At my work, people buy bagels when it’s someone’s birthday. An odd way to celebrate, but people generally go for it.
At about mid-morning I decided I’d go grab one, only to discover that my favorite, and arguably best flavor - “cinnamon cruncher” (my name) – was all gone. I wasn’t surprised, since they only buy like 2 or 3 of them (for a 30-person office), and that led to the following IM exchange (I’m in red):
I love Mutts, but because I don’t enjoy visiting a full web page for one single comic, I never read it; Mutts doesn’t have an RSS feed.
So what’d I do? I created an RSS feed for Mutts.
The same restrictions apply:
Want to subscribe to this sick RSS feed? Click here!
Firebug uses different colors to highlight different element attributes (i.e. width, margin and padding), but there is no documentation on the Firebug site that allows you to interpret these colors, so I’ve posted them below.
Firebug color key
Sugarcube is a great song by the noise-rock band Yo La Tengo.
The lyrics are below (reprinted from songmeanings.net), followed by my interpretation.
Lyrics
whatever you want from me
whatever you want I’ll do
try to squeeze a drop of blood
from a sugarcubetry to be more assured
try to be more right there
try to be less uptight
try to be more aware
whatever you want from me
is what I want to do for you
sweeter than a drop of blood
from a sugarcubeand though I like to act the part of being tough
I crumble like a sugarcube
for youwhatever you want from me
whatever you want I’ll do
and I will trywhatever you want from me
whatever you want I’ll do
try to squeeze a drop of blood
squeeze a drop of blood from a sugarcube
Interpretation
This song is an anthem of dependence; this guy would rather change everything about himself than lose his mate. He’d even try to do the impossible (”squeeze a drop of blood from a sugarcube”).
This is not a song about a person bettering themselves; this is a desperate plea. The proof is in the following two lines:
“Whatever you want from me /
is what I want to do for you”
I can’t deny the violent imagery of squeezing blood out of someone he considers so “sweet.” This is the inherent problem with trying to please someone: deep down, you violently resent feeling like you have to please them, lest your only perceived source of happiness be taken from you.
You can control who is currently following you on Twitter without having to always have your updates protected. Here’s how:
I went on Craiglist looking for some seeds and birdfeeds, in preparation for Springtime, and I ran into some problems:
This is where my quest ended. Jim was most unhelpful.
GTA 4 is a long, long… long game. Is it fun? A little. There’s a lot of tedium, and somehow the spark that made the last games in the series such inimitable experiences is gone.
In at least a couple of ways, GTA 4 is too big of a game. The map is too big, and the intentions are too big.
Too quickly did I start to tire of having to drive to all the different places in order to get missions, and then drive to the actual missions. About 1/3 of the way through the game, I started using taxis to get places almost exclusively. And… isn’t the heart of this game supposed to be driving around in a giant playground? Aren’t I supposed to get distracted from missions and just fuck around for 45 minutes for no reason? Somehow, none of that is fun in this iteration. This was just one giant mission slog ’til the end.
I was really excited that I’d finally get to ride around subways — I was really excited to get some small whiff of the excitement of being in the actual New York City. At first, I thought my hopes were simply too lofty, but now I realize this game just isn’t that fun. I used the train system probably twice total. What’s the point? Between taxis and cars, why the hell would I use the subway system?
And what good is a huge world if almost every square inch of it is identical? GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas all had areas with very different feels and textures to them. Remember how in San Andreas, you could be in the ghetto, or go up into the Hollywood hills, or go drive out into the boondocks? None of that variance of experience exists on GTA 4. Here, no matter what island you’re on, every square block is exactly the same. With the exception of hills and a few annoying water-based missions, the entirety of GTA 4’s world is interchangeable: city blocks, light poles, people, and way too many police officers.
And forget about Central Park; you’ll spend the end of one mission here, and that’s it. There’s no reason for it to exist.
GTA 4 also loses the cop-versus-player dynamic, as well. Here the cops feel almost like an afterthought; they’re annoying, predictable, and are only brought in to increase the difficulty of missions.
And once you’ve tired of the missions - the endless whack, chase, and escort jobs you have to pull for endless, anonymous mobsters - you can spend some time with the most utterly pointless and tedious feature in any game I’ve played recently: relationships.
In GTA 4, you can befriend people and date people (just women, as far as I can tell, except for one mission). These people will call you up from time to time and ask you to hang out, doing things like getting drunk (which is actually a great simulation of inebriation — so good, in fact, that I think they should make kids do it in driving school), playing darts, and eating food. When you do this, they will like you more (like in The Sims), and if you do this a lot of times, you’ll get a modest benefit, like cheap guns and not-always-successful cop wanted-level reductions. This might be a fine side-benefit if it were semi-hidden and didn’t take the incredible time investment required for what is basically a chore that gets you something you don’t really need, but GTA 4 inundates you with this relationship crap. The game makes a point of nagging you about various relationships right after you’ve begun a mission, so you’re forced to tell the person “no” and incur negative repercussions on this relationship. Why the fuck did they do this? What is the purpose of putting you in a fake moral quandary? Maybe the GT in GTA stands for Guilt Trip now.
And there’s no more powerful symbol for how flawed this game is than how awful driving is. I don’t know for the life of me why they changed the driving system so substantially, but they did. It’s like every car weighs 4 tons and has soap all over the tires. Even after playing for nearly forty hours and having the best cars in the game, I still never got the hang of power sliding — even though I did it many times every time I drove a car.
In conclusion, I have a lot of gripes with this game, but I don’t think they necessarily add up to the sour taste GTA 4 leaves in my mouth. This game just doesn’t feel as good as GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas. I’m not totally sure why. I do know that the whole time I played this, I pined for Vice City. I pined for the lush, colorful environments; I pined for the ability to drive down the beautiful, art deco-clad beachside strip. But most of all, I pined for the transcendent fun (really, almost ecstacy!) the past GTA games have provided. Don’t believe the hype: This one’s a heart crushing dud.
Score: 2/5
Verdict: Not worth playing
If you have the Faceboxes, here’s a way to annoy someone with only using one word (and one punctuation mark):
If you want to watch a movie whose main character (played by inveterate overactor Ellen Page) is so unlikable that you actually want the pedophile antagonist to break loose and kill her, then you’ll really love Hard Candy.
Score: 0/5
Verdict: Not worth watching
