Sunday, February 22, 2009

Desperately Trying Not to be a Cynical Asshole

The easy way is easy. I can easily sit here and crow about corporations, dehumanizing commercialism, selling our childhood memories, billions of dollars in mouse-ears sales, the absolutely criminal price of $2.75 for an Itzakadoozie, the utter homogeneity of Disney culture, or just how bloody creepy a farmed community spitting distance from Walt Disney World (named Celebration, for Christ's sake) is. See? That was easy.

Still. Still. It was fun. I had a nice time. There were crowds. They thronged. There were people there dragging their children onto rides which the kids did not want to get on. These children were yelled at. And still. It was fun.

But I'm not here to change the world, and you're not here looking for answers to the world's myriad problems.

Katie's dad has a condo in Celebration, FL. Just read the Wikipedia article. It was a lovely little condominium complex with a pool, a business center, a cafe, a gym, the works.

When I was ten, I went to Florida with my mom, aunt, grandmother, sister and cousins. We stayed in Daytona Beach. My memories of that trip are hazy. I remember ants in the cracks on the sidewalk. Watching the old Hercules cartoon on television. Going to Toys R Us (which was a big deal, because there wasn't one in Newfoundland in 1988), where I was allowed to buy a Dino Riders toy. Going to a flea market where I got one of those clacking silver ball things you put on your desk. (I didn't know what it was called.)

My memories of Walt Disney World are brighter, but no less hazy for that. The Haunted Mansion, Swiss Family Robinson treehouse, It's a Small World, and not being permitted to press the "go up" button on the Dumbo Ride because Sarah was frightened. The World is composed of four parts now: two Kingdoms (of both the Magical and Animal varieties), Disney's Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM Hollywood Studios), and a wildly-recapitalized Epcot (which used to stand for Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow).

I'll spare you a longer rant. I've posted plenty of pictures from the trip here, with the diatribe broken up into bite-sized captions instead. Suffice it to say that we did actually have a great time, even if Reed can be a bit... um... results-oriented in his approach to vacationing. That said, it was due to Reed's diligence in planning and actually sprinting from place to place that we got to do and see as much as we did and saw. I just went through the pamphlets and came up with 29 as the number of attractions we saw in three days. It was as concentrated a dose of Disney as can be administered without killing the test subject.

Onwards.

For those of you who care about such things: we did not, in point of fact, disappear from the face of the Earth in the closing months of 2008. To prove this, I have provided a couple of dozen photographs from that period of time here. There is a giant Hello Kitty.

Jeff was kind enough to notify me of the existence of something called a Pomegranate. It purports to be the ultimate in slim, sexy mobile computing. An iPhone killer, if you will. Click on through to its website and take a look. The catch, of course, is that it is a spectacular fraud. The Pomegranate does not exist, other than as a wonderful little trick to get you to learn more about Nova Scotia. The entire thing was dreamed up as a viral ad for Nova Scotia's tourism push. Good for them! Adam approved. Final score: 10.

As Watchmen draws near, they continue to come up with nifty expanded-universe stuff. Like this.

Which segues neatly into some free online video games. Heff directed me to this one; drop a coin in the slot and play Final Fight with either NiteOwl or the Silk Spectre. (Protip: Kick through garbage cans FTW.) Also, less punchy-kicky, more obssessivey-compulsy is Perfect Balance, which explains itself very clearly in its title, and which I played to level 4 before getting too pissed off to go any further.

Today's Big Thing has been a source of amusement for me. Here's a particularly good one.

Also, I have learned that there will be a film called Black Dynamite. This is the trailer.

I think it will be a perfect film.

There are those who maintain that LOLcats are a dying breed. I say these people spend too much time on the internet. (A dangerous thing for me to say.) So, it with great joy that I present to you, rolcats, a clever spoof of lolcats wherein Cyrillic gibberish is superimposed on photos of cats, and a witty "translation" is provided. It is wonderful.

I mentioned last time that I was trying to learn some C++ and Flash. Well, I spent about an hour and a half of my busy Friday night making my first flash animation. I uploaded it to youtube, but the framerate took a hit. If you want, you can download the .mov file here, or the .swf file here, for a less-choppy version.

Not much, but it's a start.

That's it for now. I have to cook supper. We have visitors arriving from Nova Scotia tomorrow tonight! Surprise!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
I'm her mom. No, she's not.

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