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The NBC version of Coupling is incredibly bad. I know, everyone said it was bad, but I wanted to see for myself. I lasted about five minutes before screaming in horror and deleting my TiVo season pass. The sad thing is that it uses the same scripts. It practically uses the same sets. But the acting — it’s like Shakespeare performed by earnestly dull high school students. Not that the original Coupling was Shakespeare, but the American cast isn’t really up to the standards of high school students either. ...

There was a certain amount of inaccurate news regarding the woman condemened to death by stoning in Nigeria. Thus, I thought I’d note that her sentence has been overturned. That’s the good news; the bad news is that it was overturned on a technicality, and the law’s still in place.

I couldn’t resist just one more sampling of VeriSign’s bounty: innocence89.com innocenceinmates.com innocenceprogram.com innocence-top.com Had an innocencetop.com a few days ago. Someone’s persistent (but dumb).

The Movie Box has copies of the two new Kill Bill trailers (from the soundtrack CD). Not any spoilers we didn’t see in the first couple of trailers, lots of cool stuff, and a glimpse at an interesting cinematic technique I won’t spoil in case someone wants to be surprised in the theaters. I am so jazzed for this movie.

Now, see, if they’d done this (original) (warning: QuickTime ahead) in Footloose, Kevin Bacon wouldn’t have been so darned rebellious. Free State High School, in Lawrence, Kansas, has apparently been having a problem with “provocative” dancing. So they made a video to show students what sorts of things weren’t permissible. The dancer in the video, as it happens, is the school mascot in full costume.

Arref (original) and Ginger (original) are talking about “sticky PCs” today — characters who really touch and affect other PCs by their very nature. It’s an excellent concept, and one I’ve used without having a good name for it for a while. In gaming, the easiest way for a PC to get screen time is to draw out the other PCs. “Tell me your story — it sounds interesting.” The key is to enable screen time for other people, and get your screen time from the reflection, rather than trying to draw others into your story. Popular characters are those who facilitate someone else’s roleplay. The dynamic is most visible in large-cast games, like LARPs and MUDs, but I think it applies even in smaller face to face groups.

Speaking of Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson has caused a Quicksilver wiki (original) to be generated. Clever man.

California Indian tribes have donated $6.7 million to various recall candidates (original) this year. Most of that’s gone to Bustamante (and he’s had to return (original) most of them). Schwarzenegger has reacted with attack ads (original) directed at the tribal gaming lobby; deeply ironic, considering his anti-immigration stance. Then again, he’s not really anti-immigration; he’s pro European males. It’s ok to immigrate illegally (original) if you’re him.

Earlier tonight, while I was sitting around enjoying an evening of daring adventure, we heard a huge cheer from across the Boston rooftops. Brant’s place is not far from Fenway, so it was pretty clear what was going on. About fifteen minutes later, there was another cheer — this one even bigger, and longer, and more passionate. It was a three run homer in the bottom of the ninth, and a homer in the tenth (original). The reporters are calling it the comeback victory of the year. I knew, from the sound and timbre of the crowd, that it must have been something of the sort. From the time I heard the second cheer to the time I got home and read the news, I had the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from knowing the Red Sox did something spectacular. And now, I’m just happy that the sounds of cheering from across the Boston rooftops told me what was going on. ...

Quicksilver is so damned big. My god, it’s big. It’s 900 pages, and it’s really really big, and it’s the first volume of three. And it’s Neal Stephenson, so you know it’s going to be even more wordy than that. I’m about halfway through, thanks to an early shipment to a bookstore which will remain nameless. The book’s divided into thirds, more or less. The first third is Daniel Waterhouse’s story, which can in no way be considered to have a plot. Halfway through the second third, one character mentions the picaresque genre, in which a random character wanders through an interesting landscape without direction. That would be the first third of the book. Just to put a cherry on top of it, the story opens quite late in Waterhouse’s life, and then proceeds to tell us all about his earlier history in flashback. So no tension, unless you count the pirates. ...