Ron's Info-Closet Annex

Sun, 29 Feb 2004

Five preferred indifferents for Friday, 27 Feb 2004

Woodman: I finished The Tin Woodman of Oz (1918) by L. Frank Baum on Thursday. It is by far the most philosophical of Baum's original 14 Oz books, and for that reason, many Oz fans do not like it, but it is my favourite. I hope to post a review and relevant excerpts shortly.
Lunch: Had a great lunch with my friend Chad Urso McDaniel on Thursday too. We really got into the conversational groove, and lost track of the time. I usually spend a few minutes browsing in the Elliott Bay Book Company, where we have lunch, but this time I had to dash back to the office.
Radio: RadioParadise.com is a great Internet radio station for intelligent rock. Marty thinks it doesn't rock enough, but I frequently listen to it on headphones at work. Radio Paradise plays lots of new stuff, so I'm constantly jotting down the names of songs to... uh, buy later. Best of all, it's listener-supported, so it doesn't have commercials. Hell, it doesn't even have pledge drives!
Gaming: An unusually good game night. Note: As I write this, this session report is unfinished. That's the way wikis are.
Barcharts: In helping Marty study for her GREs, I (re-)discovered a really cool set of study aids with the brand name of Barcharts, available from Barcharts.com. There are several manufacturers of "laminated study guides", but Barcharts seems to be the best, biggest, and most popular. Marty bought a few of them for math review.
I bought the aid on Comparative Religion. You would be amazed at how hard it is to find a clear, concise, neutral exposition of Buddhism's Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path online, not to mention the main talking points of the other major religions of the world. I also plan to buy the German Grammar and German Vocabulary aids, in my endless, somewhat quixotic attempt to obtain a reading knowledge of German.
Marty and I are going to sit down and read the Comparative Religion one together when her GREs are over; meanwhile, she has boosted her GRE math scores quickly, according to her computerised practice exams. I know most of that is due to her brains and hard work, but I think the Barcharts have helped.

Entered 20:37 [/personal/friday5] permalink

RetroLubes: Back to the Future, Forward Into the Past

A couple of days ago I picked up a bottle of lube ("for topical cosmetic use only", it says here) at my local Love Fubar store. There was a big rack of lube and I was only interested in the ingredients and the price, as this kind of lube is a commodity item. (James "Kibo" Parry used to buy it in huge vats for his own odd purposes, and once brought a huge plastic bagful that he had coloured green to one of our post-Christmas Mathom Parties in Boston.) I therefore did not look closely at the label on the front, and when I got it home, discovered it had a creepy label (see photo).

The label reads "ID Millennium" and bears a white thumbprint above the brand name on the faux holographic label. Being paranoid, my immediate reaction was to fear that the emerging world security state was attempting to soften up the populace with operant conditioning, using the positive reinforcement of sex to make people complacent about biometrics.

A little thought suggests that in order for this campaign to have much effect, a significant proportion of the population would have to be buying and using this brand of lube. It's far more likely that the CEO of this company thought that a logo featuring biometrics would seem futuristic in a sexy rather than a repulsive way (as it seems to me). My wife Marty says, "Porn products have the worst marketing. We've all read the Adam & Eve catalog -- and despaired. You have to imagine Tom Carvel saying in a gravelly voice, 'It's like The Matrix! The kids will love it!'"

Remember, the brand that is probably the market leader in this niche is called "AstroGlide", another pathetic attempt to sound futuristic that actually reminds me of Sputnik and poor Laika. Thus, ID Millennium -- it's, like, so three years ago.

Entered 16:30 [/culture] permalink

Wed, 25 Feb 2004

Oz Online

I just learned on the Nonestica mailing list that the remaindered trade paperbacks by Mundus of the 14 Baum Oz books (nearly full-size photoreproductions) I described are available online from Daedalus Books and Music for $4.98, which is what I paid for them locally. Their retail price (it says here) is $14.95, which is 67% off.

I also noticed that Daedalus has The Annotated Wizard of Oz: Centennial Edition, edited by Michael Patrick Hearn, for $9.98, which is what I paid for it locally. That's about 75% off, as the book retails for $39.95. This massive tome with beautiful full-colour illustrations is well worth a $10 investment.

Disclaimer: I have no connection with Daedalus. But go there, search for "Baum", and order the Oz books anyway.

Entered 13:33 [/books/oz] permalink

Sun, 22 Feb 2004

Doing my bit...

...to spread santorum far and wee.

Entered 23:26 [/polyticks] permalink

Oz in the Emerald City

A redundancy? Not necessarily. "The Emerald City" has long been a nickname for Seattle. This post will tell you where to get the Oz books relatively cheaply in Seattle, and some other places if you have the misfortune not to live here. :)

Half Price Books is your dear, dear friend. As of early 2004, you can pick up all 14 of the L. Frank Baum Oz books by hitting various Half Price Books locations in the Seattle area. Each book is $4.98, so a complete set will cost you about $70 plus tax. At present, there are nine stores in metro-Seattle. The new Capital Hill store on Belmont Avenue seems to have the widest selection, but you will probably have to visit more than one store to get all the books. The editions being remaindered, by the way, are published by a company calling itself "For Your Knowledge" or "Mundus". (The company seems to have changed its name at one point; the books published under one name do not differ in any significant way from those published under the other.) These are hefty trade paperbacks -- not quite Dover quality, but I have no complaints at $5 apiece.

Half Price Books has stores in Arizona, California, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas (of course), Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin as well, so if you live in those states, you may also be in luck. Unfortunately, they seem to have discontinued web orders.

If you do want Dover-quality paperbacks, the Elliott Bay Book Company in Pioneer Square has most or all of the Baum Oz books in Dover editions. They cost twice as much as the Mundus/For Your Knowledge editions, but that's still only $10 or so, and they will last you the rest of your life. Alternatively, order the Dover editions directly from Dover.

The University of Washington Bookstore has half a dozen of the Mundus/For Your Knowledge editions, plus remaindered copies of the Centennial Edition of the Annotated Wizard of Oz for about $10. This book from 2000 is well worth making a special trip for. The UW Bookstore also has several of the Dover editions, and they sometimes stock Edward Einhorn's influential Paradox in Oz. (It's where I got my copy.)

If you don't care much about illustrations, you can find all 14 of the Baum Oz books at the Online Books Page and then some, in free ebook form. Share and Enjoy!

If none of these options suit you, try ordering Oz books from Powell's, which has an incredible variety of them, new and used.
You'll support this site if you order via the link I just gave you. SURRENDER AMAZON!

Entered 19:59 [/books/oz] permalink

Sunday is Friday at Carvel's

If you grew up on the East Coast during the late 70s or early 80s, you may remember ice cream tycoon Tom Carvel's decision to do his own commercials for his ice cream chain, anticipating Dave Thomas's Wendy's commercials by 15 or 20 years. Unfortunately, unlike Dave Thomas's voice, Tom Carvel's was a guttural monotone that seemed to indicate the intelligence behind it was ravaged by age and perhaps didn't have too much to work with in the first place. One of the stellar business decisions made by Tom (or whoever made his mouth move) was to use a single mold for all Carvel ice cream cakes, so that Cookie Puss (an attempt to cash in on the movie E.T., whose TV voice sounded like a chipmunk in an echo chamber) looked suspiciously like Fudgie the Whale upside-down. Then there was the amnemonic advertising slogan "Wednesday is Sundae at Carvel's", which attempted to convey that you got two-for-one ice cream sundaes every Wednesday at Carvel's, but ended up conveying to viewers that Thursday was Sundae, or perhaps Tuesday was Sundae, or maybe Tuesday was Thursday... Why bother?

Tom Carvel is probably long dead, and I don't care whether Carvel's is still a going concern on the East Coast enough to Google for it, which is saying something, I think. In any case, since I'm doing my Friday Five on Sunday, I just wanted to announce that Sunday is now Friday.

Friday, 20 February 2004

Kickass new cellphone: Because I was stupid enough to lose my old cellphone but smart enough to have signed up for the replacement program with Sprint, for some reason when I ponied up my $35 deductible, they did not send me a reconditioned phone of the same model, but a brand new phone that is much, much better. It's a ruggedised Sanyo RL2000. It has a colour screen almost as big as your average PDA, and besides doing ordinary cellphone things with it, I can surf the web, read and send email, and if anyone I know ever gets a similar phone, I can use it as a sort of walkie-talkie. The customer service dudelet told me, "Man! I wish I could afford one of those! Your new phone can run circles around your old phone without even moving. Why did they send you one of those, anyway?"
Games magazine: On a day when I wasn't expecting any particularly good snailmail, the April 2004 Games magazine arrived. The cover story, "The New Oldest Game in the World", by R.H. Wei, tells the story of the discovery by Vincent Hughes, the "real-life Indiana Jones", of an ancient Egyptian board game called "The Game of Flying Obelisks". The game is extremely complex for one of that period; it more closely resembles a modern Chess variant than anything else known to exist at that time.
Yes, it's the April 2004 Games magazine. Geddit? I didn't buy the article as a whole for a minute, but I thought at least that Vincent Hughes might exist, since the article says he studied at Yale, and I recall reading about a "real-life Indiana Jones" etc. etc. in the Yale alumni magazine. However, relevant Google searches return nothing on the great man.
The Game of Flying Obelisks looks like fun, though, and receives a much more in-depth treatment than Games usually gives games it publishes, even if half of the coverage is fiction.
Nonestica: OK, a couple of weeks ago I talked about receiving a "current" or "spark" of inspiration from a friend, and said that I was collaborating on a project around this inspiration with him. Now I can tell you. My friend and I were working on a piecepack game based on the 14 Oz (as in Wizard) books by L. Frank Baum. The collaboration has fallen through; my friend had never collaborated on a game before and was uncomfortable doing so. Oh well; at least I can now blather about Oz (or Nonestica, as the continent of which Oz forms a part is commonly (?) known), without outing myself and spoiling my anonymity for the latest piecepack game design contest. More later; meanwhile, check out this collection of Ozzy/Nonestican links I've collected. I don't have many at the moment, but they are all key resources.
Game design: So it looks as if Marty and I will be entering at least one game in the new piecepack contest. I like it so far, and that's all I'm going to say.
Great EGG meeting: We had another great meeting of EGG, our local game design group. Kisa Griffin had a new piecepack game for us to playtest, and AlphaTim Schutz had a new Alpha Playing Cards game. I always come out of these meetings high off my friends' brilliance, and thankful (when I'm demonstrating a game) that I have a community to support me. As much as I love Seattle Cosmic, and as unfinished as the games brought to EGG tend to be, I have to say I usually have more fun at EGG meetings, because the games I'm playing were not designed by someone I don't know in Europe (say), but by someone I know and sometimes even love -- and if I don't like something about the game, I can suggest a fix and the fix may be incorporated into the rules on the spot. EGG meetings are so intense, though, that it's probably good they're only once a month rather than once a week.

Have a fine week, everyone, and remember: Fudgie the Whale makes a great gift!

Entered 18:43 [/personal/friday5] permalink

Wed, 18 Feb 2004

Belated Friday Ten

Two weeks of Friday Fives, but late. I've been two-timing you, dear blog reader; I post my Friday Fives as soon as I can on a social mailing list that originated the custom, then dawdle over posting them in HTML form on my blog. Live with it.

Friday, 13 Feb 2004: Friday the 13th Friday 5!

Rip, tie, cut toy man. While ripping, mixing, burning, etc. music for my MP3 CD player, I've discovered The Goon Show. Old time radio is really a form of abandonware. Although The Goon Show is still copyrighted, who will prosecute you for downloading episodes? How much less so for radio shows from the 1940s and 1930s! This is one reason I support the Public Domain Enhancement Act. To quote Lawrence Lessig, "That act would require American copyright holders to pay $1 fifty years after a work was published. If they pay the $1, the copyright continues. If they don't, the work passes into the public domain. Historical estimates would suggest 98% of works would pass into the pubilc domain after 50 years." Some things are worth more to the public than they are to the copyright holders.
Caucus. Marty and I attended our district's Democratic Party Caucus on Saturday. Five people from our tiny precinct voted (although there were something like a 1000% [sic] increase in attendees to the caucus overall). Three out of the five of us, including me and Marty, were for Kucinich, the other two for Kerry. (Two confused Deaniacs showed up after the voting took place, for a total of seven from our precinct.) In the end, two of our three delegates went to Kucinich. I like to think Marty and I did our bit for his substantial showing (by the standards of his campaign) in Washington State: 8%.
Bush is fucking up. Big time. He can't show us the WMDs or proof that he wasn't AWOL. I thought he'd be cunning enough to fake "proof", but apparently not, so far. Even Fox's archconservative Bill O'Reilly is jumping ship; Yahoo! News recently reported "Conservative television news anchor Bill O'Reilly said on Tuesday he was now skeptical about the Bush administration and apologized to viewers for supporting prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction." Keep fucking up, asshole.
Juvenon. My mother has Alzheimer's, so anything I can do to stave off the ravages of aging in myself medicinally is welcome. I'm only 38, so it may be a bit early to start taking Juvenon, but I bought a three-month supply of the two component supplements online. If I don't experience any effect after three months, I'll know that either it doesn't work at all, or it doesn't work for me, at this time in my life.
Journal. I've finally decided what to make of the beautiful handmade journal that Meredith gave me for Christmas. I'm making it a book of aphorisms. Since I'm not an aphorism machine like Ludwig Wittgenstein or Friedrich Nietzsche, I think I can look forward to filling this book (in green ink, to match the cover) for years to come.

Friday, 6 Feb 2004: Doggie birthday

Tia. It was my dog Tia's 10th birthday (observed) today, 6 February. While it's sad to see her getting old, we look forward to years more with her, and we are glad our "Lab Chow" has been a part of our family for so long. (We got her when she was two and a half years old, from a shelter, and have never regretted it.)
Piecepack. Piecepack dice cards and piecepack paper dice. My friend John Braley invented piecepack dice cards, I elaborated on them and extended the concept to piecepack paper dice, Tim Schutz elaborated on the dice cards and drew up a beautiful printable set of them.
Magazine. Abstract Games Magazine issue 16 finally arrived. It's as good as usual, which is very, very.
Beating the Bushes. Kerry beat Bush in some polls. Democrats are out in mobs at the primaries and caucuses while the Republicans seem sluggish. The Republicans will have a harder time fixing the election again if the Democratic candidate wins by a landslide.
Inspiration wants to be free. As a bipolar person, I have thought for a long time that inspiration always came (if you'll excuse the metaphor) in an electric shock directly from the Muse. However, this week I found that a "current" can be passed down the years from one person to another. (I believe "current" is the correct occult term.) I started collaborating on a project with the person who passed a certain current on to me recently. Unfortunately, I can't say more right now. I don't mean to be secretive; we'll publicise it when we're done.