I have a post going up on SFist today about a boring show in Berkeley (redundant?). The show is a bunch of performance art and dance and poetry and video installations about how disabled people are sexual. YAW-AWN. It's pr0n for people who dig invalids; and it's pr0n for people who dig tolerance. I am neither of those types of people.

I originally had a fantastic headline for the post, but SFist being a more public setting than my own blog, I decided that it was a little too offensive to use there. So I'll just have to be content with using it here: Performance Art: The Greatest Handicap of Them All. Lord, I'm funny.

Aquarium Drunkard has a lovely Where Do You Go To (My Lovely) mp3 from Wes Anderson's Hotel Chevalier. Including cover art!

James bought Portal last night, an XBox game that he played for a few hours straight and beat the very same night. It was short, by game standards, but it actually felt long because the final level is about three times as long as the whole rest of the game. I didn't play, but it was very very watchable.

Anyway, the end credits are just about the best thing ever, but in a way that I can't really convey because they're all about the relationship that you form with the game's AI. It has some really genius voice lines; I think this is the first game that I've actually enjoyed listening to. There's really only two characters in the game; the player and an unseen God-figure (although you could make a case that one particular inanimate cube is anthropomorphised to the point of being an interloper).

The player's actions trigger the voice lines; and the voice lines prompt the player to take certain actions. But there's more to it than just obeying (and disobeying) the game's spoken commands; the geniusly-written dialogue is funny and interesting, and it adds significance to the objects and events in the game. (For example, there's a drawing of a cake on a wall at one point that is pretty much the funniest thing ever, because of various cake-related comments you've been hearing up to that point).

My point is, the game does a pretty amazing thing with the voice lines. I called it a "relationship" at first, then stopped myself because at first glance, it doesn't seem like you actually interact. You can't verbally respond to the voice; and the voice (generally) doesn't respond to your actions with actions of its own. It's just pre-recorded lines, after all. You don't really communicate with the voice at all; you just take actions and make decisions. Not because you want to supply information to the voice, but because there's a puzzle to be solved. You're not communicating with the voice any more than you communicating with the author of the New York Times Crossword Puzzle.

Except that the voice watches you, and reacts. Like if the NYT puzzle guy was looking over your shoulder and going, "oh, shit, you're using pen?" It IS a relationship, because both characters have attitudes about each other, and those attitudes change and are affected by both parties' actions. It's fairly simple, now that I think about it.

Why is this the first game I've ever seen that makes me feel like I've had a relationship with a character, rather than just pushed buttons on a computer? The fantastic irony here is that the character in this game is a computer.

I torrented the final song from someone, partially because it's actually a rather pretty song; but also now because of my emotional connection to it.

Have you seen HeavyInk? It's a brand new comic book website. You should totally come friend me on it. It's the work of a guy whose blog I like, and it's still all betaish and thrilling and new, and I'm going to have a hard time not spending a lot of money on it.

Last night, I had a dream in which the last name of a high school boyfriend floated through my head. I'd been trying to remember his name for YEARS, because I wanted to Google-stalk him. But I couldn't remember -- it was Peter ... something? Something Italian? I think it sounded vaguely embarrassing? I'd simply forgotten. Probably because our courtship was the kind of awkward learning process that's best left in the past.

And then, poof, in the middle of sleeping, there it suddenly was. At long last, his last name. It was like leaning against a bookcase and having it suddenly spin around and reveal a secret passageway into my preconscious.

I found him. Here he is.

He's doing fine these days (still in Connecticut, the poor thing), and it's a little hard not to still think of him as a 17-year-old. He has at least one shirtless friend, so he's a good gay. I wonder if he remembers the time that we went to see Titanic on a date and cried.

Oh shit! I just realized, THAT'S why I dreamed his last name last night: the day before, I'd done some DVD-sorting at work at involved the movie Titanic. And while I was doing it, I was reminded of that mortifying, tearful date. And then that somehow unlocked his "last name" vault in my sleepy brain.

Well. Huh. There you are. Should I email him? Errrrrrrr, probably not. And anyway, it's not possible. My email to the 17-year-old boy who liked me for a week would inevitably get misdelivered to a 26-year-old man who's moved on, far far beyond those few fumbling days.

Two months ago, I started a miniblog on which I write just a single sentence from a story, with a title. And in a fit of incredibly odd coincidence, the very first entry came true this weekend. Well, half-true, anyway: I was awakened by a new alarm clock that I thought was a smoke detector. A premonition! I wonder which one will come true next. I hope it's the one about puberty.

There's an interesting post on Slog in defense of Edda and Klara, a photograph that generated some controversy in Britain. The image is voyeuristic, with a lighting and composition that appears very candid, and a tunnel-like vignetting that calls attention to the scene like a spotlight. Two small girls engage in play that is overtly sexual. One of them is naked, and in such a position, relative to the camera, that her physical privacy is entirely eliminated.

I wonder if they're embarrassed by this photo -- it's from 1998, so they'd be teens now. They're probably either mortified, or doing exactly the same thing.

Anyway. The post on Slog is very well-put, and addresses authorship and expression in a way in which anyone acquainted with the arts is probably already familiar.

I did get a bit hung up, though, on the writer's use of the word "innocent." I think she intends it to mean "meaningless," or "without symbolic relevance." The opening sentence of the post suggests that no photographic subject is "innocent," and I'm fairly sure I can agree with that. I looked through some of my recent pictures on Flickr, and all of them can be said to signify something. Even the ones that don't seem to indict the subject or viewer:

Or does she mean "innocent" to mean "without guile," or "without ulterior motive," or "without intent to mean anything," which is very different from being actually meaningless. Because then I think all of those above photos could (arguably) refute that point.

I have determined, by closely examining my Lunch Lines, that I like to repeat myself thricely. I must think it makes me sound poetic or something. God, it sounds pretentious. Apparently I'm only tolerable when engaging in self-parody.