Quartz City

Everyone is blogging-wide on this, so I’m obliged to make note of this. One part reality television and many parts Sartre, Kafka, The Prisoner, and good old-fashioned social paranoia, Mafia has become the parlor game of choice in the convention scene. Mafia has now hit the NYC literary set and as they say, hilarity ensues.

Novelist Jonathan Lethem has become an evangelist in literary circles for a party game called “Mafia” that involves lies, deceit, and heavy doses of social paranoia - all of which are readily available at any serious Manhattan cocktail party. The game is played with twelve people, three of which, unbeknownst to everyone else, are designated “mafia.” The mafia attempt to turn the rest of the group against each other as mafia suspects are voted out of the group. People that have played with Lethem find it a little disconcerting. The skill at psychological manipulation required to play well (”social torture,” The Observer calls it) greatly exceeds that of the average Manhattan-variety social climber. The true protagonists are not to be trusted.

Can’t wait for this to hit the LA entertainment industry folks.

PopMatters’ top 10 nicely summarizes the speculation surrounding 9/11, the War On Terrorism, and the Secret War On The Public. The hit parade goes…

1. Great Game in the Caspian Sea
2. The Afghanistan/Enron Connection
3. The Magic Passport Theory
4. Hijacker Oddities I
5. Hijacker Oddities II
6. Insider Trades
7. The New World Order Will Not Be Televised
8. Iran/Contra Redux
9. The Reichstag Fire and Operation Northwoods
10. Things to Come

Worth checking out as some of this is going to figure into much of what’s in store for 2003.

Jenny points out a couple of cool things:

A RSS feed for the excellent Astronomy Picture of the Day and the GeoURL ICBM Address Server

Because you can’t have enough tarot decks, ladies and gentlemen - the Peanuts Tarot Deck.

Record numbers of American “refugees” are seeking asylum in Canada.

Just dropped a pile of stuff on eBay over the weekend. Several Apple “Think Different” posters and a big pile of Hellblazer and Swamp Thing comics.

Teresa Hayden points out a thread on The Straight Dope message board. Someone asked how Lord Of The Rings would read if it was written by Ernest Hemingway and the insanity starts from there.

An example:

“Choose life. Choose a side. Choose a quest. Choose a fellowship. Choose a fucking big sword. Choose elven cloaks, horses, mallorns, and rings of power…choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are and why you’ve got to destroy the fucking thing. Choose sitting by a fire listening to mind-numbing, spirit-crushing ballads, stuffing fucking lembas into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable volcano, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats who left home with you. Choose a future. Choose life…But why would I want to do a thing like that?”

Google picks me up in the oddest places…

• In the ReadMe file for the Ricochet spam reporting agent. Funny thing here is that it’s a way old friends.net address from when Xplain still had the domain. Now friends.net is an dating service.
• A Japanese site with an email address that’s over ten years old.
• A forwarded article about a faked treasure find.
• My 72nd place finish in the 1998 Lee Atwater Invitational Dead Pool.

John Robb’s suggestion about showing off Segways at theme parks and state fairs reminds me about the first time I ever saw a home computer. I think it was 1978 (so I would have been 12 years old) and my mom took me to the San Diego County Fair. I couldn’t tell you a thing about the fair, because my attention was completely absorbed by the Apple Computer booth that was either in (or adjacent to) the flower show. On display was a first generation Apple II and it was the greatest thing I’d seen.

Still feeling sucker-punched from the news about Joe Strummer yesterday. *sigh*. Only saw The Clash once back in the day when they opened up for The Who in 1982 (the bill should have been reversed) and Joe later on the tour for Earthquake Weather, but my favorite Joe memory was from the tour in which he joined The Pogues - possibly the best concert I’d seen in my life. Didn’t hurt that Los Lobos were the headliners too (the show happened the week their cover of “La Bamba” hit #1).