Not as seen on TV

Facebook recently put me back in touch with a friend I haven't seen or heard from since high school. When I found out she now works at Liz Claiborne with Tim Gunn, I immediately assumed that her life is some kind of hybrid of The Devil Wears Prada and Project Runway and I was consumed with jealousy.

But then it occurred to me that people think my job is insanely cool, ("Wow! Do you get to sit around and play video games all day? That must be the best job ever!") but if people base their understanding of what I do on the portrayal of video game companies on TV, they may have a warped perception of what my life is really like. Consider these works:

Law & Order: Criminal Intent, F.P.S.
There's so much wrong with this episode it's hard to know where to start but the title is a good place. FPS stands for First Person Shooter but the game "Deathmatch" is clearly an MMO. The visuals you see are all dungeon-based PvP fighting. Then there's TR Knight wandering around, mumbling about the "lighting on the wall polygons" the entire episode. If he's the head of programming and that's all they let him do, he is a really sucky programmer. But the best part comes when the detectives figure out that the murdered woman was online playing when she was attacked and they go to the game company to find out who else was online at the same time. It's the hottest online game going according to the script and on a Friday night at 10pm, there were a whole 50 other people playing! With subscription numbers like that, you would think that killing players would be the last thing they would do.

Law & Order: SVU, Game
The obligatory "GTA makes you kill hookers" episode. Bad Rockstar! Bad! It does have one unintentionally hilarious moment when the killer is getting a PET scan and the tech uses a Game Cube controller. I did not realize until I saw it that Nintendo also makes medical equipment.

X Files, First Person Shooter
Again, someone needs to explain to TV what FPS means. A VR game becomes sentient and kills a tester "known only as Retro" (I wonder what they put on his paycheck) so Mulder has to go in and fight it while the employees of the game company cower helplessly behind their keyboards. OK, maybe that's not so unrealistic. Scully and Mulder bicker endlessly about the relative worth of video games (SPOILER! Scully thinks they are pointless, Mulder is a fanboy) and in the end Scully has to become the kick ass bitch to defeat the virtual kick ass bitch.

CSI: Miami, Game Over
OK, what's with killing the poor testers? I mean come on! We get the lowest pay, the least respect, the crappiest computers and now you kill us off too?!?!? That said, this is my favorite of the Game Dev episodes. So many great suspects to choose from. Did Tony Hawk kill poor Jake because he was really doing all the work? was it the insane programmer who blamed the tester because of all the extra work he had fixing the bugs he found (hello! You coded the bugs asshole!)? was it the testers jealous wife (as IF!)? was it the other tester who was all hopped up on his cane sugar soda ordered special from Mexico? Can they figure it out from the mocap data of the actual murder? You are just going to have to watch this one to find out.

Murder She Wrote, A Virtual Murder
Again with the virtual reality game. And if one ever did get significant funding, I suspect the IP they would choose would not be written by a senior citizen from Cabot Cove, ME, no matter how good she is at solving murders. This episode involves Jessica having to do a last minute rewrite because of a glitch in one specific character and a lead programmer who is murdered while trying to steal source code. For a VR game. On a floppy disk. I'm sure you can fit a lot of VR code on a floppy. OK, I admit it. I am probably the only working game developer (well I will be working soon) who has actually seen an episode of Murder, She Wrote but I am sure my mother has and thinks we all walk around the office in power suits with huge shoulder pads, heels, and panty hose.

But if anyone really wants to know what it's like to work in a game company, all they really have to watch is Grandma's Boy. It's crude, disgusting, adolescent and totally accurate.

Shhhh... If you are quiet you can hear the fiddling

I drove by this McCain/Palin sign proudly displayed in the parking lot of a lumber yard that failed in the wake of our housing crisis and I couldn't help but stop and take a picture. So many thoughts sprang to my mind immediately. How can anyone be so clueless as to miss the incredible irony of an image like this one? Did someone actually have the thought, "I know, I have a vacant, run down property. It's the PERFECT place for a McCain sign!"

If I had more of a vandal’s heart, I would be tempted to add a sign overtop saying, “This failed business brought to you by:” but that would be unfair. They haven’t really had a chance to put businesses under yet. But that doesn’t stop their local campaign office from taking advantage of the opportunities a deserted commercial site has to offer.

Because nothing says “Reform*Prosperity*Peace” like a sign behind a locked chain link fence.

Old 84 Lumber

I am so tempted to post this to failblog...

Blog This!

I downloaded the new Picasa 3 Beta today and decided to check out the "Blog This" feature. Of course, my hard drive is full of nothing more exciting than endless pictures of my cats being exceptionally cute. This is Mingus, climbing the apple tree in the front yard.

The chili that gave me weird dreams

It occurs to me that just posting the weird dreams I had because of the chili without the recipe is cruel so here goes. It's inspired by Ellie Krieger's White Chili, as seen on Food TV by me yesterday before I went shopping. Actually, it was the fact that I stumbled on really nice poblano peppers at the Korean market that prompted me to make this.

Black and White Chili

olive oil

1 medium onion, diced

3 medium poblano peppers, finely diced (seeded and ribs removed)

1 Tbsp garlic (from the big jar I bought at the Korean market)

1 Tbsp ground cumin

1/2 Tsp kosher salt

1/4 Tsp chili powder (no salt kind)

3/4 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 Tsp fresh ground pepper

1 pound ground white meat turkey

1 can black eyed peas

1 can black beans

3 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1 Tbsp lime juice

3-4 dashes hot sauce

1/4 cup gravy flour (like Wondra)

1 can hominy

Salt

Lime wedges

Heat the oil in large pot or Dutch oven over moderate heat. Add the onion and poblanos, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are soft, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic, cumin, chili powder, salt, fresh ground pepper, and oregano and cook, for about 30 seconds.

Add the ground turkey and cook, breaking up the meat with a spoon, until the meat is no longer pink about 2 minutes. Add the beans, broth, lime juice, and hot sauce. Sprinkle gravy flour over mixture and mix in well. Cook, partially covered, stirring occasionally, for 25 minutes.

Add the hominy and salt, to taste, and continue cooking, partially covered, 10 minutes longer. Garnish with a lime wedge.

NOTE: This chili was even better the next day.

Things that are better now than when we were kids

As I refilled the bottle of olive oil I keep next to the stove from the 3L bottle I buy at the warehouse club, I flashed on the tiny bottle of Pompeian Olive Oil we used to have in the pantry when I was a kid. Recipes that called for olive oil required precision measurements so as to not waste a precious drop. When the bottle ran out, we piled in the car for a trip down to Little Italy to a special Italian grocery store to buy another tiny bottle. Now, I use olive oil for all of my cooking. I can't think of a meal that doesn't start with a swirl of olive oil in a pan. Sure, I have smaller bottles of different grades and nationalities of olive oil, but the giant jug of extra virgin olive oil is my go to oil. Every time I go to make brownies, I have to run out and buy new vegetable oil because the tiny bottle in the pantry (that I bought last time I made brownies) has gone rancid on me.

But I still love a good trip to the Italian grocery store.

Ringtone dilemma

So I finally got around to replacing my old cell phone (you know the one with the 4 key that didn't work anymore, making it impossible to text gerunds) and upgraded to a fancy one with a full keyboard, the LG enV. Because I am inherently distrustful of anything different or new, I refuse to take the protective plastic scratch guard off the front of it. I figure once I do, I am fully committed. But then again, am I really committed to a phone while it still has only the default ringtones?

But that presents the dilemma at hand. Do I stick with the elaborate set of ringtones I already have that allow me to immediately identify who is calling me without having to dig my phone out of my purse? Or, do I seize the opportunity to change things up and get some new tunes? No, if I have to download them all over anyway, I might was well embrace the new.

Getting new ringtones always seems like it should be so much fun but then, when faced with the moment of download no return, I always find myself paralyzed with indecision. What if I choose the wrong song? I'm too cheap to waste a $2 download so once I get a song, I am damn well going to use it (thus the Rainbow Connection debacle of 2004). How does one express themselves and identify their friends and family with a 3-5 minute song? It's a veritable minefield of cute and uncool and annoying. And now there is the added wrinkle (poor choice of words) that I don't recognize half the songs on the "What's New" page. sigh.

Back to the Verizon Media Store.

Dreams inspired by white turkey chili

I'm in a night club and we're all sitting around, waiting for Deb's act to start. She explains to me that she is going to get me a pink sweater like hers with one big black dot, but first she has to get one with two black dots for my niece. Then she goes on to tell me the Pony Club store in Savannah closed and she just cleaned up on stuff to give my niece for Christmas.

First, there was some kind of ecological disaster and we all had to be airlifted out. I had to hang onto the ladder and hold my breath through the poison gas cloud.

Upon my arrival at the relocation desk, I waited while a group of travel agents finished the arrangements for a tour for a high school reunion. Finally, she hands me my relocation package, which includes a brochure about the nightlife in the area where I will be settled. It has a club that features "shovel dancing" and has a picture of a middle-aged man in full motorcycle leathers and assless chaps dancing with a woman in a mumu. I know I will be fine.

Finally, I am coming home from Thanksgiving Dinner and remark this was the worst one yet [this is sadly, not dream fiction, I have had some wretched Thanksgiving dinners]. I stumble onto Erica and a group of her friends just as they are setting the table for their own Thanksgiving. I ask if I can help and find myself sitting at the end between Erica and Christopher Walken. I go to check the messages on my phone and when I come back, there is a pot of vegetables in front of me. I ask Erica if there are fiddleheads in there and she says, yes and a lot more. I look in and there are indeed fiddleheads plus a bunch of small vegetables shaped like skulls and skeletons. Christopher Walken looks at me and asks, "are you acquainted with the Flintstones?"