Year-end “top X” lists drive me a little crazy. (I've been seeing a lot of them because every video game blog or site appears to be contractually obligated to crank dozens of them out this time of year.) So I'm not actually posting my “year-end” media as any kind of a “top 7-9 games of the year” list. I do, however, find myself wanting to note ( Read more... )

I've lived here for 2.5 years. In winter terms, that's something like 5 winters. In this time, I have not purchased a warm winter coat. Today is the day.

( Initial thoughts )

Last night I dreamt that I was trapped on a decrepit resort island with friends and coworkers (a rotating cast, really). There was something creepy about the island (more Lost than Gilligan's), and we decided we needed to chart it to find a way off. We divided into groups to explore in different directions, but there was the question of how to ( Read more... )

I'm reading Macbeth for the first time. It's always fun to have first reactions on works like this whose cultural legacy is more familiar than the source material ( Read more... )

Laura has already posted about our dinner, saving me the trouble of commemorating a lovely meal that involved a shit-lot of cheese. (At the end I was just adding crumbled Gorgonzola to everything to see what it would be like. Result: DELICIOUS IN EVERY CASE ( Read more... )

I'm watching Batman: The Movie. A few things of note:

• Adam West is cute
• The movie, while not in other respects mind-blowingly awesome, does feature a sinister plot to use Joker's jack-in-the-box trap to launch Batman out of window into the sea where he'll land in Penguin's octopus, which has been packed with explosives. (This plot element was ( Read more... )

I was flummoxed this morning when I read this NYT article on the Justice Department's rationale for certain types of interrogation when they're used to prevent terrorist attacks.While the Geneva Conventions prohibit “outrages upon personal dignity,” a letter sent by the Justice Department to Congress on March 5 makes clear that the administration ( Read more... )

Hives are fascinating. They're not there until the skin is irritated. Then once it's irritated, it becomes inflamed and itches. If you scratch it, the welt spreads. The more you scratch, the more you have hives.

I've experimentally scratched an X over my chest with my fingernail. If this works, I've totally got entertainment for the day.

Or: SERIOUSLY GO SEE YOUR DENTIST RIGHT NOW GUYSSo I had a dental appointment about two weeks ago. I noted that I had a sort of strange infection-like-thing at the root of tooth I'd had work on almost a decade ago. (A root canal.) He referred me to an endodontist whom I went to see today ( Read more... )

The NYT has an article on a recent municipal scandal in Washington D.C.. Apparently, tax officials have been cutting themselves refund checks totaling to more than $30 million. Okay, fine. Living in Chicago has made me fairly sanguine about the prospect of corrupt civic officials ( Read more... )