The Rabbit Hole

I've seen many arguments for and against prosecution of digital content pirates. This is the best argument I've yet read as to why prosecution is the losing strategy if your battle is really about sales and not, say, some sort of ego trip about controlling content.
( Some more thoughts on this. )


Speaking of Legos and pirates, though, I bought the latest game, Lego: Pirates of the Caribbean, and it's delightful, if a little bizarre. Like, I can hardly tell where the cut scenes are going to end and going to drop me in to play the story. Also, a lot of the story play seems to take place in scenes that aren't, strictly speaking, movie-based. For instance, recruiting Jack Sparrow's crew to go chase after Barbosa in The Curse of the Black Pearl. In the movie, Jack goes as far as to find Mr. Gibbs himself, but the rest of the crew shows up at the dock later, and that's the end of it. In the game, I run around finding each person and securing them for my ship. It's a little backwards, but in a movie where there are a) invincible zombie enemies and b) not infinite amounts of droids to destroy, it's passable. It's a Lego [Fill in the Blank Film Franchise] game; it could be Lego: Twilight and I would still play it. (Especially if I got to bash little Edward into a million studs on occasion.) Hopefully, too, it will tide me over until Lego makes my dreams come true and exploits its possession of the rights to The Lord of the Rings to make a game in addition to the physical sets.

And did I mention that I'm playing all these games on my brand new PS3?

In 2010, when I started biking to work, I promised myself that if I hit 100 trips on my bicycle--trips that would otherwise cost me a ride on the subway, not bike rides taken just for the fun of riding--I would buy myself a present with the money I'd saved commuting. I didn't make it in 2010. In 2011, however, thanks in part to the unseasonably warm weather and my increased endurance, I rode my bike on over 250 rides over the course of about 6-7 months. Counting strictly by $2.25 rides on a pay-as-you-go accounting (or $2.10 or so, with the MTA's bonus thrown in), that's more that $500 saved by not taking mass transit. If you count instead the cost of unlimited 30-day Metrocards for those months, I saved hundreds of dollars more. You could even subtract the money that I did set aside for the infrequent ride on the subway and/or bus (about $60 pre-tax from my paycheck), and I was still ahead by more than the cost of the system. And I was staying in shape. Win-win-win all around.

Why a PS3? For starters, it does have some games you can't get on the XBOX that I've been interested in playing, and I enjoyed some of them at PAXEast enough for it to stick in my mind this long. (Looking forward to the Uncharted series a lot!) I also know quite a few people who have them now from whom I can borrow games, which makes me less nervous about the investment. Ther's also the Blu-Ray player, which, as I build up my library, will come in handy. Plus our apartment already has an XBOX 360, which my roommates have rounded out with a Kinect now. I even got a $75 gift certificate at Target for buying the bundle I wanted anyway (it came with a Move controller and a game as well) after Christmas. I made out with a bandit. I feel a little ashamed spending so much on myself at the holidays, but it was something I earned. Next year, I'll try to save up for a TV :)

I have no idea how to friend people on it, but I'm TrinityVixen (shocker, I know). Say hi to me some time? Please do not laugh at my laughably paltry amount of trophies. I'm working on it!

One: Nicholas Cage's career is sure...interesting. He's in a movie called Drive Angry, for which I have just seen this trailer.

A quick synopsis for those of you who won't subject yourselves to the trailer: Nicholas Cage breaks out of Hell to stop a Satanic cult from sacrificing his grandchild to, well, presumably let other things out of Hell besides Nicholas Cage. A truly delicious William Fichtner is Satan's helper, sent to retrieve him. Also, there's some eye-candy chick, who will probably follow a trajectory where she will be introduced as "fierce independent woman," then relegated to side-kick to actual hero with actual motivation, before finally slung into damsel in distress.

I can't quite tell, on a truly impressive scale of bad movies he's made, where this one falls. Surely, it has to be better than that lamentable The Wicker Man remake, but it may not be quite up to the schlocky fun of something like Gone in 60 Seconds, for all that is has lots of muscle cars in it. Shame. I do love me some William Fichtner. He's great when he's quietly menacing evil.

*****

Two: I have yet to sit down and watch Being Human. I heard that they were remaking it for the US, though, and I automatically rolled my eyes and swore, "God, is that really necessary?" to no one in particular. (I am getting funny looks at work now.) Then I found out genre fiction punching bag, fabulous-body-having, kind of adorkable and occasional bad-ass Jedi Apprentice Samuel "Crashdown/Doomsday/that time he was on Dexter/I think he was in The Mist" Witwer was going to be in it. Goddamnit, now I have to watch this, don't I?

AHEM, I said, "I have to watch this, don't I???"


That's what I thought. Funny thing I also just learned in trying to adjust text to fit this picture: there's some option that says "abs bottom" or something. I got stuck at abs, then giggled as I moved onto bottom. Ooh, yes please?

*****

Three (things make a post): For those of you not following me on Twitter, last night I fell off my bike. Rest assured, I'm really mostly injured when it comes to my pride. I tried to go up on a curb, in the rain, and there was just no way it wasn't going to go pear-shaped. I'm lucky I'm not worse off than I am. I have a cut and some skin rubbed off on one arm, which is now much more sore than it was yesterday, but still functional. Otherwise? Fine. I guess I'm finally a true biker in the city. Short of being doored, that is, which I could totally skip as an initiation ritual. Bike was making funny noises last night, but it seemed to mostly be because of the crap on the tires hitting the brake (the wet streets kicked up a lot of grit). 

What's worse than a little fall is how blasted cold it was to be wet through last night. I came back, took a hot shower to clean up and get warm and then, despite being warm, felt cold for the rest of the night. Blargh. At least moonlightalice kindly warned me not to bike this morning as it is like to rain again. Not that I was going to. My arm is too sore for that (I caught myself with it), but it's good to know that there's a real reason not to as opposed to a wussy reason.