Noiseless Chatter Archive

Receiving spam is nothing notable anymore. Every so often something crawls past Yahoo’s proprietary filers, but since I only use this Yahoo account for spam anyway, it’s never a problem. But recently I received the following in my inbox: …and that’s just upsetting. Where’s the craftsmanship? The incentive? The heart-rending tale of woe intended to get me out to Western Union as quickly as possible? There’s an art to this kind of spam, and it’s an art that “Conniel” is disrespecting entirely by sending out something so effortless. Set aside the poor grammar (as there’s really no getting around that) and you have a woman(?) telling me she’s sick, and asking me to take her funds so that I can give them to charity. Then she demands — doesn’t even implore! — that I email her back. The subject line is promising, but nowhere does Conniel actually invite me to save any souls so I’m pretty disappointed. Sing us a song…you’re the spammer man. This is the equivalent of a real-...

I picked up Kid Icarus: Uprising this Friday, its day of release. I’ve pre-ordered games before so there’s nothing special about my immediate purchase, but I do think it’s worth pointing out just how promising the game looked. For starters, it’s the first entry in a long-dead — but classic — franchise in twenty years or so. That’s enough to at least get me interested. Then the advertising materials started to surface, followed eventually by reviews, and everything seemed…well, everything seemed pretty perfect. It looked like a strong title and a safe bet, so I pre-ordered it…and I love it. It’s great. It exceeded more or less every expectation I had, and my expectations were pretty high. But there’s one issue I do have with the game. Not a problem, but an issue. See, the game is self-aware. And while this is not an issue exclusive to Kid Icarus: Uprising , the fact that even tried and true Nintendo franchises are becoming self-aware is really making me think that...

A few pieces of business. One: You’ve probably noticed that updates here aren’t quite…regular. Never fear…that was always my intention for this particular blog. Longer, more exploratory articles posted less frequently. I understand some folks might prefer shorter pieces posted regularly, but dat ain’t how I roll so…never fear if you find me going a week or more without updating. But that leads me into… Two: I’ve recently obtained permission — or, rather, confirmed that I had permission — to post some of my old Noise to Signal articles here. So expect a few of those to turn up in the near future, which should give you more to read and enjoy and call me an idiot for writing. I might revise them slightly to correct any errors or to include information I’ve learned since, but they shouldn’t change much and if you’ve read them you’ve read them. Hooray! Three: Many thanks to the folks at Dead Homer Society , who recently singled out my essay about the South Park ...

He’s metal and small and doesn’t judge me at all. He’s a cyberwired bundle of joy. My robot friend. In 2004, a coworker of mine convinced me to start watching South Park again. I’m not really sure why I had stopped. I was one of the show’s early adopters — which isn’t saying much; there were many — and I was always happy to defend it as being more substantial than its mountains of violence and profanity led the easily insulted to believe. It was a great show, I thought, with clever writing and some genuinely intelligent insight into touchy subjects and controversial material. But at some point, probably around season five or so, it became less important for me to tune in regularly. I think, in a way, I didn’t want to watch it become a shadow of itself. I never saw the quality slip, but my turning away was a preemptive measure. It’s what would keep me from having to see it devolve and degrade itself before me, becoming less of an artistic statement and more of a way...

When I was linkbuilding this past week, I came across this : It’s sweet and all, but do me a favor: if I ever die unexpectedly and you’d like to turn my blog into a tribute to me, please remove from the sidebar whatever bikini babe weight loss ads might be undercutting the solemnity. After all, if you have access to my blog and can therefore post those mournful goodbyes, you can also delete my Google adsense code. I won’t need the twelve cents a year anymore. Thank you in advance, from this side of the veil of tears.

Here’s a question: what does Mega Man think? When he stands there blinking, staring into the space where the now defeated robot master once stood, pelting him with projectiles, what does he think? What runs through his mind? What kind of things bubble up from beneath, into and through Mega Man’s consciousness, as he stands stock still, willfully paralyzed, unresponsive to requests and commands to move, blinking, wondering, pondering. What sort of things might go through his mind? What memory is he fighting to suppress? What goal is he fighting for? It can’t be everlasting peace. Not anymore. He knows better. The fighting never ends, and yet he never stops fighting. He stands alone and small in an empty room, blinking. What injury is freshest in his mind? What narrowly-avoided death trap will haunt his dreams? When will he get to go home? What sort of a life is this that he leads? An endless gauntlet of machines designed for the specific purpose of wearin...

It should be clear to readers of this blog that music is extremely important to me — what with the fact that a whole two previous posts were tagged as having to do with music and they both consist entirely of context-free YouTube clips — and so nothing bothers me more than seeing it disrespected. Of course, being human beings (and, more to the point, being Americans), disrespecting something is the first thing we do when money is involved, and compromising artistic integrity is a close second. Hence the use — or misuse, or abuse — of excellent songs in commercials that seem to be suspiciously engineered to retroactively drain respectability from anyone who ever enjoyed the songs therein. Here are ten of the worst offenders that come to mind. Please feel free to leave more in the comments, so that I can become even more upset, and have another reason to stomp loudly in small circles around my house. 1) “Boom Boom,” John Lee Hooker, 1962. Ruined by Chili’s. I won’t preten...