I’m listening to the soundtrack from Two Towers as I write this. Ferris and Riley are on the floor behind me, back to back, slowly creeping across my floor in an effort to stay in the rectangle of sun that’s warming about 16 square feet of my living room. The smell of coffee and freshly-baked potato bread hangs heavy in the air.
None of this has anything to do with what I sat down to write, but it’s a wonderful winter morning here in casa Wheaton, and I wanted to commit it to 1’s and 0’s, so it’s never forgotten.
Back in November, Nolan and I tried to go to the Los Angeles Auto Show. Of course, when we got to the Convention Center, we found out that the Los Angeles Auto show was, in fact, in Orange County that weekend. All was not lost, however, because we went on to have an incredibly wonderful day together anyway.
This last weekend, the Los Angeles Auto Show was actually in Los Angeles, and Nolan and I spent all last week counting down the days until Sunday (Sunday! Sunday!) when we planned to attend.
Sunday was unseasonably warm and clear. We wore T-shirts and took the train down to the convention center. We sat in the very front, and watched the tracks, gleaming in the January sun, as they guided us toward Union Station.
“Are you excited, Wil?” Nolan asked me.
“You bet I am,” I said.
“I can’t wait to see the cars from PGR2,” he said.
I nodded.
“You know what PGR2 is, right?” He said.
“Project Gotham Racing 2,” I said, “Jeeze. I’m not that out of touch . . . am I?”
“Well, I guess not,” he said with a grin, “. . . right now.”
“I hope we have as much fun as we did last year,” I said.
“Me too,” he said.
We arrived at Union Station, ran down the tunnel to the Red Line, and jumped into the train just before the doors closed. Three stops later, we were on the Blue Line for one stop. We got off the train at Pico, and emerged in a crowd of auto-enthusiasts.
We walked to the Convention Center entrance down a street lined with vendors who hawked cheap toys, flowers, social security cards, and various types of food. We stopped at a red light next to a woman pushing a shopping cart topped with a propane grill. The smoky air was fragrant with cooking onions and sausages.
“Oh! That smells good! Can we get one?” Nolan asked.
“Are you sure you want to eat a sausage that’s prepared on top of a shopping cart?” I asked.
He thought for a moment. “Uhm, no. That’s gross.” He said.
“Maybe we can grab something inside,” I said.
“Maybe,” he said, “but I don’t think we should spend seven dollars on a pretzel.”
I laughed as the light changed. The crowd of people pushed us into the street, and Nolan held my hand as we crossed.
“Hey, you get in for free because you’re twelve!” I said, while we waited in line to buy our tickets.
“And you can –”
“If you say I can get in as a senior, I’m gonna –”
“Hit me with your cane?” he said.
“No, but I’ll tie you behind my Rascal Scooter and drag you through the mud,” I laughed.
We bought my non-senior-priced ticket, and walked into the West Hall.
To Be Continued . . .

Paul O’Neill has backed off from some of the statements I quoted a couple of days ago. Of course, this has resulted in a few e-mail lectures from people who kindly advise that I should just shut my stupid Hollywood liberal mouth and move to France.
I’m not planning any relocation, or any self-censorship in the near future, so If you’re one of those readers, I kindly advise you to go listen to Rush and come back tomorrow.

Last month, I wrote about The awesome generosity of Penny Arcade readers, and the lack of media coverage of that story.
Well, today there is a fantastic follow-up to that story. The author of the story that prompted the guys at PA to launch Child’s Play celebrated, and apologized to Penny Arcade and its readers.

This is some combination of a celebration and an apology. First, the celebration.
A week before Thanksgiving, The Herald printed my first column on ultra-violent video games, and then put it on the Web site, www.heraldnet.com. The most important reaction I saw came right after Thanksgiving through a Web site called penny-arcade.com.
An unidentified writer wrote, “If you are like me, every time you see an article like this one — where the author claims that video games are training our nation’s youth to kill — you get angry.”
When readers clicked “this one,” my column on video games popped up.
[. . .]
Among other things they did to inspire giving, Penny-arcade published a letter from one of its readers. He is the father of a 5-year-old boy who had spent most of the previous five months at Children’s Hospital getting chemotherapy for lymphoma.
Almost every parent can immediately identify with that father’s distress, and with his heartfelt “thank you” to Penny-arcade for its Child’s Play toy drive.
[. . .]
Here is the apology part and then back to more celebration. Certainly many gamers read my column as a statement that I believe that they are bad people. For that impression I am sorry. I did not and do not believe that.
In any case, the Penny-arcade Web site and many of their readers, who are apparently gamers, demonstrated that they have big hearts and generous instincts.

Mr. Bill France, who wrote the original story, and the story quoted above has earned a trophy and a pizza from the official WWdN Prize Patrol™.

I think that Alison Berkley is teh rules:

It just occurred to me that I am a snowboard whore.
I am the lady in red (literally) who accepts cash at the end of the day from the ultrawealthy ski vacationers at Snowmass who think I’m a miracle worker because their brain-dead kid actually got excited about something besides video games for the first time since the day she turned 13.
They call us “snowboard pros” which makes it sound a lot more legit than it really is. Whatever. My parents are just happy I’m a professional at something, especially after all that money they blew on boarding school and the six years it took me to get through college.
No, I’m not bumming around some upper-crust resort. I’m not afraid of the so-called “real world” or facing the responsibility of becoming an “adult.” I’m a snowboard pro, bitch. That’s Alison Berkley, S.P.

It’s rare that I read something and laugh all the way through, so for that, Alison Berkley, S.P., I salute you!
(huge thanks go out to Russ who brought this story to my attention)
UPDATE: A few readers e-mailed me that, after she wrote this article, Alison Bekley was fired from her job at Snowmass:

The “Princess” has dinged her crown — and lost her job.
Cheeky Aspen Times columnist Alison Berkley apparently went too far last week when she detailed her perceived shortcomings as a local snowboard instructor, writing, among other things, in her weekly column — entitled “The Princess’s Palate” — that she felt like “a snowboard whore” for dressing in red and accepting cold, hard cash from Snowmass Ski Area’s “ultrawealthy.”
Her bosses at Aspen Skiing Co., which is owned by the Crown family of Chicago, were none too pleased with the sassy columnist, earlier this week terminating her employment and the privileges that go along with it, including her ski pass and the on-mountain locker she mocked in the column.

It’s just another example of Rich Fucking Assholes™, who have no sense of humor, screwing things up for the rest of us. Alison Berkley, Fomer Snowboard Pro and Martyr, I still salute you. You are still teh rules. Maybe spending less time with Rich Fucking Assholes™ and their Spoiled Brat Kids™ will give you time to focus on a writing career. You’re obviously good at it.

Here’s some more geeky webby goodness I’ve uncovered in the last few days.
Blogger users can easily create RSS feeds for their site using Rss-ify. It’s really cool. All you do is put some tags in your entry templates, generate a URL, and watch the fun.
(hat tip to Juan Cole, who is the first blogger I read to use this nifty application.)
For anyone wondering, I use NetNewswire Lite on my iBook (still in a coma, but hopefully coming back from the logic-board doctors at Apple this week), and AmphetaDesk on my Linux machine, though I’m giving Pears a try today.
Remember a few days ago when I was so excited to learn the magic use of the TITLE tag? Several readers e-mailed to let me know that I can build symbols using unicode, like < or > to show off my HTML . . . uh . . . “skills” . . . I guess . . . in a less-lame way.
<a href="http://www.homestarruner.com" title="seriously.">like this!</a>.
Many people ask me why I don’t use target="_blank" in my links. So many, in fact, that I really should add it to the FAQ. The answer is, “because it’s just as easy to right-click (or ctl-click, if you’re a machead) to open links in new windows, most browswers can be set to open links in background tabs or windows anyway, and I’m too lazy to type it into every link.”
The follow-up, of course, is, “Well, then why don’t you just put make "_blank" the base link?”
To which I reply, “Because I don’t want to. So there. Nyahh.”
Now, I am off to have left-over soup, and a slice of just-baked potato bread for lunch. \m/