No, I’m not addicted to video games. No, I don’t need to go to rehab. It just occurred to me on the subway to work this morning while I was once again pummeling Heihachi in my quest to make Devil Jin (Nicely customized with new horns) a PSP Tekken “Virtuoso” that I’ve been spending a lot of time playing video games lately. What’s the big deal with that? Well, like I said, nothing, really. It’s just that I used to read novels or my weekly Time Out New York on the subway.

At home it’s a similiar situation. I don’t play excessively as evidenced by my wretchedly low Xbox Live gamerscore, but I do seem to be busy running high-pitched teenagers off the road in Burnout Revenge more than other pursuits lately. Of course, I just got that Xbox 360 exactly 1 month ago as a gift, but still…

Then, of course, there’s the issue of keeping up with my MMO of choice. All MMO’s are time suckers. The fact that I even play one means I spend a lot of time in game.

So, the feeling is just that the balance is out of whack. With that in mind I’m going to try to remember what it was that I used to do with all that time by not playing any video games in September with one minor exception: it’s on if someone comes over to my place to rock some Rockstar Table Tennis or some other game.

So, no solo play.

I don’t expect this to be a difficult undertaking, but I do expect to be surprised by the amount of time I’ll regain from going cold turkey for a month. We’ll see how it goes… I’ll keep you posted.

Wow! I have to remember to figure out how to buy one of these! Being a fan of the Ghost in the Shell movies and Stand Alone Complex series (not so much the mangas), I’ve wanted a Tachikoma of my own for a long time. This one seems like a prototype, but I really hope they go into production. I would definitely be in line to pick on up.

Here’s some video of it in action and the Tachikoma robot product page. Via Engadget.

Well, today marked a strange occurance in the world of science that saw the amount of planets in our solar system revised down to 8!

It seems like a small thing bacause it doesn’t really affect our everyday lives, but somehow I feel like reality has changed. All my life, I’ve been taught that there are 9 planets, but now Pluto will no longer carry that designation. Kids growing up now will get new text books in the near future where the new rules will be the norm making our adult pasts seem that much more ignorant, quaint and misguided.

Again, I don’t really know why this is weighing on my mind so much, but I would at least like to remember this day for future reference should I ever have kids I can tell them the very day their solar system got a little more cozy.

From the AP:

For now, membership [of the planets] will be restricted to the eight ”classical” planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Much-maligned Pluto doesn’t make the grade under the new rules for a planet: ”a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a … nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.”

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune’s.

Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of ”dwarf planets,” similar to what long have been termed ”minor planets.” The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun — ”small solar system bodies,” a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites.

Photograph of the IAU’s Richard Binze, Christopher Corbally and Jocelyn Bell-Burnell by Petr David Josek/AP

OK, I’m not really into TV nowadays, but there is one show that almost forces me to watch through sheer coolness. That show is Lost. I admit: I love it. Although I missed the first season completely and didn’t start watching until the second, a quick review of what I had missed had me hooked.

I mean what’s the deal with the black smoke and why haven’t we seen it in a while? Also, who are these “Others” and why are they on the island? What’s the deal with the island anyways? Is it purgatory like so many people like to hypothesize?

I dunno, but I’m going to find out. I hope this upcoming season is as cool as this promotion poster they’ve just released for it (click for a larger version) because I’ll definitely remember to catch it when it returns to ABC October 4, 2006 at 9pm!

A bit over a week ago (yes, I’ve been busy) I managed to check out The Descent. Now, I’m not much of a horror movie fan, so I don’t go see too many. But this one seemed like such an interesting premise and the trailers looked so good that I had to go.

Anyway, to make a long story short, it was an awesome ride of a movie. I have to admit that I was put off by the first bit of harshly portrayed nastiness on the road, but once the girls got into the cave, the tension was incredible, the lighting spot-on, and almost all the acting fantastic. (I’ll also admit that not only did I dislike the Asian girl’s character, I didn’t think she was very good at playing the character, which only made me want to see her get hers that much more!)

As horror films go, I shouldn’t forget that this one is definitely worth another watch sometime down the road again.

OK, I have a bad memory. I can’t remember the conversation I had on the cab ride home last night. I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday. I can however remember in what year the World Trade Center was destroyed.

It would seem that according to a recent poll published in the Washington Post, 30% of Americans can’t say the same thing. This is truly amazing. These people vote; they have children; they influence advertising spending with their viewing habits. They’re your neighbors and maybe even friends. Living in New York, it’s easy to lose touch with the way that the rest of the country lives, but this is ridiculous.

It’s probably a good idea to remember never to overestimate the masses or as L7 put it back in the day: “The Masses are asses.”

Image via yerffej9 on Flickr.

Remember when this country was so amazingly screwed up, it decided to change the name of “french fries” to “freedom fries” just to spite a country which disagreed with its policies?

Yeah, I know not much has changed in terms of the state of the union, but at least one thing is changing. The International Herald Tribune is reporting that “in the last few weeks, U.S. Congress has quietly changed the name of the “freedom fries” sold in its cafeterias back to French fries”.

Thank goodness that’s over and done with. The only thing is… that as much as I’d love to forget such a boneheaded move by the US government, it’s probably something I should try remember. I could easily see freedom fries fading into obscurity only to have an incident 20 years from now cause the idiots in power then to decide the right thing to call a vinaigrette with sugar and ketchup added should be “Freedom Dressing”.

Freedom Fries sculpture via Nadeem Sabella

This is something I really have got to remember because although I don’t think of myself as butt-ugly, I often come across that way in photos.

Part of the problem is that I guess I just feel uncomfortable about posing for photographs and would prefer to be more natural, ignoring the camera all together.

Well, that hasn’t been working out for me, so I suppose it’s time for a change. I mean with so many people having cameras and camera phones (and living in New York where you’re in a photo every 2 minutes) the bad images of me are beginning to vastly out number the good ones.

Anyway, this page has some good ideas for how to improve the way you look in pictures.

Now if only I can remember to be more photogenic!

Image via MarenB on Flickr

It’s been almost a week since I had the pleasure of checking out Bloc Party (currently one of my favorite bands) play Williamsburg’s McCarren Park Pool, so I imagine I’ve already forgotten a good bit about the show. However, there are a couple things that really stuck with me for days after.

One was how good Bloc Party’s music is. Even though they only have one studio album out, all the songs are real keepers and came across very well live. No, they’re not some mega-rock band or anything full of over the top stage performances, but that’s not the point. They played great music in a show that was quite powerful and energetic…

Which brings me to the next thing I really remember: the crowd sucked, sucked, sucked! I know from too many concerts to recall that New Yorkers make terrible audiences for live music. Too often, I’ve been at shows where bands from the UK or the West coast have come to play a show in New York only to be met with a crowd of too-cool-to-bother-dancing-or-even-clapping New Yorkers with an over active sense of entitlement, but I must admit it seems even worse in the all-image Williamsburg hood.

A few years ago, I noticed this abysmal crowd performance at the Warsaw in Williamsburg for The Streets first trip to our fair city (before they went soft). It was so wretched that time, that Mike Skinner (the front man) started hurling curses and full beer bottles at the crowd.

I’m all for being cool. Dressing cool. Listening to cool music. Reading cool books. Creating cool art. But I hope I remember not to become so “cool” that I can’t dance, cheer, and have fun at a rock concert.

By the way YoutTube has tons of video of the Bloc Party show.

Image via ewanian on Flickr