Yup, it's true.

I've been reading The Long Tail, a book about the new economy evident in the online marketplace. It takes a book to explain it if you aren't a digital storytelling student, but here's a good example: (link) The "long tail" comes from the sales graph (say, from iTMS) where online sales peak with the predictable popular hits, then drops off sharply with the less popular songs. The graph never quite hits zero, though, and those low sellers add up like mad after a while. Niche markets hold more sway than they used to. The aforelinked article shows this, where casual gamers make up an estimated %76 of total game sales. This figure is broken down further, but the vast majority of people aren't as committed to gaming as the people video games are marketed to. This is interesting to me, anyway.

It's new comic day today. I got some good ones, the standout being Doc Frankenstein, a comic written by the Wachowski brothers that hasn't come out in nearly a year.

The mass influx of denim-clad academic acolytes to this jerkwater burg signals the start of the Fall semester once again. I've seen a few people I know walking around, and I can't help but notice the looks I get suggesting that people had thought I graduated. Not yet, kids- I'll be leaching off the state until December. In the meantime, I have plenty of projects to keep my busy, many of which will be documented online.

The last couple of times I've been to Best Buy, I've noticed an alarming trend in the music section. The employees are getting agressive now. It used to be that they'd troll the aisles and make their presense known now and again, similar to sharks off the coast of Hawaii. For some reason, they're now in full-on South-African-great-white mode, aggressively pouncing on anything in or near their territory. The first time it happened, I was digging through the middle of the alphabet in the rock/pop section. A blueshirt came up to me and asked me if I needed help finding anything. I said no without looking up, thus upholding my end of the social contract to at least the minimal standard. He pressed the matter, asking me what I was looking for, and I said I didn't know. He then asked me what kind of music I'm into, as if the Metalica-fan circa '93 hair/beard combo wasn't at least a clue. I'm pretty good at blocking out people I don't want to deal with, but this one actually tripped my old "don't talk to strangers" reflex. I looked up at him, said "lots of kinds," and moved away from him.

The second incident in recent memory was a week ago. I was looking for the Metric album that got a good writeup in the New Yorker, when someone came up behind me and said "hey, how 'ya doing?" Students had been filtering back in all week, and I figured I would see somebody I knew in public at some point, so I stood up and turned around to see a complete (albeit cute and female) stranger standing there in a BSU shirt. It threw me off, as her nametag was partially concealed by her hair. The faux-familiarity seemed presumptuous, and I gave her a weird look, as I was genuinely thrown off by her manner. I walked out of the store a little mad about this. The guy at the independently-owned Villiage Green didn't bug me when I ultimately bought the CD I was looking for in the first place. I like owning physical media, but iTunes and Amazon don't take the piss out of me when I purchase online.

My first attempt at 3-D modeling in Second Life:


I had to fight it a bit because the shapes can only scale down so far, and the ability to make 2d shapes is conspicuously absent (a low poly-count is desirable, one would think), but I'm happy with the result so far. For those of you who haven't read Warren Ellis's early-career Transmetropolitan comic, the odd-shaped glasses are a prominent character feature of the protagonist. I'm not %100 happy with this yet, and I may just break down and pay the $.34 to upload a 2-D image of the glasses. Thus far, I'm really impressed with Second Life.

Oh, how I want a burrito now.

The new apartment is quite nice, though I'm not totally settled yet. I'm working more until the semester to finish a couple big things at work, so I'm usually tired when I get home and end up going to bed early in order to catch the first MITS bus I can in the morning. The bus isn't bad, and the human menagerie is entertaining enough. I'm lucky to be on a line that stops right by the building I work in.

I opened the door the other night to find a huge spider web across the top left corner, complete with a large spider. The little bugger had spun the entire thing in the span of a few hours since I had last opened the door. I cleared it away, but the web was back the next morning for me to walk through. This was a formidable spider, with exponentially more legs than me, so I waited until it turned around (thus exposing the belly) and then clobbered it.

One more thing- I tried out Second Life to see what the character creation options were like. Here's my avatar after some rudimentary tweaking:

I think I'm happy with it. Now I just have to make some clothing textures.

This is intentional, don't worry:
Read that last line carefully: why would the IRS need a copyright? I found this spam in the BSU question/comment e-mail account that I've been working in. I don't normally read spam, but this one caught my eye because it was funny. Also note the processing time of 6-9 days. I don't think the IRS can change a coffee filter that fast.

Like the Flannery O'Connor story I read and forgot in undergrad, I am currently a displaced person. See description: that's me, but not in Africa. My landlord needed me to get out when my lease expired right as my employment status solidified for next semester, so I've been scrambling around with the help of several friends and family to move out and find somewhere to live. My next apartment won't be available until August 5th, so I'm currently crashing at "Gerry's Pad," so named by the red LED persistence-of-vision clock that flashes at me from my vantage point on the fold-out sofa. We ate at MCL last night "for the experience." Also for the blue jello, if I'm honest. The manager in the buffet line complimented my grey Fender shirt, which was nice, as I imagine the employees get sick of the aggressively quaint decorum. It makes me wonder what "quaint" and "kitsch" will look like when I'm old. Will we have pictures from the good old days of two-dimensional Doom sprites and the Google logo from before Google bought the Catholic church in 2016? Instead of depression-era Coca-Cola ads on the wall, will we have current recession-era ads? It's probably not too far off. After dinner, Gerry and I compulsively stopped in Hot Topic to look at shirts for bands we've never heard of. I ought to write down a few names and ask the Wundergrad if he knows them, but that would require me to care about bands formed after 1997. Then we went to the bookstore and bought books, proving that we do read after all. He got the Superman Returns shooting script and I got a book of essays about "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg. Fun stuff.

I'm setting up a photoblog with a template that will allow for larger photos to be displayed. The template is simple, but I'm still having trouble with the formatting.

We left the pristine grounds of Chautauqua yesterday and drove straight on to Taco Bell in Cleveland for food served on cardboard by teenagers who were neither pretty nor talented- a sharp contrast to the previous week of watching children play Mozart's recognizable hits in the park while eating grilled veggie sandwiches. Before we left we attended a Q&A with Arlen Specter and Lee Hamilton, and the day before that a speech by Arthur Sulzberger Jr. They were all as interesting as one would expect, which means a lot coming from me, as I generally don't want to hear about any political issue not covered in a Metal Gear or Splinter Cell game.

Here are a few more pictures from the past few days:

Things old people like:
High waistlines
Sitting
Ice cream
Walking slowly and looking around
Paying attention to anyone who happens to be talking
Large glasses
T-shirts with buttons
Flowers, both fresh and as floral print on wallpaper and clothing
Breakfast
Eating together (any meal)
Nodding at things
Where they used to live
Their grown children and each offspring’s marital state and vocation
The term “Digital Storytelling”
Church at any hour of the day, any day of the week

Things old people don’t like:
The internet
My brother and I until they find out that we still read books, then we’re “very nice”
Poor restaurant service
Restaurant service that reminds them of previous poor service
Rain
Hot weather
When people take their scooter parking, even when they clearly have reserved scooter parking

This much has been clear, so far, here at Chautauqua. As for me, I’ve enjoyed the past couple of days. Today I took a watercolor class with a room full of flower painting geriatrics, a guy who makes charts, and a landscape architect guy from Florida. Turns out I still have my layout and design chops, even if my brush technique is a little shaky. Last night I went to an opera for the first time if my life. Now, I enjoy the theatre and the musical as much as and perhaps more than the average heterosexual male, and I’m not entirely sworn off opera for the rest of my life, but damnation The Marriage of Figaro is long: three and a half hours with intermissions (plural) and enough time between relevant plot points to work out a Thursday NYT crossword. Superman Returns moves like an episode of Robot Chicken by comparison. On the other hand, the performers were all amazingly talented, and getting to hear the famous prologue piece live complete with a real harpsichord made me giddy. I also went to the ballet, which was quite enjoyable. The highlight of the evening was a huge group performance of Ravel’s Bolero done in a cool Spanish style. Apparently this was the world premiere of this particular arrangement mixed with this particular choreography, for what that’s worth. More harmonica class tomorrow, and I might have time to drive to a comic shop to buy 52. All this high-class living is giving me the shakes for some good-ole low culture like I’m used to. I make a habit of re-dumbening a bit at the end of the day with a little Mario Kart DS, just to keep my center.
Curiously, I seem to be in social demand in Indiana during the one week in several months I happen to leave. For those who have asked, I’ll be back on Monday definitely, and maybe Saturday or Sunday, depending on whether or not I go to Chicago. In short: you know me and concrete plans, so I’ll see you when I see you.

I sat down here in the library to get a strong wi-fi signal so I could upload pictures I took last night and as I was checking Penny Arcade (a tri-weekly staple of life), an old lady walked by and paused to express amusement that I was reading a comic strip on the internet. Imagine that- humor has endured well after the twilight of the rotary phone. Her grandson rolled his eyes and ushered her on to the books, most likely concious of the sort of humor that can be found in webcomics.

The harmonica class was a strange sort of fun. The instructor used the time to painstakingly explain the scale we were to practice, as well as several other topics. I'd summarize them here, but playing my new harmonica has been an exercise in oxygen depravation.

I took a walk last night and took some pictures with my door lens. I also stood for a while under the trees at dusk and watched the bats fly by overhead and in some cases right past me at close range.



































































After spending most of my life far removed from anything nautical, I felt compelled to photograph the heck out of the lake and the boats, as these things only exist to me in Tom Waits songs. For all I know, the Edmund Fitzgerald is sitting at the bottom of this lake next to the Lusitania and a giant kracken. I'd totally believe that if someone told me it was true.

After a drive across the intrusively placed state of Ohio, I am currently sitting in a preposterously quaint hotel on the grounds of Chautauqua (shuh-TAW-kwah), a town devoted to arts and humanities of every stripe. My initial impression is it’s kind of like Austin, TX for the black-socks-with-shorts crowd. The main parking lot has a handicap section the nearly the size of Fenway’s outfield, if that tells you anything. I’ll be here for a week with my mom and brother, going to art galleries and attending seminars that look interesting. Notable enough to plan ahead for are a series of classes to learn the harmonica and a basic watercolor class. I never learned watercolor properly, but I’ve messed around with ink washes and gouache. As for the harmonica, I think we’re doing it just because we can.

Being here is a bit like scuba diving while dependent on a tank of oxygen. I’m cut off from my natural environment; and iron lung made of PS2 games, high-end Adobe products, and at least three months of comic books within arm’s reach at almost all times. For life support, I have my iPod (currently playing Velvet Underground); Mom’s DS with Mario Kart, Advance Wars, Brain Age, and some kind of surgery game I have to try at some point; Mom’s laptop with a spotty wi-fi signal from somewhere nearby; and the vague prospect of a comic shop in a town nearby where I can purchase 52 on Wednesday. I also have a few books along, and I plan to work on school-related things too.

Blogger currently is sort of loading as of this sentence, but a while ago I got Wikipedia to load to look up the Spanish-American war for an aborted old-people joke- just assume it would be funny if you knew what I was talking about. Hopefully this will post correctly. I should be able to upload photos of this place when I’m in better proximity to the library. For now, you’ll have to take my word for it that the room we’re staying in is floor-to-ceiling floral print. The flowers outnumber the resident population of Monaco.

Kal-L, I believe.
One of the Medici, probably. I don't remember. Michael and I saw this in Chicago.
If you don't know Yoda, don't read this blog.
Thanks to Michelle, I have two pleasant looking monkies.
One of Gerry's old Zorro comics.

I saw an idea for cheap fisheye photography on the internet last week, and on a trip to wallyworld I decided to test this method. A one-way peep hole with the inside end removed makes for a cheap way to deform a subject. I made a stand for the lens with green floral wire, a cheap and versatile material I discovered in undergrad when my friends used it for sculpy clay armature understructure. The original faq I found has comments and links to other methods of mounting the lens to the camera. If I can find a cheap lenscap or filter, I'll try to make a mount for it. The images are all orange due to the light in my apartment, and PS couldn't do much to change the saturated orange.

In other news, it's good to be a comic geek right now. The last panel of Astonishing X-men #15 made me (quite literally) jump out of bed and dance around for what it referenced, and hopefully everybody else who reads this issue will get the meaning. Gerry and I purchased our advance tickets for the first showing of Superman Returns next week, so we're all ready to go.

This week saw the similarly abrupt arrival and exeunt of a small orange cat at Gerry's apartment. From what I gather, Monday evening three excitable undergrads presented him with a year-old cat wrapped in a light blue sweater and a smattering of cat supplies purchased so recently the receipt ink was scarcely dry. Essentially, an all-in-one cat care kit, presented with the sincere hope that said cat might live with Gerry. Gerry, being the probable exclusive caregiver, was incredulous to the idea, though the girls made promises to stop by often to help with care and feeding of the feline presently hiding under the bed for lack of a say in the matter. If there is a common factor to any of Gerry's few questionable decisions, it is my consort, so he called me to come see the cat. They had coaxed it back to the couch when I arrived, where it was shedding by the bale from the stress of being lugged around campus by such an excitable gaggle, all the while quietly praising the management of their apartment complex for a rule against cats. Yadda yadda, Gerry got a cat. Ever wonder what happens when you introduce an unpredictable element into a controlled environment? Gerry's expression while watching the cat was often that of a Swiss engineer surveying a room full of children fingerpainting- open befuddlement at the random behaviors and quiet amusement. I got to play the role of the cool uncle who only shows up long enough to spoil the cat rotten with attention, never once having to put up with the nighttime quirks when the cat couldn't sleep. The aforementioned girls put up fliers in the village and the owner claimed him, confirming his gender for us. Though they were grateful, they failed to offer any recompense for the expenses of boarding a cat. The term "schmucks" has been suggested more than once. Curiously, the cat is missed. Of course I miss the little bugger, because I didn't do much to care for him aside from checking in once and helping with some basic cat knowledge gained from caring for June at USF. Gerry freely admits to being attached to the cat, having tentatively dubbed him "Streaky" after Supergirl's cat circa 1960. This was a good little cat- he sat on our laps and greeted people like a dog.

I just saw Everthus the Deadbeats play an outdoor show- good stuff as always. They travel with a rubbermaid bin full of various noise makers that the crowd can play along with, and one stalwart fan always shows up with a skillet and spoon. The act before them was one guy dressed in black with a cape and large sunglasses. He sang along with some sort of old background music CD and danced around. It was funny, then annoying, then ultimately cool. At one point he danced out to the middle of the road to dance in front of an alpha-male stereotype driving a convertible. The guy looked pretty confused, as most people would, and the crowd loved it. The Belle Ends were conspicuously absent, as this was supposed to be their big comeback show.

Those of you who are in or near Muncie ought to plan to head down to Villiage Green Records in the villiage next Friday, June 9th at 6PM. Everthus the Deadbeats will be playing a CD realease show with The Belle Ends. All-ages, so tall people won't have any trouble seeing over the crowd.

I thought about reviewing The Da Vinci Code and X-Men here, but I wasn't particularly blown away by either. Da Vinci Code follows a pretty standard formula for the sake of having a plot, which often gets in the way of the more interesting parts about architecture and symbolism. I would rather see a re-edit with most of the plot crap removed, save for Sir Ian McKellen's scenes. Most expository dialogue is accompanied by short vignettes of historic events. Someone mentions the crusades, and suddenly a huge, lavish depiction of the crusades comes up to remind the audience what it probably looked like. While I normally love big fx shots, I thought these scenes were tedious and tacked on to keep the average person's attention until the next time someone pointed a gun at someone else. Yes, academics pack heat in this movie. Are Ivy league tenured faculty normally strapped when travelling abroad? I mean, aside from Indiana Jones, whose movies are easily comparable and superior to this movie, as they can take an absurd premise and actually have fun with it. No such fun is found in this movie, not even in the foundation of the Louvre, a building that has been dug up and remodeled so many times in the last thousand years or so one wonders how there could be any mystery left in it.

X-Men wasn't really great, or terrible, which is probably the worst way to tackle the Dark Phoenix story, perhaps the most signifigant story in the Marvel U. I really don't have much to say about it, except that too many characters and no real plot was the reason I stopped reading X-Men when I was 15. The film effectively sinks the franchise, despite the box office gross, which is just as well. I'm ready for Superman Returns.

Star Wars Unaltered!
It's about bloody time! The special editions were a cool exercise in CGI compositing, and it was great to see the trilogy on the big screen (best valentines day date ever, back in the day), but I strongly prefer the original trilogy as it first appeared. The added elements were mostly just distracting, and now everything that blows up in the SW universe has that weird ring effect. Also, the second image in the article clearly shows Han shooting Greedo because he had it coming, not in self-defense because Greedo couldn't draw a bead on a seated target over the space of a table. For that, I'd like to thank Kevin Smith, who gave us the phrase "that's the worst idea since Greedo shoots first." Gerry said this would never happen. :)

Thanks to Michael for the link.

There should be a restaurant here.

True to personal form, I took an academically ill-advised trip on the eve of finals this past weekend. In undergrad I saw the Smashing Pumpkins at the end of two semesters, studying in the car. This time I visited my brother at Kenyon College to go to the senior send-off weekend celebration. The headline act was Talib Kweli (in a rare flyover state performance), and a slew of Kenyon bands. I was fortunate to see Potato Famine in their last performance together. It was a great set- Fields of Athenry, one by Flogging Molly, and a great Irish style version of Freebird as a finale; all complete with two violins and a flute player. Talib Kweli was great too- The songs I really wanted to hear, Old School, Roll Off Me, and Get By were great. It was funny, though, because the jubilant crowd was nearly all academic geeks and trust fund hippies, and nearly all white.

I also got to meet Michael's friends, eat at the deli, and get schooled at Super Smash Brothers- karmic retribution for the DS Halo parties, I guess. I also lost a milk drinking race to Michael's roommate that had warranted a detour to a second dining hall after brunch. It wasn't even close. I had a little more than half done when I heard his cup hit the table- "like pouring it down the sink."

All in all, a fun weekend. I have finals to finish this week and end of year parties to attend. Charlie Don't Surf is playing at the Heorot with some band from Italy tonight, and tomorrow Tool has a new CD out. All this and Free Comic Day next Saturday? I'll be busier than a labradoodle watching tennis.

This is a post about comic books, so if you skip it, I won't blame you.

This was originally an e-mail rant about big events in comic books I sent Gerry. It's long enough that I decided to put it here too.

I’ve seen Marvel fall into this pattern before, where they keep trying to one-up themselves by building event on top of event. I think the staff gets locked into that because they feel like they’re pushing themselves creatively when they upset the status quo. Also, crossovers inflate sales, which keeps the executives happy. This is unfortunate because (we keep saying this!) the major strength at Marvel is the individual books. Some of their best stuff is coming from minds like Whedon, Way, and Brubaker- all more or less standalone storylines. Also, the reason people like Bendis is because of his work on Ultimate Spider-Man and Alias- two staunchly continuity-independent books. I think they got lucky in the past with the first Secret War, the Dark Phoenix saga, and a few other big events, and they’re still trying to create their “Crisis”- the big continuity shattering event to define everything for years to come.

The problem is, they either don’t do enough to resonate throughout the universe (any X-book crossover circa 95), or they go nuts and have to backpedal just to get all their writers and fans on the same page (Onslaught, Heroes Reborn, House of M). Either way, nothing as of yet has really stuck. I think this may be because the Marvel Universe is organized well enough that they don’t need to reboot the universe like DC. The only real chaos for Marvel comes from their big events, whereas DC uses events to simplify things. And the universe chugs along.

To what end, though? A big event will generate sales among the fanboys who know enough to keep it all straight, but the highly coveted new reader will skip it entirely, and the casual reader in Borders may only flip through it if the cover looks good. If I was to act as Virgil to a new reader, I would dissuade them from reading Crisis or Civil War until the trades come out, and start them on Captain America and Astonishing X-men. Or Alias, or Ultimate Spider-Man, or a slew of other self-contained comics with easily accessible characters.

Speaking of comics, Infinite Crisis wraps up this week with #7 and the largest hero-villain battle ever, no hyperbole. The Villains United special this week set it all up, with nearly every hero and villain ending up in Metropolis after a worldwide prison break. Considering how free Geoff Johns has been with killing off characters in this series, and considering that Doomsday, Bane, Solomon Grundy, and a noticably more psychotic than usual Bizarro are all there, the issue is going to be incredible.


Go watch C for Cookie. You'll be glad you did.

I am basically familiar with the Protestant work ethic, but where in this philosophy does it say that labor must be performed at 9:45 in the morning? This morning I had just rolled out of bed and commenced to relieving myself when I heard a knock at the door, followed by the door opening and the heralding of a maintenance man come to paint my water heater closet. I had worked out with the landlady that the guy could come today. I should note that we spoke on the phone at 2:00 in the afternoon on Monday, when this sounded sensible. I ended up getting dressed in the kitchen and scurrying out the door. Presently, the fellow is whitewashing my WC where the leaking water left spots on the wall. His hat did not suggest fealty to Jefferson Davis like the last guy, which I appreciate. He had better not touch my comics.

In other news, the Google Blog just announced the release of a free 3-D app, Google Sketch-Up. It doesn't appear to do much, so I'm excited to see what I can do with it. Simple open-ended apps are great for creativity sometimes. Also, there's a pretty strong rumor that Google will be making a free word processor online soon- basically MS Word in a web browser for free.

The Smashing Pumpkins website is back up after being down for a few years. There's also a new SP guitar book on Amazon, so I hope my neighbors don't mind hearing the opening riff from the song Siva for days on end this summer.