Bravo finished showing the first season of The West Wing, which seems like as good a time as any to talk about it. I’m gonna keep watching, and I might even buy the DVD set. When you get right down to it, Aaron Sorkin knows how to write really good dialogue, and he knows how to pluck the heartstrings. The closing moments of “In Excelsis Deo” are really drop dead beautiful and touching. I care about the characters, too. ...
This is very sad. The Online Computer Library Center, who owns the Dewey Decimal System, is suing the Library Hotel. Apparently one’s not permitted to use the DDC without purchasing a license. Since Melvil Dewey first published the DDC in 1876, one would think that at least the early editions would have passed out of copyright, but perhaps there’s a wrinkle I don’t understand. It’s still a malicious, nasty lawsuit. “A person who came to their Web site and looked at the way (the hotel) is promoted and marketed would think they were passing themselves off as connected with the owner of the Dewey Decimal Classification system.” ...
Haven’t seen Underworld yet, but it’s in the theaters. Here’s one take on the similarities between White Wolf’s mythos and the movie. Here’s someone disagreeing (original). Maybe I’ll get out to see it this afternoon and chime in with my own thoughts. I’m getting PACER access so I can read the court documents, but once you request access they send you the password via regular mail so it may be a couple of days yet before I can go hunting for minutae.
Haven’t fared past the first run of breakfast joints I found for a while, but I did today. The Lighthouse in Medford Square is not exceptional and does not provide any unusual taste treats, but it does a basic breakfast damned well and I rather expect I’ll drift by there again from time to time. The coffee is OK and the hash browns are not too greasy; the french toast is angelic. Bring your own real maple syrup.
One of the members of the Iraqi Governing Council was shot today (original). Potential motivations are plentiful. Akila al-Hashimi is a woman, she cooperates with the United States, she is a Shiite, and she was a Ba’athist. There are indications that women aren’t being treated so well in Iraq these days. Certainly cooperating with the United States can be dangerous (original). The Sunnis are worried about Shiite power gains, which has motivated recent killings. And nobody likes the Ba’athists. ...
This is the Isabel picture I’d been looking for; saw it once, couldn’t find it again, now I have. Amazing. randomWalks has more picture links (original). Snopes is tracking that tanker picture. I think it’s Photoshopped; the sea is too calm.
In honor of the impending election season, and because — oh, wait, nobody demanded it. Well, our mashup of the day is The West Wing anyway. Depending on how you look at it, West Wing is either a brilliant show about a team of exceptional individuals working to maintain their ideals under the spotlight of Presidential politics, or it’s a self-indulgent epic about a bunch of unlikely White House staffers that takes place in an alternate reality in which liberal politics work. Either way, it’s got that snappy Aaron Sorkin dialogue and it’s kind of nice to pretend that our government is that idealistic. Have at it.
Verisign recommends innocence.com as an alternative to the following non-existent domains: innocentes.net brokeninnocence.com visualinnocence.com (actually, the guy searched for girls.visualinnocence.com) originalinnocence.com lamented-innocence.com innocenze.com blk_innocence.com www.iinnocence.com (you know, that probably was a legit typo) I’m actually kind of tempted by a couple of those. Alas, lamented-innocence.com is taken, it just has no nameserver.
Your Mashup, should you choose to accept it: the Beach Boys. Yeah, the surfer legends, the face of 1960s surf music, the boy band of the decade — the Beach Boys. Without pushing in any particular direction, I’d say there’s potential for romantic scenarios, ecological scenarios, fun-oriented scenarios, or even auto racing scenarios. A lot of roleplaying is oriented towards the big deadly problem. The Beach Boys… are not. What can you do with the sun-drenched teenage hormonal wonderland evoked by “Surfer Girl”? If that doesn’t tickle your fancy and you prefer the Smile lyrics, though, be my guest. That stuff is pretty cool too.
It’s Labor Day, and I thought about postponing till tomorrow — but nah. Let’s do some mashing up of the old pop culture; let’s dance with the memes in the pale moonlight. (Whoops, there’s one now.) Our chosen subject this week: Shogun, by James Clavell. If I was going to boil Shogun down to a sentence of summation, I’d say it was about a man plunged into a culture he considers barbaric, and how he learns to understand it. It’s perhaps the case that the book is worthwhile not so much for the plot, but for the sincere attempt to write about Japanese culture on its own ground, which is difficult to subsume into gaming. Still, the raw plot material is probably fairly fertile ground. Have at it.