Added Frictionless Insight because I’d meant to for a long time and didn’t get around to it, Neil Gaiman because I realized I should have a long time ago, and Fail Math because I hadn’t heard of them at all before and then I read their Half-Life 2 and Deus Ex 2 reviews and went Holy Shit This Rocks and decided I needed to read it more often.

Rearranged some other sites in the list at left. For once, didn’t take any off. This is for me more than it is for you.

Right while I’m watching Law & Order reruns on TNT, I hear about this.

Just finished leeching The Beastles off of DJ BC. Thanks Spike for the plug.

I took some pictures of my workplace to show my family. They’ll probably stay on my CF cards for a while, as I am lazy and I’m not sure I want the whole Internet to know where I work. Photoshopping is not in my nature, not yet.

Gave a Minibosses live CD as a white elephant gift. One cousin seemed horrified when I explained to her what it was, but another traded it off gratefully.

My grandpa seemed to like his “Army” sweatshirt that I got him for Christmas, though I chickened out on asking him more about his WWII experiences. He seemed in better spirits and health than he has been, but he’s still as lonely and resigned to his inevitable fate as ever. Can’t help thinking I missed my last chance.

So, back to work and back to sleeping on my old crummy mattress. Next week will officially be “after the holidays,” so hopefully there will be more interesting things happening to me, job-wise.

Or at least I hope I will be on Friday. Planning on it, anyway. We’ll see whether the weather cooperates, and whether American Eagle loses my luggage for a week like they did last Christmas. I’m in Texas, but I’m from Kansas, and that’s where most of my family lives. So that’s where I’m going, and I haven’t seen most of them since my sister’s wedding in June.

Checklist for what I’ll need:

• Coat. It has pockets, so I’ll stash lots of stuff in it. Most of the gifts I’m giving are gift cards, which fit nicely in the pockets and don’t require wrapping. (Which I can’t do before my flight, else the Airport Gestapo will just rip them open.) When I get ready to go through the security gate, I’ll just take it off and let it run through the X-ray machine. They’ll probably still make me take my shoes off.

• Gameboy pack. My sister-in-law gave me this last Christmas to go with my SP. It looks like a mini-backpack and came with a hiking carabiner that I can clip to my belt. Something else I can stash stuff in, and let it run through security separately. Looks goofy, but I do anyway.
• Ticket printout. Priceline says this is now required by law at checkin to prove I’m not a terrist.
• Keychain drive update. Don’t know if I’ll have time to write any on break, but I still feel like I’m shirking if I’m not at least prepared to write anywhere there’s a computer.
• All gifts. No guarantee they’ll make it to Kansas the same time I do, but like the writing, I need to at least make the effort to absolve myself of blame.
• Gratitude. That I have a family who, unlike so many products of familial dysfunction I’ve met over the Internet and otherwise, will be glad to see me and whom I don’t dread seeing.

Maybe that last one is something you have to get old to remember on Christmas. But then you get old, and you forget anyway.

Happy Pleasebuyourcrappyghettoexplodingcellphones to you, too.

Trailer here, Comicon trailer here. Co-directed by Miller and Robert Rodriguez, using Rodriguez’s production company, Troublemaker Studios.

Miller is one of the big heroes of comic books, and I admit I haven’t read this series. But it’s got a killer ensemble cast, and it could be awesome. Lots of comic book movie projects in the works these days — for a reason.

Someone flipped me the bird on the road today. I was ahead of him in a busy intersection that apparently didn’t move fast enough, and left the ass end of his giant extended-cab monster truck in the intersection. He busted his ass around me, flipped me off, then zipped into the space left by several cars in front of me.

I just laughed. It must suck having that small a penis.

Another week without much to add. I’m currently way behind on my obligations to the Lazarus project, but patience (and help recruiting other writers) sometimes pays. Not planning to stretch it too thin, and I might have my writing mojo working again. Lately I’ve been (supposedly) in demand for paying writing work from no less than three different agencies on both coasts plus Austin. But none of it’s started yet, and as such it’s not worth much either as a boast or an excuse.

So it’ll be another weekend spent indoors again. Thankfully my Christmas shopping’s done.

Try working at a newspaper. I’ve been fortunate enough to work at papers that are reasonably financially sound business operations, but not everyone that I might consider colleagues in the field are so lucky.

Take, for instance, Clark Kent and Lois Lane.

Bungie, the absolute masters of game community, have done it again.

Watch out, ladies, these guys play Halo 2. Thanks Ubiq.

Guess what’s in my fridge right now.

Soy Nog. It’s actually better than I expected, and I didn’t expect much. The regular soy-milk aftertaste is cut by the nog flavor, and it isn’t so rich. Though I’ve also had great luck with a nog made from vanilla pudding mix, skim milk and rum extract.

What happens when overpaid young professionals and disaffected upper-crust trust-fund kids from Dallas decide they want to become video game developers? Some have been joining the Guildhall, the 18-month non-degree program at Southern Methodist University, which for those not in Texas can just as well be thought of as the most exclusive and expensive place for anyone to get what might be called an “education” in Texas. (Just don’t ask about Division I football.)

The Dallas Observer did their usual treatment, not unlike what they did for Ion Storm five years ago or SubstanceTV three years ago. They do their best to answer what I’ve been asking in stage whispers at game industry conventions for about two years now: Why the hell would anyone want to pay $32,000 for a non-degree program about how to make video games? Does anyone from this craphole actually get a job?

Actually, they don’t answer that last question. They just answer why people join the program in the first place, and none of them make any goddamned sense to me (one is some executive disappointed with the lack of intellectual challenge in his job, one’s a man of color disappointed with the way black people are represented in video games, everyone else is just disappointed.) And what do they learn there? From what I gather, it’s just the lessons of the industry, that the projects have to be done yesterday, they’re rarely what you set out to accomplish and in the end you just have to be in love with the process if you want to be a “dev.”

Some people should learn to save their money and just join a mod project. Or join a seminary, if they like poverty that much.