Death From Above

There is a dog named Death From Above.

All right, that’s probably not what his owners call him.  But it’s what I call him.  He is a Springer Spaniel, and one of those dogs who takes any sort of movement within a hundred foot radius of his house as a potential threat, best responded to by tirades of furious barking.   His owners live a few doors down from me;  they have a tiny exterior landing connected to the second story door on their house, and in good weather (and sometimes not-so-good weather) they leave him up there, where he lies somewhat sulkily, without much to do.   Since the distance between their house and the next is modest, about the span of a city alleyway, his view of the street from that vantage is limited to a narrow aperture:  six feet or so of sidewalk, directly in front of the opening.  But should something (or anything) appear in that opening, he launches to his feet and unleashes like the Hound of the Baskervilles–  whereupon the alleyway acts as an echo chamber, magnifying his bark far beyond anything he could achieve on his own.  The effect for the passerby is comparable to being set upon by a Messerschmitt.

There is no point to this story, except that he got me again this morning.

Return to Crapopolis

For some time now, and with no obvious provocation, Jack has been pulling video games off the shelf that we haven’t touched in ages and booting them up again.  On some level I find this troubling, as it suggests to me that maybe he’s bored, and I should be doing more to engage him in ways that don’t involve a screen.  But in other ways it seems completely natural, as the majority of them are games that I wound up playing in whole or in part for him while he cheered me on, because he didn’t have the patience and coordination to play them alone.  So now he’s looking at them with a fresh eye:  remembering what they involved, and having the satisfaction of testing them with his current, more highly developed skills.

The irony of this is that most of these same games are utter pieces of crap.  One in particular, the Monsters, Inc. PS2 game, is in a dead-heat tie with Earthworld from the Atari 2600 for the title of The Worst Video Game I’ve Ever Played.  I cursed my way silently through every wretched, repetitive, suck-shit level of it, trying to smile for Jack’s sake, because he loved it so much, and praying that I could just get to some kind of screen that said THE END so we could claim that we finished it and I’d never have to turn the damn thing on again.  And now here he is, gladly revisiting it, voluntarily!

I do hope we finally finish Ico someday, though, before the PS2 burns out like the Xbox did.  It was originally reviewed by the now defunct Electronic Gaming Monthly as taking about 10 hours to complete.  We’ve been working on it for– three?  four years?…

Spore: Over 5 Billion Served

Did something truly awful last night while conducting my star-spanning race of Purple Shifters along the arm of the galaxy where Fortune stranded them.  After terraforming my two-zillionth rock into a paradisiacal wonderland (I’m fond of cooling down inner orbit planets in binary systems;  it makes for some spectacular sunrises), it suddenly occurred to me to wonder what would happen if you used those same terraforming tools in reverse, on a planet that was already habitable.  And, um…  occupied.  So I dropped into orbit above a T3 planet with a pre-spacefaring civilization, trained my Heat Ray on it until the climate destabilized, then watched in horrified fascination as the entire ecosystem collapsed tier by tier.   In the end, after every last plant and animal had gone extinct, about 60% of the planetary crust returned to a molten state, consuming all the charred, ashen remains of the now-lifeless cities in one giant slow-broiling conflagration of bubbling death.

Presumably that wouldn’t work on another spacefaring species, since colonies can survive quite nicely on T-Zero worlds (although in theory it should always work on a homeworld, where the cities have no advanced technological insulation.)   Also not sure whether any attempt to manipulate the T-rating of another species’ planet would automatically result in a local declaration of war.  Seems logical that it would.  But then again, you could be trying to improve the T-rating for them.  And they’re always calling you up whining and trying to get you stop all their eco-disasters.  That certainly counts as manipulation.

It’s also not quite as quick and impressive as just hitting the offending species with a planet buster and blowing their whole freaking world to Kingdom Come.  But it’s way cheaper, and infinitely more demoralizing for them.  You know, if you spend your time considering that sort of thing.

99,000 to Go

Crossed the 1000 mile mark today in the mighty Mini while whippin’ up the Saltfen Thruway to go see “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” (IMAX 3D!  Naturally.)  Still nary a complaint, unless you wanna count the center arm rest jamming halfway open because the coins inside rolled back into the hinge when I folded it up.  And she’s barely into her third tank of gas!

Also still nailing down the nuances of exactly how much gas to give her off a standing start.  Not enough and she rolls kinda leisurely;  too much and it’s snarl and leap.  Got All-Season Traction Control, though, so I don’t have to worry about leaving any rubber on the road if I screw it up.

And yes, “Gloria” won the name contest.  (“Gloria” pretty much won the name contest the moment the Empress said it;  it’s all just been me struggling with myself.)  Bummer I can’t get that on a personalized plate for her, though.  Would have to explain to all the neighbors, and everyone else, over and over and over…

Don’t Walk

City of Mists tourists make me laugh.  I know they shouldn’t;  we’re all tourists somewhere, and there are many places outside the Mysterious East where I look foolish and fit in badly.  But even so:  when you’re standing on the curb of a one-way street barely 12 feet wide, and there are no cars coming, and a street vendor on that same curb begins to push his wall-sized food cart out into the street to cross, AND he’s between you and the direction any cars would be coming from to boot, does it really make any sense to stand there dutifully waiting for the pedestrian “Walk” signal?

Ai! Autumnus

It is that day.

That day when Summer has unquestionably recused itself, when the clear blue sky and the golden sun and the desperate earth embrace as friends again, and the people of the City snap alive from their suffering swelter.   That day when the breeze is electric, like a promise, and it chases through the streets in blessing, and everyone has somewhere to go, and someplace to be and something to do.

I should not be here.  I should be far to the north, at an outdoor café, lingering over a golden brown cup of loose leaf Irish Breakfast tea and the remains of a croissant with honey, writing postcards in black ink and drinking in the scent of the leaves on the wind.

But I’m not.

What the HELL?!

Another British Racing Green white-topped Mini Cooper-S tonight, this time IN SEALAND.  It coalesced out of nowhere on my 10 driving home via Route 33, preceded me into town, and we ran tail to nose until we hit the light at Boardwalk.  He turned right.  I went straight.  Nobody gets off Route 33 and then drives Boardwalk unless they’re targeting someplace in Sealand.  If he was going to Rutledge, he could have gotten off 33 one exit earlier and gone straight there.

What is this, Those Annoying Post Brothers?

What the Hell??

Someone who just started parking in front of the apartment complex in Shadetree where my son lives has–   a British Racing Green white-topped Mini Cooper-S!  With the white bonnet stripes on the hood that I wanted to get!

I better not look too closely.  It might be me from a future timeline…

What Can I Freeze?

Successful grocery shopping trip in the new Mini.  Not really that tactically challenging overall, though it might have been more complicated had Jack been there.  (A carton of eggs and some ham steaks were relegated to his seat for the duration.)  Proving more difficult to remember not to leave my IPod locked inside.

Also, as the result of a continuing dialogue with good friend Neuro, am experimenting with some new food strategies.  Today that means I get to play the exciting game, What Can I Freeze?, wherein I attempt to reduce the amount of food that winds up rotting in my fridge without having to drive 20 minutes up Route 33 or walk to the farmer’s market every other day.  Today’s contestants are strawberries and cilantro…

It Works Out in the End

Got a pleasant and somewhat surprising call from Weaver (!) this morning.  She was standing outside the Shadetree Public School with Jack waiting to unleash him upon third grade for the first time, and called purely to make the observation that he was no longer the shortest and tiniest kid in his class.  Was a good feeling.  When your child is born so severely premature, there is a sense in which you never stop thinking of him in that way, as somebody who has to be defended.

Still wish I was there with him.

Awww, Never Mind

Delivered a Byzantine and progressively more-and-more awkward monologue to a guy at work today, trying to explain why holding a heat-reactive coffee cup that displays the word “OFF” when empty and “ON” when full under lukewarm water, so that both words displayed simultaneously, made it “Schrödinger’s Coffee Mug”.