Miss Anthropy

Media Studies

Henry Jenkins:
-How Fictional Story Worlds Influence Real World Politics

Gaming

Wired GameLife:
-Hands On: Mass Effect 2, The Ultimate Do-Over

Kotaku:
-These are the most adorable Final Fantasy cosplayers ever!
-Just How Straight are FFXIII's First Five~Six Hours?
-First Heavy Rain Chronicles Episode is Yours Free (If You Pre-order)
-High Moon Clears Up All This Gears of War Talk About Transformers
-New NieR Trailer Will Make You Its Bitch
-Mass Effect 3 Will End Story Arc

Film

Gizmodo:
-Avatar Review: Yes, It Changed Everything After All
-It's Time for Us to Fight Back Against Movie Theater Talkers

io9:
-How Many Paid Vacation Days Would You Get If You Worked at Cyberdyne?
-When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like Avatar?

Writing

Tribal Writer (via lady_ganesh):
-why you need to write like a bad girl

Music

Kotaku:
-Final Fantasy (the Band) Has a New, Less Trademark Infringing Name

Curios

Gizmodo:
-The First Picture of a Lake Outside Earth
-10 Strange Gadget Situations Caught on Camera

Boing Boing:
-What "Kills 99.9% of germs" really means
-Video is the Paint: a guest art-dispatch from Kristen Philipkoski
-Know Your Meme: Om Nom Nom

io9:
-If Websites Were Nations, Digg and Reddit Would Go to War
-How Close Are We to Colonizing Space?
-When Stars Orbit Black Holes
-Ten Science Stories That Changed Our Decade

What the Hell

Boing Boing:
-Bug powder causes male bedbugs to stab each other to death with their penises

FAIL

Kotaku:
-Heavy Rain's "progressive" approach to character identity and mature storytelling completely undercuts itself by having its female protagonist appear as a Playboy nude and I am not even kidding.

I know for sure now that I have been in this city too long, seeing as I can no longer tell the difference between serious violence and simple alpha male penis games from the frat next door, and, I find, I don't even care anymore.

Their backyard looks like a tornado hit it. Apparently they were having something between a gang brawl and a smash party. A lot of broken glass. I'm damn sure some people got hurt.

There's something very disturbing about frats, and I don't mean in that "random acts of violence" Animal House way. There's just something positively subhuman about going to school on daddy's money, with daddy's Corvette that he bought you, and devoting 100% of your time to destroying shit and playing the same five techno remixes of stupid 90s songs. Not only is your lizard brain clearly taking over, but someone --a lot of someones-- have allowed it and even encouraged it to happen.

...

I'm reading Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End for SF class. In this future world, Terry Pratchett apparently never contracted Alzheimer's, and owns most of Scotland. They turned the UCSD central library into a VR simulation of the one at Unseen University because the chief librarian (not an Orangutan, I assume) is a fan. It makes me a little depressed to read about some of this --futures that will never be and so forth-- but I do think Vinge has it right that one day fandom will take over the whole goddamn world.

But where is Gibson in this story? I really must know.

Watch for this.

I just got hit with it myself. Fortunately, the guy on the other end was amicable and we were able to determine it was all some sort of mistake, but Jesus, imagine if I had gotten someone less thoughtful.

Low down: if you are on AIM and you update your eljay, this bot will connect you with someone else who has just done the same, beginning with a bogus message. They may also be incendiary: the one I got read "I believe, good sir, that you misspelled 'nigger' in your recent post". Hilarity, I imagine, is intended to ensue for any third party, but it's nothing but a nuisance and potential nightmare for the rest of us.

Some typical iterations (this is not a complete list):
-TyrranicalSalmon
-DevourableSalmon
-ArmoredSalmon
-NoxiousSalmon
-TroubledSalmon
-ReanimatedSalmon
-NumerousSalmon
-ChivalrousSalmon
-SadisticSalmon
-CredulousSalmon
-GhastlySalmon
-NauseousSalmon
-SassySalmon
-PotentialSalmon
-BanalSalmon
-IntriguingSalmon
-DullardSalmon
-EfficientSalmon
-ClimacticSalmon
-HumaneSalmon
-ProtestingSalmon
-PompousSalmon
-DefacedSalmon
-NoteworthySalmon
-ConcealedSalmon
-PropheticSalmon
-SpurnedSalmon
-ZombifiedSalmon
-BetrayedSalmon
-AppliedSalmon
-CredibleSalmon
-WishfulSalmon
-WitheredSalmon
-MorbidSalmon
-ReflexiveSalmon
-RickAstleySalmon <--- ENVY!!
-RalliedSalmon
-TopologySalmon
-BarackSalmon

Just when I was feeling proud of the internet, it pulls stupid shit like this.

Also: themissinghat is a community for victims of this and other nasty bots. The earliest instance I've dredged up for the Salmonbot is this post, recorded on the 9th of this month. There are maybe a dozen or more other iterations logged in this group than what I've recorded here.

IF YOU ARE HIT WITH THIS BOT: The person on the other end has a username you cannot see, and they cannot see your real SN. To allay hostilities or confusion, IM them back politely, explain the bot, and point them to information pages like this one.

Update: It was all a social experiment! Yeah, this doesn't have "4chan asshole" written all over it....

I've had a little bit of a cold war going on with ants in my apartment for the past few months. I see one, I kill it. I see a few, I kill them. I could never figure out where they came from, so I didn't pursue it. Scouts in my territory are spy planes just begging to be shot down.

Well, they invaded this morning. It was my fault for leaving the empty take-out by my desk-- I noticed two ants crawling across my .hack game case and looked down to find a veritable swarm covering the take-out bag. There was a thick trail along the base of the computer desk, going along the baseboard behind my food cabinet and storage bin, around the main electrical socket, up the cabling to a hole in the ceiling. Bastards sure were taking the scenic route.

I took out every last piece of trash and sealed all the kitchenware in plastic bags. Then I sprayed Lysol. Everywhere. Unfortunately, it just made them scatter and seek out a new trail, including along the ceiling. I spent a good hour spraying, wiping away the corpses, squishing the errant workers (there were even some large males in there, though wingless... huh), but I just couldn't reach the ceiling ones, ended up inhaling and getting Lysol in my eyes more than hurting them. At wit's end, I decided to just buy some traps when I came back from costume-scouting that afternoon, but as I chucked my trash in the bin outside I told myself it just couldn't wait that long. I called upon the RA, who was remarkably at home, and asked if he had some spare traps.

"No, but we've got some pesticide."

"Gimme."

This isn't your average can of Raid, friends. This is the industrial-strength shit the RA uses on the lawn. Some small dogs couldn't survive a hit with this stuff.

I nuked the motherfuckers. I may die of poisoning now, or at least be nauseous for weeks, but I stopped those bastards cold. I have created an insect-sized nuclear winter, just for them.

I felt bad as I did it. I know, it's one of those trite unrealistic things you hear in stupid children's books, about sensitive girls who are loathe to hurt another creature. There was also the half-formed thought that they weren't behaving all that differently than Americans, what with all the coming in and eating everything with utter disregard for that ecological equilibrium we're taught so much about. But I pay for my territory, damn it. They can bother the Korean couple next door for all I care. They keep stealing my detergent anyway.

...Detergent. FUCK. I forgot to buy detergent while I was out.

BUNCHA. SAVAGES. IN. THIS. TOWN.

I came down today and someone had torn all my curry boxes out of the cupboard and spilled packages of oatmeal on top of them. Another cupboard had had its contents emptied directly onto the floor. Nothing missing from the fridge, surprisingly, but a LOT of trash in the eating area, two open containers of hookah flavour shit on the counter, beer bottle caps, and someone's keys and credit card on a table.

I knew I'd've felt like a thief if I'd taken the keys and credit card, even with the intent to put up signs. After all, there's every chance this was an innocent's stuff getting a practical joke played on him. But after cleaning up my cupboard items and going out on a scheduled lunch with Dave, when I came back the items were gone and I so wish I'd taken them. I'm sick of this reprehensible behaviour and the manager and RA that shrug and say 'nothing we can do' and a social context that can facilitate these kind of subhuman antics.

I never thought I'd miss my pretty-pretty-princess roommate.

~

Lunch with Dave was great, though. We talked about my grad school options and the waitress basically called us a pair of gluttons. Dave didn't let me see the check but I do hope he gave her a shitty tip. Look, I work in the service industry too-- I know most of your customers are despicable, but telling them that is just bad training.

Dave did tell me to just grow a spine and tell a particularly oppressive director that I need an assistant. Yes, even if said director is evil. If the options are to ask or let the entire art department flail and burn, the choice is pretty clear.

~

Dave remarked that they didn't have cool film school shirts when he went here. I think I know of a gift to get him sometime, then...

ETA: Oh god. I wasn't imagining it. Emily and Dan really are shooting in the same week. Orson Welles*, please send me a set builder!

*As an atheist, I pray to different gods. In this case, planet-eating space gods.

Warner Bros. president of production has decreed they will no longer greenlight films with female leads.

The comments are even more disgusting. Go on. Read them.

I swear to god, I'm moving to a country with state-subsidised cinema.

I am joining other considerate human beings in boycotting Warner films until these schmucks back down and make it up to us with a film called Ode to the Vagina or something. Much as it pains me, that likely means I won't be seeing Sweeny Todd. Well, we all have to make sacrifices.

On the other hand, if ever there were a time to condone piracy, it'd be this. Just saying.

*Corey Burton* "Those bitches!"

Ahem. Yeah, people have been stealing food from the fridge again. Cans of soda strewn around the dining hall, used wrappers, crumbs. One of my parfaits is gone, and they squished my bread. I can only imagine they didn't take my milk because it's soy.

They also left my eggs out on the counter, presumably since about midnight. None taken, but I guess the act of thieving tired them out so much they couldn't put the cartons back or, indeed, some poor person's frozen dinners that they left stacked on the tile.

Fuckers.

I went to talk to the RA and the building manager, who were sitting around on their asses, as is their favourite sport. They laughed. Nothing they could do. "Many people have minifridges," the manager said, shrugging. Uh, yeah, because trying to enforce any level of decency in your building is just so hard. I know-- why don't people buy their own hotplates and mini-ovens as well, and also their own portapotties? It's simpler than keeping the bathroom stocked with toilet paper. Very capitalist. Ayn Rand would approve.

I have a minifridge. It's where I keep my booze and leftover take-out. It's really not big enough for much more than that, but christ, I'm at wit's end. On Friday I'm going to stop by the all-night pharmacy on the way back from work and pick up one of those large plastic bins. Apart from being the one thing Nemesis cannot destroy, I'm hoping the opaque plastic and my room number scrawled across the front will be enough to suggest, at least, that I must be some crazy neurotic Asian whose weird homebrew concoctions you wouldn't want to steal anyway.

If that doesn't work, I suppose I'm buying a hotplate.

It turned out to be a damn good thing that I didn't chicken out of going to the gym today, because I needed to burn off a little steam after that morning's discovery. Unfortunately, it's going to be beyond annoying to try to stick my alternate clothes in my satchel, and I'd forgotten how annoying backpacks are. So I bought a new shiny satchel with extra storage space, and I'm just going to mentally block out the price tag. Because really, I did need more things with the UCLA logo all over them.

The unfortunate thing is that this one has more pinnable surface area than did my last bag (which holds 15, and also 4 keychains), meaning I must get more pins. Yes, I do think I need 37 pieces of flare to express myself.

The director's coming by tonight to pick up the last boards and pay me. I have eight pages left to sketch. Can she do it, folks?

(I love this song. In essence, it's saying "make love AND war". Check out the lyrics here. So dirty.)

Pike, at least, warns you when they're gonna pull one of their shitty parties. Whatever rationale Sigma Nu has for playing the same three fucking helium-voiced children's songs for four straight hours while a scant handful of drunken fratboys amble about the courtyard, it is insufficient.

I called the police. Yes, I said, I was fine filing a noise complaint, just send someone. I didn't realise till I was on the phone just how much of a headache I had.

After that I took some trash down and found a bum digging through the apartment dumpster. He had most of the bags hauled out and a pitiful collection of bottles and cans at his feet.

He looked at me. I stared at him, holding my trash bags.

"Evening," he said.

"Evening," I said. "Uh."

"Just set it down there," he said, gesturing to the grass. "I'll get to it."

I had no idea what else to do so I just did what he said, like I was dropping off a donation for the Goodwill. "Right, thanks," I said hastily, and ran back inside.

No wonder all you East Coast folk think Los Angeles is divorced from normal reality. It is.

The frat guys, at least, have stopped, after a brief spate of "MMMBop". (FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU.) Now we're back to the screaming domestic abuse from Zeta Beta Tau. O student life.

I believe in hallmarks in my life. I strongly maintain that the 2006-2007 New Year's was when my warranty broke and everything that could start to malfunction suddenly did. I also believe that providence sent me to this apartment complex to give me ridiculous things to write about.

So I've ranted before about the mysterious dish-thieves in this building. We have a communal kitchen, and for a great while things were wonderful and no-one stole anything. Then my cups started vanishing, and my plates and my silverware. My peanut butter and milk got used up faster than I could swear I was capable, likewise my dish soap and salt and pepper. The food stuff I was willing to write off as inattentiveness, but there's something very smoking gun-esque about one of your scant few plates vanishing for a week and then turning up absolutely filthy and without a word of apology.

I've debated what to do about this. It pissed me off considerably. I theorised that one of the tenants who moved in after me brought their social autism with them, or maybe someone was mistaking my dish set for their own in some weird fashion. After one of my cups that I'd completely given up on as a lost cause suddenly turned up in the sink, I thought of nothing else but going to the RA about putting up a goddamn sign, something to the effect of "hey kids! communal kitchen != communal dishware! SO DON'T FUCKING USE STUFF THAT'S NOT YOURS". But I always had to run to work or class and so that thought sorta stayed stationary.

Then tonight I came home and I made the mistake of taking the stairs past one of my party members, who stopped me and prompted the so-how-was-your-day routine. It was then I elected to excuse myself by quickly ducking into the kitchen to wash the work-grime off my face, and lo, there was the RA, making a steak. With my salt and pepper shakers.

Guess who thought communal kitchen = communal dishware. And condiments and peanut butter and milk, apparently.

Ah, this building. Tarantulas loose in the hallways, showering in pitch darkness, and RAs who steal your salt and pepper. What a life.

There were maggots on the kitchen tile this morning.

Apparently, someone had left something to rot at the bottom of the garbage can and then the flies had gotten in. I came down at around 10 in the morning to find the RA sweeping and mopping.

"Er, can I come in?"

"You might not want to."

"But you're just cleaning, aren't you?"

I was halfway over to the toaster before I took a proper look down.

"Oh god, that's not rice!"

I still ate breakfast, though.

This new apartment building's really turning out well, isn't it? The second floor windows are level with the neighbouring frat's chimney, there's no AC, the guy on the third floor keeps a tarantula that gets out of its cage, the washing machines flood the basement, the vending machine eats your change, the postman only remembers to bring the mail maybe two times out of the week, the stoves don't work, people steal your dishes and food constantly, anyone can kick anyone else off the LAN, all the lights are broken in the shower room, and the kitchen is officially a breeding ground for maggots.

...But at least it's cheap and I don't have a roommate.

Trope: I just defeated a GIANT TARANTULA.
Bitstream: ooo
Bitstream: in what?
Trope: ....................I love how I say that and you automatically assume it's in a videogame.
Trope: No, dummy. A real giant tarantula.
Bitstream: you mean in life? o_O
Trope: YES.
Bitstream: I -almost- asked if you meant for real
Bitstream: but then I thought they werent native...
Bitstream: so I thought, nooo
Trope: Two of my neighbours came to my door asking if I had a tarantula.
Trope: Cuz there was a BIG FUCKING TARANTULA loose in the hall.
Bitstream: how big are we talking? o_O
Trope: Size of my fist.
Trope: Big mo'fo.
Bitstream: scary
Bitstream: so, uhh... did you go up a level?
Trope: I gained new party members.
Bitstream: awesome

( What actually happened. )