Anyway, what I was driving at ... for some reason or other, I chose a digital publisher. dissertation.de who, by the way, have so far not managed to get my royalties for 2001 in. Christiane did so a year earlier and had to find that VG Wort, a German interest group who reimburse authors for royalties lost through photocopying, did not accept print on demand, claiming that no-one pays for digital publications in the first place so the author does not lose anything through photocopying.
I tried to claim my thesis for 2001 and succeeded. Must be progress ...
12:10 PM

 
Will & Grace? Duh. Gimmie Jack & Karen anytime.
12:00 PM

Wednesday, June 19, 2002  
First We Chase Manhattan ...

I watched the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge (formerly "Chase Manhattan") from my window tonight.

The first lot to come by - having run a distance that takes me around 15 minutes of brisk walk & uphill! - I wouldn't have been able to outrun them had I joined them at that point.
After ten minutes, they were still coming strong, a little slower maybe, but chatting, laughing, called between the groups, some trying the get a La Ola going down the street.
After 25 minutes the walkers outnumbered the runners.
After half an hour of watching moving bodies, no lie, stationary objects I tried to look at were wobbling. Focusing on the runners, the house-fronts across the street developed a strange moiree-effect in the corner of my eye ...

Chase Manhatten comes with a t-shirt contest. Last year, the company I was with then designed *one* xxx....xxLarge shirt for 5 runners who actually managed to run convoy all the way and come in just after the top 50%. Check the Blue Mars website for a picture.

This year, the best sights - apart from a woman with an umbrelle and some guys carrying ... something - was a guy still in his grey suit - but with running shoes alright.

The JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge has a ten year tradition in Frankfurt: companies go outside and run the city in an event that promotes fairness on the job and teamwork. This year had above 51 thousand runners from more than 1.700 companies - some of whom bus in from halfway across Germany.
1:04 PM

Sunday, June 02, 2002  
Mona Lara Lisa

Today, German "women's" TV program Mona Lisa had a piece on women and porn, claiming that what with the anonymity (yeah, right) of the internet, more women get into watching porn - prompting the industry to produce porn targeted at women: softer, more romantic etc. etc. (yeah, right).

One of the productions Mona Lisa showed was a series made by a woman, Ira Hoffman, who dresses up as Lara Croft, stalks deserts and other so-called exotic places and "chances upon" couples making out. Claim: "Die Produzentin erobert mit einer starken Frau als Abenteurerin in der Erotikfilmbranche Neuland." (The producer stakes new claims for strong women as adventurers in the erotics-industry.)

But really, the umpteenth time Lara Croft gets misappropriated as a role-model for strong women is not worth a post, is it ...
9:55 AM

Saturday, June 01, 2002  
underdramatized

Been to see Episode 2.

Soo? It was *fun*. E2 is a digital-fx-fest. A seat-gripper for its racing-scenes. A 3D-goggle-movie without the goggles.

And after the utterly bland E1, at least here you can do good old 90s-style overintrepretations again. If Star Wars was about the classical son-father conflict, America growing up, whatever, you know the lines ... E2 is the nostalgic reinterpretation of embarrassingly adolescent bahavior into a young rebel pose. "I only want to save the world - but my mentor won't let me." *sulk* Timely and appropriate. Complete with a bit of wholesale antidemocratic "the senate is stupid and corrupt and sets loose a war machinery it will not be able to control in a bit". Just where have we seen those clone warriors before (or after)? If only one strong man had taken matters in his hands ...

Mark thinks its unrealistic the way the ex-queen packs her own luggage - I simply want to know when thoses cases will be available at a mall near me.

More importantly, Mark asks "If computer games as an art form have such promise, why does the appearance of a game-sequence (a scene intended to anchor a computer game tie-in) consistently represent an intrusion into the drama?" Question back: If the "drama" is as weak as it is in E2, where's the intrusion? E2 happily strings along genre-typical scenes and manages not to lose its speed. It's a two-and-a-half hour trailer with just enough drama thrown in to carry the viewer along. To stay with the games-metaphor: the cut-scenes (that usually transport the narrative in an action game) are kept to a minimum. Very low drama-intrusion but sufficiently narratized to be palatable for a mainstream audience.
Unlike e.g. the Tomb Raider movie that might have worked through game aesthetics alone but really crashed with the weight of some sort of plot some producer obviously thought mandatory for a motion picture.
So now games stop trying to be "interactive movies", movies aiming for blockbuster will try to be linearized games for while and then maybe we'll get two (or more) independent art forms.
1:12 PM