There were two things in this month’s Atlantic Monthly that I found interesting/commentable.
The first was an obituary for Steve Irwin. I want to preface this by saying I don’t know anything about him. I’ve never seen his shows or movies or anything. I just have a perception of him as a kind of caricature of an Australian bushman. The obituary was titled “Unfair Dinkum”. It wasn’t very informative but that doesn’t matter b/c it was the title that struck me.
I hope that when I have an obituary written about me it is not titled with some sort of goofy colloquialism. I can’t think of what it would be, maybe some Spanglish thing, “Este Vato es dead, guey” or nineties punker slang, “Rode the last wohl whip”? It doesn’t quite have that whole dignified thing that obituaries should have.

The second thing in there is about creating video games that have more interactive characters. They would be driven by an AI engine that could have life like conversations and reactions to your character. At first it sounded interesting. Instead of talking to someone and having them say, “The princess is missing! No one ever goes in the haunted castle.” you could have a real conversation with the character. This sounded great until they began talking about what they planned on doing with it.
The programmers want to create short sitcom style games. To me that’s not all the interesting. If you look up sitcoms on Wikipedia it points out the fact that there are only really like 10 sitcom plots anyway, not counting the “a very special episode” or Christmas special plots.
So anyway, the first game they designed involved you going to dinner at a friends and getting sucked into their argument. It’s an interesting concept, but it doesn’t exactly sound fun. Woohoo, can I play Awkward Moment again?! After going to an awkward dinner party in real life I always want to let off steam by reenacting it on my computer at home!
My roommate and I started brainstorming sequels like, “Why is my girlfriend pissed at me?”, “Surly customer service rep”, or “Is the boss hinting he’s going to fire me?”
Screw escapist fantasies like drag racing in the streets of Tokyo or blowing up secret terrorist organizations. I want to relive the most uncomfortable and stressful aspects of life in a virtual enviroment!