Sentential Links #86

Yup, we've reached Installment #86 of Sentential Links. However, we will not be 86ing the series. Just in case anyone was wondering.

:: I had a wild hair and decided to redesign my weblog. (Sean's is the first blog I ever saw, and aside from changing the contents of his sidebar on occasion, his blog has maintained its look for the entire time -- until last week.)

:: Well, here it is. It's not too pink, is it? (No. It's more of a faded salmon color, actually. [Little Friends joke there.] Lynn redid her blog's appearance too.)

:: Every time we receive one message it means we are not receiving something else. (I haven't commented on the Anna Nicole Smith thing because it just doesn't interest me, except that I've noted what Belladonna notes here -- the media focus on her was absurd. I just don't get it. Her death was the banner headline that day in the Buffalo News, beating out the ongoing trial of a former close associate of the Vice President of the United States. There's a statement in there about our priorities.)

:: The ESRB is so eager to let me know if the game will torment my ears with bad words, or if my eyes might be scalded by the sight of boobies, but they never tell me what I really want to know: They never warn me that I need to pick up an extra controller or mouse while I’m buying the game, to replace the one I’m inevitably going to smash. (I have got to stop reading Shamus's blog, because every day I read him I feel my resistance to allowing computer games in the home to slip a little. The other day at Target I very nearly dropped forty bucks on a five-pack of Star Wars games, but luckily for me and my wallet and that pesky marriage thing, I recovered after a self-administered dope-slap. But you can't go around giving yourself dope-slaps forever; sooner or later their effectiveness wears off, and then you're just that weird long-haired guy in overalls who keeps slapping himself in public. And believe me, I don't want to be that guy.)

:: Making a bigger leap, I think that the thread connecting 24, CSI, opposition to anti-bullying legislation, and in the past opposition to anti-lynching statutes is the conviction that society requires extra-legal violence in order to hold together. (Hmmmmm.)

:: So, to summarize: it's badly paid, the hours are weird, the office environment can be claustrophobic, you can't get the staff, you're selling your wares to big corporations who can roll over in their sleep and crush you if you don't make nice, nobody's going to give you a champagne reception, a stretch limo or a signing tour, there's lots of business admin stuff to deal with, and you still have to cram in a normal social life or you'll go mad.

On the other hand: you're doing exactly what you always wanted to do (or you'd get frustrated and go do something else). And what could be better than that?

:: I’ve recently received permission from Ian Hamet to explain the events behind his mysterious disappearance from the Web last July, and his enigmatic reappearance in mid-October. The tale’s not quite as lurid as the fevered imaginings that had me calling the American consulate on Ian’s behalf, but it’ll do.

:: I'm a latecomer to the horror genre. Aside from a couple Steven King movie adaptions, the required Edgar Allen Poe poetry (standard for any budding young Goth), and weekends rolling dice over my Vampire character sheet as a teenager I didn't bother with the genre much.

Enough for now. Tune back in next week for more exciting stuff.