My current schedule for the 2006 Independent Film Festival of Boston (original), which I will have the pleasure of sharing with my sweetie: Friday 4/21 Edmond, Somerville 1, 8 PM Mamet, William H. Macy. That does it for me. District B13, Somerville 5, 11 PM Cool as crap French sci-fi action flick with tons of martial arts. Saturday 4/22 Shadow Company, Somerville 3, 12:45 PM This is a maybe due to timing, but it’s an interesting-looking documentary. See also Kathryn Cramer’s writing on this subject (original). ...

This here is Spike Lee making the best caper flick he can make with a superb cast, which is pretty good on all fronts. And actually, the cast is a notch better than you’d think, for the following reasons: Denzel Washington does not play Denzel Washington, and Chiwetel Ejiofor is a great actor even if you don’t know who he is. I guess if you do know who he is already, the cast is only half a notch better than you’d think. ...

Brick is playing tonight down at the Kendall. 7:10 show. And I might just hang out after for the 10 PM showing of Thank You for Smoking. I’m fairly sure that there’s some inherent value in the concept of a high school noir flick. Plus it’s got the chick from Lost, no not the evil one, the other one. Plus Shaft as a high school principal. Possibly that last is stunt casting. ...

Last year, Caltech pranked MIT fairly hard. This year, MIT struck back. Admittedly, it’s not that hard to prank Fleming, but there’s still a fair amount of elegance in this one.

We have caught up on Lost, thanks to Chris, Tivo, Bittorrent, and iTunes. As a result, I have a new theory, which I think is completely original. Although it’s flawed insofar as it explains precisely none of the mysteries at all. Still, it’s a good theory. I noticed last night, while Sayid, Charlie, and Ana-Lucia were off investigating something dangerous without telling anyone where they were going — this, to make sure that anything that happened to them would be as bad as possible and cause as much impact on the rest of the group as was feasible — you can’t go telling people what you’re doing, especially if you’re violating the First Rule, which is “bring the irreplaceable doctor with you on any risky expedition” — crap, lost track. ...

[When I was just a little lad, I worked at Netcom, then among the largest ISPs in the country. Some of our customers wanted me fired for posting this.] Newsgroups: netcom.announce,netcom.general,netcom.netcruiser.announce,netcom.net cruiser.general Path: kremvax.scots.net!bobr From: bobr@scots.net (Robert McReiger) Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT: ScotsNet Followup-To: netcom.general,netcom.netcruiser.general Message-ID: Organization: ScotsNet On-line Communication Sairvices, Inc. Date: Sat, 1 Apr 1995 00:00:00 GMT Approved: bobr@kremvax.scots.net I'd like to thank ye all for reading this little message I've composed, because this little message is representin' a large change in this company, and it's no small decision I've made. So it's a good thing ye took the time to read it. Because I've got a lot to be tellin' ye. But before I'm about that, I suppose a number o' ye will be won'drin' why I've gone an' changed me name. Well, I'm goin' to be tellin' ye that too. I've been resarchin' me heritage, and I've discovered that I've a wee bit of Scots ancestry in me -- and I've decided that it'd be fittin' to honor it. Which leads me to the subject of this wee little announcement. You see, I dinna think just changin' me name is enough to prove me love for my new-found heritage. No, I don't. Fairthermore, I've been thinkin' lately it's about time my company was provin' its intent to turn over a new leaf by turning into a new company. Wi' a new name, you know. As such, I've decided that NETCOM Online Communication Sairvices, Incorporated, will no longer be NETCOM Online Communication Sairvices. Incorporated. From now on, we're goin' to be *ScotsNet*. And our domain name, it'll be scots.net. We'll also be changin' a few of our policies. To start with, we think anyone who gets an' account wi' us is deservin' of a little recognition. Any sort of account, from our beloved NetCruiser accounts all the way to our T1 customers. So whenever ye gets an account wi' us, we'll be givin' you your choice of a *wee* little terrier, or a *great whackin' huge* terrier. Whichever ye like. And furthermore, if ye've gotten' an account wi' us, and it hasn't worked out -- perhaps the bairns have been peerin' at the filthy pictures on Usenet, or perhaps ye can't get the bluidy modem to produce the bluidy initialization strings, or maybe it's just that your spouse dinna think you're spendin' enough time wi' your new terrier -- we've got a way to make it up t'you. We're not goin' to help you get it workin', but if you can't get it workin', we'll send you a lovely potted plant. Altogether free. *And* your money back, as an apology. It's the least we can do. And in general, there's one thing ye can count on from here on in. ScotsNet will niver do anythin' less than our very best to be the most *Scottish* Internet Sairvice Provider we can be, and we can be vurry Scottish indeed. And we will be. Because there's one thing we know for sure. If it's not Scottish... it's *crap*. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert McReiger bobr@scots.net Chairman, ScotsNet Online Communication Sairvices, Inc.

From one of Raph Koster’s posts on GDC: Patrick Dugan asking a panel of academics whether the cultural shifts brought on by massively multiplayer games may include damaging our conception of the nation-state as a key form of personal identity. Academics don’t quite know what to say. Even I know what to say to that. “Yes.” Rambly thoughts ahead. Personal identity is increasingly fluid; the ability to put on an impenetrable mask ensures that. Hm. Rereading the quote, I wonder if it wouldn’t be more appropriate to say “tribal identity,” though. You could say that’s a subsection of personal identity. I tend to reject that as necessity, though; it’s one potential aspect of personal identity. And precision requires that we distinguish between the aspect and the whole, no? ...

Oh, OK, Rob. Our Canadian overlord talks, and we listen. Unplumbed Ephemeral Circus genre time. The Empire is decaying. It has always been decaying; it will be decaying for millenial. Nobody remembers the time when it was not, except perhaps the positronic computators that remain. They grind equations into dust for purposes that were set back when the Empire was bright. It is rumored that a man knows how to change those purposes; that legacy was passed down in his clan from mother to son, from uncle to niece, and cannot be used until the time is right. ...

A while back, I dropped any support for RSS 1.0 on this weblog. I never regret that decision.

I’m running out of elliptical titles for posts about awards. Ah well. Um, yeah, the Origins Awards (original). I didn’t game much this last year. That won’t stop me from commenting, though! I see, among the Best RPG nominees: five licensed games. Well, four; I don’t think it counts as a license when the same person is writing both the original text (Artesia) and the RPG. Four out of the five use existing systems, with varying degrees of adaptation to the world. ...