Gism Butter

This blog becomes increasingly irrelevant the more other people want me to blog for them. I have only so much brain I can encode into any given place. So, I’ll just post some pretty pictures here.

Naturally, you came here first for your uninformed, poorly devised economic solutions. Until now, I’ve avoided talking about the economy, beyond calling a depression a depression. Dumbass. But I do currently desire to pontificate on something I know nothing about. Money.
Earlier, with a large bit of butter on my chest, I was inclined to watch This. I am deeply pissed, now. I’m not entirely sure that everything this William K. Black fellow says is true, but he is certainly reputable. And incendiary.

Based upon this interview, I whole heartedly agree with this gentleman. I think he has the answers we are looking for. And he also seems to be into the idea of stringing up the fat cats. Whatever that actually means. I’m in favor of any plan that gets me a house.

The figure of the tyrant-monster is known to the mythologies, folk traditions, legends, and even nightmares, of the world; and his characteristics are everywhere essentially the same. He is the hoarder of the general benefit. He is the monster avid for the greedy rights of “my and mine.” The havoc wrought by him is described in mythology and fain’ tale as being universal throughout his domain. This may be no more than his household, his own tortured psyche, or the lives that he blights with the touch of his friendship and assistance; or it may amount to the extent of his civilization. The inflated ego of the tyrant is a curse to himself and his world—no matter how his affairs may seem to prosper. Self-terrorized, fear-haunted, alert at every hand to meet and battle back the anticipated aggressions of his environment, which are primarily the reflections of the uncontrollable impulses to acquisition within himself, the giant of self-achieved independence is the world’s messenger of disaster, even though, in his mind, he may entertain himself with humane intentions. Wherever he sets his hand there is a cry (if not from the housetops, then- more miserably—within every heart): a cry for the redeeming hero, the carrier of the shining blade, whose blow, whose touch, whose existence, will liberate the land.

This was laying around in my drafts folder. It’s by Campbell. It’s also obliquely about the ACCRC, though it’s now gone.

I’ve been depressed all year. Every day, another print publication vanishes. They’re not moving online. They’re not morphing into a video program, or changing over into a [ick!] podcast. They’re dying. Or they’re limping through irrelevance in some sickly half-shapen zombie form online or inside another dying magazine. So far this year, at least one magazine or newspaper has ceased publication every single day. Electronic Gaming Monthly. Dr. Dobbs Journal. Redmond Developer News. Hallmark Magazine. RCR Wireless News. Arena. Penthouse? DID I JUST LINK THE WEEKLY WORLD NEWS AS A REPUTABLE SOURCE?

What’s the world coming to? Not that it’s surprising. We all knew it was doomed. Reporters saw the train leaving the station, and waved goodbye. “The Web doesn’t pay enough yet,” we’d say. “It’ll even out slowly over the next dozen years. Then, by 2050, there won’t be any more print.”

How completely wrong we all were. Print has been dead for six years. Maybe ten. It just didn’t know it. And 2009 in the reckoning. I now believe that print as a business will be dead in the next year. Maybe books survive. Maybe not. Magazines don’t. Newspapers don’t. Unless it’s subsidized outright, it’s dead.

And now that it’s dying, reporters are left out in the cold. They can’t get jobs online: they don’t pay! And some schmuck in Alabama is happy to write that piece for free! They can’t find jobs at other magazines because they’re all dying too! All around me, I see out of work editors and reporters. Good people! They’re moving in with their mothers and fathers. But the parents are broke too! Worse than the kids!

I could go on. But to say the least, I am scared to death. There is no money in writing about life. In writing about people. My editors drilled into me, over a dozen years of hard-nosed newspaper-style years of working. “People like to read about people!” They don’t want to hear grain prices are down, I was told, they want to know how Steve, the farmer feels about his grain not selling!

But now Steve has a fucking blog. He doesn’t need me! He doesn’t need the grain! He just plays Fallout 3 all day and vegetates on his couch while the empty row homes–on what was once his farm land–rot.

What’s the answer? Hell if I know! It’s not being rich, as the dood at The Week said. Cause I have to write. And, frankly, finishing my novel doesn’t exactly sound like a profitable alternative!

And to add insult to injury, these vanishing sites are taking my clips with them. I can’t paste links to my best stuff in my pitch emails anymore! I have to mirror the stuff on my own site, which looks shady. GameTap no longer makes my stories available. I could post my raw originals, but that’s not got the same credibility. I wanted to show someone my piece on the 25th anniversary of the C64. I could not. I don’t think I’ll get that story with Rolling Stone now. Dammit!

I guess I’ll just save my money and hope for the best. And count the ways my former employers have changed over the years.

Cox News (No longer seems to have a Web news feed. Used to be like the AP)
The Atlanta Journal Constitution (site redesigned, all old content dumped)
The Austin American Statesman (Never posted paper stories online, anyway)
The East Bay Express (Left New Times Holdings/Village Voice media, now an independent weekly. Still good!)
Gamespot (Nothing anymore. Probably better that way.)
MobilePC Magazine (I guess that’s it now. Crashed and burned print-side a few years back.)
SecurityFocus.com (God bless them! Same URL after almost 7 years!)
BusinessWeek Online (No old stuff anymore…)
Information Security Magazine (Took me a while, but I found one. They moved them, but they have all mag articles online! Nice!)
Gizmodo.com (I think the url changed, but still!)
Rotten.com
Wired Magazine (Mag stories online online from recent issues)
Computer Games Magazine (Headless Zombie. The first PC game mag to die.)
Make Magazine (Solid link structure)
Gamasutra.com (Links changed? Not sure. Still there!)
Game Developer magazine (They sell PDFs of old issues. Nov 2004 anyone?)
MacAddict Magazine (Now Mac Life)
MacHome Journal (Dead)
Computer Gaming World (After 27 years as the oldest continuously published digital gaming magazine on Earth, and a name change to Games for Windows… CGW is dead.)
MacDirectory (Still there!)
GameTap (No link. They had an editorial site. It’s gone now.)
Total PC Gamer (British, maybe still going?)

Long list….

I’m going to go work on my bomb shelter.

See Jeff Green for reference.

The A’s aren’t moving to Fremont! Hurrah!

I am ashamed to say that the wife and I watch a bit of VH1 reality TV. Tonight, we caught the first episode of I Love Money 2, a show where… ahem… People who who have been on reality shows where they competitively sought the affections of celebrities, and people who have been on reality shows where they have competitively sought the affections of people who who have been on reality shows where they competitively sought the affections of celebrities compete for $250,000.

It’s very confusing. But basically, people who had their 15 minutes of fame already [or maybe twice, or even thrice!] are tortured in Mexico for our pleasure. the only reason I mention all of this is because tonight, in the first episode of “I Love Money 2,” there existed a perfect recreation of one of my favorite movies: The Magic Christian.

The contestants of this show were asked to grub around in a pool of sewage for gold coins.

Hunter begins Fear and Loathing with a quote: He who makes a beast of himself, rids himself of the pain of being a man. And therein is the paradox of humanity. The strange loop. to exist is to understand one’s own minuteness. to comprehend one’s own irrelevance. Even the biggest of men have hated the thought of death, or the concept of themselves being smaller than previous beings. And, in fact, we are all finite strange loops. Perhaps to be repeated for all eternity, but still we end. To be human is to understand one’s own humanity.

Gotta say, Mad props to Cruise Elroy for charting out the genesis of Mother 3’s music. Good stuff! There’s an awful lot going on in the sound track to this Japan-only Nintendo Role Playing Game. It’s the sequel to Earthbound, which was a sequel to Mother, for NES.

All Photos by my wife, V.

Mayor Ron “Ronnie D” Dellums

Oscar Grant’s Aunt

Looking Out From City Hall