May Day! May Day!
All right, that was admittedly super-lame. But it does bring into question just how a holiday focused around celebrating rebirth, springtime, and poles wrapped in strands of flowers and other whatnot came to signify danger in maritime lingo…? It seems like a bit of a stretch, unless the manly-man sailor in charge of penning the naval lexicon suffered a traumatic experience with a crown of posies at a young, impressionable age. Hmmm.
Right now, the only major danger I’m in concerns my credit card and those spiffy new iPods they just released. I can’t buy one, I can’t. I have the car problem to deal with, and rent, and so on and so forth. But wow. And the new top-of-the-line is six times the size of my dinky little 5GB, and slimmer to boot.
Maybe I’ll make myself an impossible deal: if I can hit my new target weight, I’ll buy one. The trouble is, this whole getting-into-shape-for-the-summer schtick is already getting expensive. I got hooked on watching an episode of The X-Files while working out in the mornings, which is great except that each season on DVD is $130. There are nine seasons. Ouch. That said, once I plow through the rest of them (I’m currently on season six, and season seven is meant to be released this month), I’ll need something else to do while exercising, and I’m seriously eyeballing the idea of going cross-country hike-jogging for my cardio work. For which a sleeker, lighter, roomier iPod would be ideal. Hmm.
Final bit of dorky news: X-Men 2: X-Men United comes out tomorrow. I shouldn’t be this stoked. This isn’t even the incarnation that I really enjoy (I got hooked on Ultimate X-Men about two years ago, thank you Bill Coughlan), but I’m still jazzed. There’s a shirt at the local comic shop that I’m so tempted to get and wear to the premiere: it’s just a navy blue T-shirt with the X logo on the breast. Nice, subtle, cool. But still dorky. I’m not sure if I can bring myself to be that dorky.
So, yeah. X-Men 2, and then Finding Nemo, and then The Matrix Reloaded, followed by Bad Boys 2 and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It’s going to be a good summer. Pass the popcorn.
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
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