warming, not burning
Oh lookie, Green Pixels has just put up my 10 Crucial Rock Band Downloads feature. This was one of those where you look around in the middle of doing the research and think, “I can’t believe I get paid to do this.”
Let’s fight about my choices. But over there, not here.
Perhaps you’ve heard of it?
My GTA4 review is now live over at Green Pixels. Spoiler alert: It’s really good. Oh, you don’t think so? Well, why don’t you drop a note in the review’s comments to that effect.
Got a new How-To up over at Mac|Life, regarding GarageBand loops and the creation thereof. Hope you find it useful. Comments off here, please comment there!
[originally published in The Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, Issue #105, June 2006]
Last month I touched on the enormous (and heated, and probably eternal) debate about the significance of violence in videogames. It’s not an easy argument to resolve; on one side you have gamers and game makers defending their hobbies and livelihoods, if not their very identities. On the other are a group of concerned citizens honestly believing — however erroneously — that they are protecting the innocent from nefarious forces.
You know what I do for a living, so you can probably guess which side I come down on. I know — from longtime, extensive, personal experience — that videogames do not turn otherwise conscientious, reasonably well-adjusted individuals into slavering, murderous social deviants. It just doesn’t happen. If it did, you and I and just about everyone we know would be in jail.
Furthermore, we can be reasonably assured that the vast majority of the slavering, murderous social deviants of history had very little exposure to videogames. Linear time’s a bitch, baby.
So why all the hubbub? Continue reading “More of the Ol’ Ultraviolence”
Back in the day, when my dad was still working funerals regularly, occasionally they would get a family from Brecksville who wanted to have the funeral mass at St. Basil the Great.
Originally, this church was right next to Bosa’s Donuts, right down on 82, just east of Brecksville Rd. (It’s since moved to a newer, bigger location.) Occasionally, after setting everything up for the funeral, the gentlemen would duck out for a quick cup of coffee and a donut at Bosa’s.
One day, my dad and two employees headed over to refresh themselves. They all sat down at the counter, and the young, adorably cute waitress came up to take their orders.
“What will it be today, guys?” she asks.
“Hmm,” says the one employee. “I’ll take a cup of coffee, but I’m not really feeling like a donut today. What else do you have?”
“Well, we’ve got bagels, English muffins, and toast.”
“What kind of toast?”
“White, wheat, rye, raisin…”
“Oh, raisin toast. That sounds great. I haven’t had raisin toast since I don’t know when. I’ll take that.”
So this cute waitress turns to Employee Number Two. “How about you, honey?”
“You know,” he says, “raisin toast actually sounds really good. I’ll have that too.”
So this adorable waitress turns to my dad. “And what about you, sweetie? Is yours raisin too?”
And my dad, without skipping a beat, says, “No, but it’s quivering a little.”