horror when I logged in yesterday and found my avatar in nothing but undershirt and heart-covered boxer shorts. My carefully-coiffed spiky purple hair was gone, replaced by the Ayran blond 'do that is the default There hair. My virtual closet was bare. Even my trusty Lightning hoverboard and -- gasp! -- my dog, Pookie Pup, were missing (poor Pookie Pup -- I'd mistreated him badly the other day by summoning him into the world several times while skydiving, just so I could watch him repeatedly plummet like a yapping stone). I'd been robbed! Was this revenge, karmaic or otherwise, for not believing the guy we met in the Tyr tower? Or some possession-grabbing There virus he'd unwittingly passed on? Now, of course, I had to do my own running around telling other avatars of my woe.
"Do you know anything about people losing their clothes?" I asked one guy in the first crowd of strangers I came across.
"You can't blame me," he responded. "I didn't do it because I don't have any extra clothes."
Purple Platypus pulled me away. "Come on, CT," he said. "These aren't the right people to ask."
"What was that?" I fumed. "A meeting of the paranoic's society?" Or perhaps, I later mused, he'd simply had the same reaction I'd had the previous day: why is this nearly naked guy talking to me about having had his clothes stolen?
Eventually, with help from a helpful Helper, the answer became clear. A few days back I'd asked There to provide me with a new avatar name (they'd rather hastily dubbed me "ChrisTay" after discovering that their initial plan to use my first name followed by the first letter of my last name might cause some offense. As a replacement, I came up with the slightly more anonymizing "N Famous.") So this was what ChrisTay looked like with his wardrobe stripped bare; everything, including my board and pup, was now in N Famous' possession. Nice of them to tell me. I logged back in as my new avatar, then Pookie Pup and I had a nice, relaxing and fully-cloathed soak with some new friends in a virtual hot tub.
Daily Blah for... Saturday, October 25, 2003
Here, There and Everywhere
So yes, I'm convinced There is going to be huge. Although it probably needs a new name: There is just a little too generic, hence my need to put it in italics every time I mention it. (How about iThere?) One friend, whom I'll identify by his There avatar Purple Platypus, spends an enormous amount of time in There and has already plonked down pictures of dead presidents to buy a virtual hoverboat. Strange as it may sound, it's worth it. The other night, PP and I took a stars-and-stripes hoverboat out for a cruise above a canyon with a large emerald tower and a harvest-yellow moon. In the other passenger seats sat three blue-haired, self-described goddesses. We'd met them at the bottom of the canyon, after we both jumped off the tower to see what would happen. The goddesses, whom at that stage all looked alike, were chasing each other round the circular canyon walls. At first, because you never saw two of them together, they looked like one person doing laps at a breakneck speed.
I jumped off the hoverboat and quit There shortly after the goddesses joined us (I had a pressing engagement in Here, the real-life non-virtual world with over six billion members). I'm kicking myself that I did, because according to PP, a paintball fight broke out with another hoverboat shortly after, and they had to ... wait. Does this sound interesting? Does it sound crazy? Are you getting that it really seemed like I was there? That the graphics are so delightful, simple, and amazingly seamless that it's impossible not to feel immersed?
As for PP's wife, known in-world as Persimmon, she's on the verge of potentially working at There. I'm wracking my brains to see if I've ever heard of a more cool-sounding job. And a third friend whom I showed round There today -- a hardcore Mac user and PC hater -- sat there with his jaw hitting the floor. "I have to get a PC," he said. "I have to get a PC just for this. I've been waiting for this kind of thing forever." So, I have to admit, have I, though I didn't truly know it until this moment. I've spent far too much of my life in Here. It's good to take a break.
Daily Blah for... Friday, October 24, 2003
There's a There There (in There)
You lucky people. Instead of making you pay for all my old articles once the week-long free period is up, I'm going to simply cut and paste them for you. So as an appetizer, here's my brief piece from last Monday's issue on the virtual world known as There:
There's Life in There
This virtual world is not just a game
By CHRIS TAYLOR
Have you ever lost touch with old friends who left town? Sure, you could call or email them — but that can feel like a poor substitute for actually being with them. What you need is some kind of virtual world where you can just hang out in one another's company.
That's the idea behind a new online service called There, which launches next week for Windows PCs ($50 a year at there.com). Think of it as a 3-D chat room: your onscreen characters talk as you type, with speech balloons coming out of their heads. They blink, breathe and nod when you type yes. Start throwing in actions like winking, yawning, gasping, even burping — and what you've got is conversation that looks like a cartoon yet feels uncannily real.
Plenty of activities are available — dune-buggy racing, dog training, jet packing — but don't confuse There with a video game. Nobody's keeping score. It's more like a massive playdate. Everything from the cute Toy Story — style graphics to the clothing stores where characters can dress up in the latest fashions (provided courtesy of Levi's and Nike) is designed to give you something to chat about.
It works. Tens of thousands signed up for prelaunch testing, even though There had space for only 2,000 at first. Will it keep working? That's for you and your friends to find out.
From the Oct. 27, 2003 issue of TIME magazine
Eye of the Panther
I wait with breathless anticipation -- wait, is that really possible? Wouldn't I have suffocated by now? -- for my Mac to finish installing OS 10.3, the infamous Panther, released tonight. Funny the way we do this, every year or so, us geeks -- rip out the very personalities of our computers and start over. And we pay for the privilege. And I'm excited to be one of the first in the world to put a Panther in my Mac, ahead of the pack. Weird.
So many questions: will it have lost all my data in some bizarre hard drive wipe-over? (Of course, I told myself I'd back up somewhere; of course, I didn't.) Will it run faster? Will the new features knock my socks off? Will I have to enter my personal details all over a-freakin'-gain?
Here it comes now. A sigh of relief as I see my familiar desktop background picture has survived; a sure sign that most of my data is there, too. A brief wuh? as I see it's requiring me to send registration information -- address, phone number, occupation and so forth. I thought it was only Microsoft that did that Big Brother stuff. Steve, what have you wrought? A quick curse when I discover that two programs are missing from the dock; they're still there, I just have to go and drag their icons into the dock all over again. Why, in the name of Jobs, why? Such randomness; again, I'd expect it from a PC. A polite internal smattering of applause as I see everything is running discernibly faster, especially the Mail program. And an audible "wow" as I hit upon the one button that shrinks all open screens into manageable thumbnails. This will prove very useful -- at least, until I rip this personality out and start over with OS 10.4 in a year or so.
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Sing, Sing, Sing
Everyone who comes to visit the house tends to assume I have a serious videogame addiction. I don't. It's just that game companies send me so much freakin' product in the hope that I might accidentally review some of it. (The better a game actually is, the less likely it is that the company will have to send it -- I'm more likely to ask for it myself, in case it is the greatest game in a generation and I do actually have to review it. Which means my shelves are stuffed with all sorts of crap, most of it still shrink-wrapped).
I do, however, like videogames. Usually I like them more in theory than in practice. It's like how the vast majority of Hollywood movies suck because they pander to the kinds of genres, styles and sequences that have worked in previous films, while successfully excising the soul of anything still worth watching. The games business is just the same. Right now most of it is stuck in the soup-brained belief that only teenage males want to play videogames. As a former teenage male myself, I didn't use to have so much of a problem with this (although I like to think that even then, I could tell the crap from the gold).
But my passion for the genre is intact. When I find a good game, an original game, an enjoyable game, I fall for it hard. And I have fallen, in the last week, for Karaoke Revolution. You know, I am sure, of Dance Dance Revolution, the pad-dancing game that's been sweeping arcades across the western world for two years now? The one where you have to match the arrows on the screen by stomping on the appropriate arrows on the floor at the right time? (It's a great workout, by the way; I highly recommend DDR as a way to get fit without all the strain of actually feeling like you're getting fit.) Karaoke Revolution is the same idea, but with voice. You plug a headset into your PlayStation 2, and then you have to sing the notes of each song at the right pitch for the right length of time.
I can almost hear the swiveling sound of your eyes rolling at this idea. Trust me, it's so much better than that sounds. You don't have to learn musical notation; these notes aren't on any recognizable stave. They roll gently across the screen as tube-like bars, swerving up or down as the song dictates. An arrow in the bottom left-hand corner represents the pitch your voice is at. All you have to do is move that arrow to where the tube is. Easy. It's like any game, except you're playing it with your vocal chords instead of your thumbs.
The song selection is surprisingly good, seemingly designed to appeal to the old as well as the young. Chronologically speaking, it starts at "When a Man Loves a Woman" and "You Really Got Me", progresses through "Billie Jean" and "Bizzare Love Triangle" (the idea that New Order is now Karaoke fodder reminds me of when P and I were shopping at Home Depot a few months ago: "True Faith" came on the in-store stereo, and I had a sudden "we're getting old" moment at New Order being treated as home-renovation musak), and ends with 21st century fare like "Complicated" and "Addicted." I have to say it was a shock to find how much of the modern stuff I simply don't know; fuddy-duddys like me are reduced to singing old-school classics like "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." Ah, those were the days, when the only lyrics sung slowly enough for understanding were in the chorus.
But most importantly, the game is simply well produced. The backing singer and music is not the original, yet you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. Your chosen on-screen singer bobs his head and bops around in the most delightful way. As you progress through levels, he or she starts off singing at a house party, belts out a number on a station platform in the Tokyo subway, tries one at a county fair, and finally (if you're good enough) headlines at a large stadium. And the crowd! There's nothing like hearing them cheer, and watching them start to wave their hands to the music, after you nailed a phrase or two. A lot of teenage pop dreams are going to be launched with this game.
As with all karaoke, it is of course vitally important that you (and any non-computer generated audience you might have) sink a couple of beers before attempting this game. Lubricating yourself is essential to removing the inhibitions that prevent full-throated gameplay. It is also the only way that you will actually think you're a good singer and ignore the fact that you simply sang Cher's "Believe" on the easiest, and most forgiving level possible.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, October 16, 2003
Time for a Change
SACRAMENTO: California's governor-elect has been sent back in time to preemptively eliminate a chief rival from the 2006 gubernatorial election, the Schwarzenegger campaign revealed last night.
The target of the temporal assassination was Sarah Connor, a Los Angeles-based waitress. In 1984, where Schwarzenegger has been sent, Connor was about to give birth to a son, John -- who, it is alleged, will become the greatest Democratic operative California has ever known.
"Sure, it might seem like hardball," said Schwarzenegger political advisor George Gorton. "But you haven't seen this kid. In his twenties, he becomes this incredibly telegenic orator. We simply couldn't take the risk of him going head to head with Arnold in the next campaign."
Outraged by what he called "an unprecedented politicization of the space-time continuum", Democratic lieutenant governor Cruz Bustamante announced he had sent back an operative of his own to save Sarah Connor's life. If that were successful, however, it is believed Republicans could attempt the assassination again at a later date, perhaps with a robot even more deadly than Schwarzenegger. "In which case," Bustamante told reporters, "we would be forced to capture Arnold, reprogram him and send him back to protect the teenage John Connor."
Daily Blah for... Thursday, October 09, 2003
No More Movies, Ja?
Thought you'd seen the last of bad movie comparisons in the media now that the "total" recall election is over? Thought Ahnuld's promise that he wouldn't make movies while in office might cause the press to cease the recycling of Hollywood jokes? What were you thinking? Check it out: the fact that Bustamante will serve under Schwarzenegger as his lieutenant governor is being compared to the plot of Twins by none less than the Christian Science Monitor. Will this movie-critic envy among reporters never end?
Pause to reflect on the fact that we just elected a governor who had to promise not to make any more freakin' movies. In other words, we just put Narcissus at the helm of the world's sixth-largest economy. I think the Washington Post said it best: Arnold's Vision is All About Himself.
Although that is an opinion piece with much skepticism, it also ends on the kind of healthy, positive conclusions I haven't been able to reach in recent days:
I'd like Schwarzenegger's win to inspire modest souls of every shade -- men and women who take themselves out of the running for governor, school superintendent or even college -- to rethink or create their own master plans.
Once, the gubernatorial election of a Teutonic-sounding, Austrian-born film star -- even a rich, superbly connected one -- wouldn't have happened. Giggles notwithstanding, a man with a plan -- whose stunning confidence we all could mimic -- will govern the Golden State.
Californians will get what they deserve.
For their sakes, pray that Arnold keeps surprising us.
Meanwhile, if you've been wondering what unearthly antics that job-changing funster Arnie will get up to next, Worth 1000 has the answer.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, October 08, 2003
The Power of Positive Thinking
I really can't get away from the guy, can I? Right after finishing that last blog, and hoping I had finally put tonight's events out of my mind, I picked up Mastery by George Leonard. It's a wonderful little tome on how we can't have the quick fixes we crave in our lives; self-improvement in any discipline comes in brief bursts interspersed with years of rigorous practice. A lesson there for the quick-fix pro-recall voters, I was thinking. And then, in a chapter lauding the power of careful visualization, I read the following quote:
"All I know is that the first step is to create the vision, because when you see that vision there -- the beautiful vision -- that creates the 'want power.' For example, my wanting to be Mr. Universe came about because I saw myself so clearly, being up there on the stage and winning."
That quote, in case you hadn't guessed from the esoteric style of English, came from one Arnold Schwarzenegger.
So did Ahnuld become governor because he created the 'want power' to do it? Was that what he was doing during the other debates -- sitting at home quietly visualizing his acceptance speech? Are we all merely players in Ahnuld's unfolding lucid dream of global domination? Is this all, perhaps, a virtual reality scenario he bought at Total Recall?
Don't laugh. Ahnuld's pal Senator Orrin Hatch recently introduced what he hopes will become the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, ridding us of that pesky provision that all Presidents have to be born in the country. As goes California, so goes the nation.
Be afraid, world. Be very afraid.
California Coup
What could I do? I tried Ethiopian food. I tried going to Mitchell's, the best ice cream in San Francisco, where, in what seemed like an appropriate nod to our pallid beanpole of an outgoing governor, I chose thin mint. I tried buying electronics online (an irony I am not immune to, for by doing so, I was contributing to the new Californian economy). I even tried downloading really cheesy Kylie Minogue tracks. But nothing could wipe over the sheer disappointment of Ahnuld's victory. How? How could so many voters be so politically inept? How could they believe the vague, made-for-TV pronouncements of a Hitler-admiring, breast-groping, language-mangling, turkey-making knucklehead with no political experience and a cadre of old-time Republican cronies?
The city seemed desolate tonight, like the Schwarzenegger tsunami had washed everyone off the streets. Nobody was out on the Haight. If I know San Franciscans, they're all indoors commiserating with a stiff drink (or something stiffer). The only comic relief was provided by my friend Aaron, who sent round a Tribe.net call to join the fresh-faced, uniformed Schwarzenjungend (Schwarzenegger Youth) corps. Tomorrow belongs to them.
Still, well done, Ahnuld. You saw your moment and you seized it, much like your Teutonic dictatorial idol. You would never have won in a regular election season with regular Republican primaries and many more weeks of media scrutiny. You guessed the electorate's rage at a nationwide recession would blind them; that they would be dazzled by your name, by your celebrity, by your pals Warren Buffett and Rob Lowe, and by your ability to string two sentences together in the one debate you showed up for. You guessed that all this would paper over the Grand Canyon cracks in your policies. You guessed right. Now the bar is set lower for your successors. Way lower. Any old celeb could run and win now. Kylie Minogue in '06!
Of course, why wait that long? Why bother having elections at all? We'll just have a recall every couple of months. It'll be like the Mr. Universe title, or box office rankings. Anyone beats you for muscles or first weekend gross, they go straight to Sacramento. And I think we'll be a lot happier that way. Who wants to worry about political nuance these days? Who has the time to bone up on policy debates? Who, besides a sidelined minority of real thinkers, cares to look below the surface of things anymore?
Daily Blah for... Sunday, October 05, 2003
My Ahnuld Dream
I can't begin to tell you how depressed I am by the latest polls in the recall race. So I'll just tell you about a dream I had last week in which I confronted Ahnuld. "We used to have real action heroes and real leaders," I told him, jabbing my finger angrily. "Now we just have fake action heroes and wannabe politicians." He just stood there, smiling. (I was dismayed to discover afterwards Gray Davis used the same line). Later in the dream, I confronted Cruz Bustamante. For some reason known best to himself, he had filled his thinning hair with hideous blond highlights and grown a long pony tail. I was begging with him to cut it off before a photographer caught him. But it didn't seem like anyone was paying any attention to him, or like he really cared about appealing to anyone.
I think that dream says everything you need to know about where this race is going.
When Tigers Attack
What is it with large, dangerous felines this week? First Roy (of Siegfried and Roy fame) gets mauled within an inch of his life by his iconic big cat on a Vegas stage -- while the audience, thinking they're seeing another illusion, gasp and applaud. Then yesterday the NYPD, not exactly big game hunters, have to subdue a 350-pound Bengal tiger in a Harlem apartment building. Nobody seems to know what the tiger was doing there. So is this like a remake of Hitchcock's The Birds, only with tigers? Are our fuzzy feline friends turning on us? Is this a coordinated international conspiracy? Has Tom Ridge been alerted? Better to be safe than sorry. Lock your doors, America. Buy more of that all-important duct-tape.
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