I wrote earlier about the teddy bear who’d collapsed on his way towards my apartment. Unfortunately not all the toys in San Francisco are so lucky. In rougher neighborhoods, like Haight-Ashbury, you come across scenes like this one. Mac and I had a Stand By Me moment a while back when we came across this bear’s body lying on the road in front of a car. It looked innocent enough until we came closer to the scene and realized that his head had been crushed!

No witnesses saw the incident, but investigators are saying it’s a case of post-picnic violence. The victim was most likely gaily dancing about while his assailant was watching him, catching him unawares. At six o’clock, his mommy and daddy arrived on the scene to take him home to bed, but instead found this.

Also, another SFist post is up.

Last night I signed up for The National Novel Writing Month, and I’m already looking forward to it. The idea is that you start writing at midnight on November 1st and stop at midnight November 30th with a 50,000 word novel. I especially like the Special Olympics quality of the event, because if you finish, you win! Yay!

Their best line is that novel writing is a “one day event.” As in, “one day I’ll write a novel.” That’s been my M.O. for years. I’ve been convinced that I could write an undisputed masterpiece of fiction, no question; the only reason it wasn’t already done is that I’d just never gotten around to the technical detail of actually sitting down and typing it. NaNoWriMo is perfect for attitudes like that — it’ll either be the start of something really cool, or it’ll be a much-needed dose of humility.

I realize I’m potentially setting myself up for a fall. I’ve already got a job that’s mostly writing documents in Word, and I haven’t been doing a stellar job of keeping up with that. Plus I signed up to do at least one column a week for SFist, plus this website, plus a couple of trips next month including one back east for Thanksgiving. Now I’m adding 1500 words a day. In my case, the word count isn’t really a problem — any unfortunate sap who’s been on the receiving end of one of my e-mails when I’m in the middle of a personal crisis can tell you that. Or for that matter, anyone who slogs through these entire blog posts.

So it’s not the number of words, it’s ending up with something salvageable by the end of it. That’s the other reason I think the NaNoWriMo is such a good idea — it forces you to abandon all the “this sucks” thinking that keeps getting you stuck, and instead just keep pouring everything out, rid of any delusions that what you’re pouring out doesn’t suck.

I’m pretty sure I’ve already got the idea for what I’m going to write, too. It’s this thing that started out as a videogame proposal back when I was at LucasArts; I was convinced it was going to be groundbreaking. I eventually realized it was a lousy game proposal, so I became convinced that it would make a great webcomic. That obviously never materialized either, so now it’s going to be my November novel. It’s about giant robots and atomic bombs and a team of superheroes. It’s going to be awful. I can’t wait.

Other subscriptions Sydney had to cancel: The American Journal of Stubble, and Bland Quarterly.

There’s some videogame website whose motto is “A moment enjoyed is never wasted,” and that’s been a useful rationalization for a while, but there’s no way I can justify my total lack of activity yesterday. I didn’t even manage to accomplish anything for my Sims. So I officially completely and totally wasted the day of October 16, 2005. Closest I came to an achievement was finally finishing that Terry Pratchett book (which was good but not particularly memorable).

All my time-wasting culminated in four straight hours of “Alias” reruns. Season 4 is like “Alias” on Paxil: the highs and lows are evened out, and it’s going forward as competent, dependable television. There are still solid episodes that are actually really good — the one with the ex-Soviet terrorist group training its agents in a simulated American suburban neighborhood was a well-done standalone episode. And last night I finally saw the episode where Sydney gets buried alive and Marshall has to gouge out the eyes of a bad guy with a spork; that was a good one. There’s just not much of the “oh hell no they didn’t just do that” anymore, although they seem to be taking steps in that direction by having Joel Grey as a Sloane look-alike.

Season 5 I’m still not sure about. I was really happy to see Fred show up, especially as a bad guy, and especially in what looks like it’s going to be a recurring part (at least until the next episode). They’re trying hard to get us interested in the two new characters who’re supposed to carry the series now, but it’s just not working yet. Granted, it’s better than the previous week’s, which had the action-packed climax on a plane with the super fighting team of a pregnant woman, a chubby guy, and a man in his early 50s taking on a terrorist cell. (But having the device turn out to be a body, not a bomb, was a nice touch).

I’m sure I’ll keep up with it at least until TNT starts showing the zombie episodes. After that, though, the new ones are going to have to pull off something pretty remarkable to keep me interested.

I wrote another article for SFist, this one about Apple’s announcement and the new video iPod. The comments section is pretty funny. As angry and bitter about computers that I am, I’ve got to laugh at being called an Apple-hater, as I’m sitting here using Safari on my Mac mini hooked up to the second iPod I’ve bought and an iSight camera and an Apple wireless keyboard and two variations of Apple mice sitting next to my second PowerBook and knowing that I sold a PowerBook to one friend and convinced another friend to buy an iBook. Part of me wonders what you’ve got to do to be a real Apple devotee, but then the rest of me doesn’t want to know because I’m not sure I could afford it.

Oh yeah, and the guy who said that the obsession with expensive gadgets is a manifestation of a greater socialogical (sic) ill of consumerist excess and social withdrawal? Well, no shit, Brainiac.

Anyway, the new iPod. No, it’s not that big a deal, just a thinner version of the iPod with a wider screen. It’s actually really nice, from what I’ve seen, and the best design of an iPod yet. It’s just not the big “video iPod” that all the blogs were leading up to. Great product by all accounts, just nothing astounding. Not even I can justify getting one, unless something… happens… to my existing iPod.

I was never convinced that any mobile device could play video worth seeing, until I saw the Sony PSP. I said it before, but including Spider-man 2 with the thing was a great move on Sony’s part. I don’t think it sold people on the idea of buying movies on UMD — it didn’t sell me on the idea, anyway. But it did show that it’s actually practical to watch an entire movie on a handheld. The problems, as I’ve said enough times now that I’m already sick of hearing myself saying it, are that UMDs suck and memory sticks don’t hold enough. It’s going to take a real video iPod, with a hard drive and everything, before you see people getting excited about mobile video.

Just for yuks, and to see what the video quality was, I did download a couple of videos from the iTunes Music Store. They’re nothing to get all excited about — they didn’t draw much attention to it in the press releases, but did mention it at the actual presentation, but the video is only 320×240. (And I’ll admit that the two videos were “Limp” by Fiona Apple, and “Least Complicated” by the Indigo Girls.)

Browsing through the video store was kind of neat, because at this point it’s still mostly old, old stuff that makes you say, “Oh yeah, I remember that video!” I’m having to flashbacks to sitting in the living room watching “Night Tracks” on TBS waiting for them to play “One Thing Leads to Another” by the Fixx again. As soon as they have “The Warrior” by Scandal Featuring Patty Smythe, I’m totally buying the hell out of that.

As for the TV shows, I’m skeptical I’ll ever use it. If I were using something like an iMac as my whole home media center, I could see how it would be cool — but then if you’re using an iMac instead of a bigger TV, then are you in the market to pay two bucks a pop for episodes of TV shows that were broadcast the night before? All the shows are DRM’ed with Fairplay, so it’s not as if I could copy the video file to a PSP, either. Or burn it on a DVD. They’ve still got to work that part out, I think.

Apparently I’m turning into a woman.

The only question is whether I’m becoming a middle-aged housewife, or a disaffected angry young soulful woman tryin’ to make it in a man’s world.

Evidence for the housewife: I’ve been listening to “Con te Partiro” by Andrea Bocelli non-stop for the past couple of days. Often — and here’s the embarrassing part — with my eyes closed, like some tweed-wearing New Yorker-reading cultural elitist sitting in an armchair enraptured, letting the music wash over him; and sometimes tearing up like Robert de Niro at the opera in The Untouchables. This is not how grown men are supposed to behave, dammit. It’s not real opera, it’s pop-era. It’s the Bellagio music! That ain’t art, it’s Vegas. And not cool swingin’ Vegas, but taking a break from the kids to fly out from Ohio and play the nickel slots and try the buffets because they’re so reasonable Vegas.

Evidence for the chick-lit reader: I’ve also been listening to Fiona Apple. And liking it. A lot. Maybe it’s just karma for making fun of her before, and hopefully buying two of her records and “Criminal” will pay it off. I guess I’d always dismissed her as just Alanis Morisette gone R&B, or Tori Amos shifted down a few octaves, but now I don’t know what to compare her music to. It’s not just that she can sing and that her songs are well-constructed, it’s that all the arrangements are really, really well done — Extraordinary Machine has a lot of the Abbey Road thing going on.

She’s still got a little of the Wednesday Addams vibe, but after Wednesday moved to France and worked in a cabaret for a few years and had a bad relationship with a bisexual German existentialist filmmaker who would tie her to a wooden chair with flaking paint under a single bare lightbulb and make her watch as he over-tightened the strings of her piano — the only thing she had tying her to her past life in the States — until they snapped and she’d flinch with each one and swear that she’d make her way back home and use this rage and pour it into her music. Or maybe just stayed in the US and dated the moron who made Boogie Nights.

And I don’t know what to think about all this Norah Jones and Neko Case music I’ve got. And the four different versions of “Possession” by Sarah McLachlan. Not to mention the fact that I own every Indigo Girls album. Jeez, am I going to have to get tickets for Lilith Fair now?

One thing I will say: the Bellagio fountain show for Con Te Partiro is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life, ever. Yeah, I said it.

Another SFist post is up today, about the robotics convention I went to last weekend. I have to say it was kind of a disappointment (the convention, and the column), probably because I’ve been jaded by all the money that gets poured into E3 shows. I’d expected to see more ASIMO and AIBO and less Lego Mindstorms and circuit boards.

In other news, the Wallace and Gromit movie is just awesome, probably my favorite movie of the year. I was thinking there’d be no way they could keep up the level of the shorts in a feature film, but they did. I also saw Serenity a second time, and it was still good, but I don’t have much desire to see it again. Now the wait’s on until DOOM.

And apart from that excitement, I’ve been playing a lot of DOOM 3 (because I’d been feeling guilty I hadn’t given it enough chance, when it turns out I had), waiting to get into a Battleground in World of Warcraft (I’m not yet convinced they actually exist), and playing the Sims 2 expansion pack, “Nightlife.”

They did a good job with it; in fact, I think that this is the expansion pack they should’ve released first. I still believe that the “University” expansion is too separate from the main game; when most of us were still just looking for more content for the main game. One of the things that always impressed me about the Sims franchise and kept me from getting totally burned out on it was that they were really committed to making the expansion packs have real content instead of just being shovelware. But with “University,” they went too far in that direction; just an updated “Livin’ Large” pack would’ve been welcomed.

“Nightlife” is the right balance — it’s the same theme as the old “Hot Date” pack but adds a lot more, and it’s all well-integrated into the main game. All the new interactions and locations are welcome, and there’s just a lot more to do. I’m one of the sad little people who plays it like a soap opera, setting up families to watch them intermingle and fall in and out of love and make each other’s lives miserable, so I appreciate all the new features making it easier to get your computer people to get other computer people into bed with them. It’s still frustrating in places, and the pack introduces a whole bunch of new bugs, but on the whole it’s engaging. Probably not enough to draw in somebody who’s not already interested in the Sims, but good for those of us who are.

Currently I’ve got the Gordon family moved in with the Wayne and Prince families; I’m hoping that Bruce Wayne will make the moves on Diana Prince and kick his current wife Selina out to the curb. I think the only thing geekier than having comic book families in the Sims would be Lord of the Rings families, but I never claimed to be highbrow. As an example: because the Sims 2 doesn’t have a “young ward” option, I had to make Dick Grayson Bruce Wayne’s son. None of the game’s built-in aspirations are really suited to the Batman, so I just figured he was obsessed with family and should have the family aspiration. So now all his wants are “Tickle Dick” and “Play with Dick.” Which is high comedy.

I wrote another thing for SFist that’s up now; they’re getting lighter and lighter, I’ve noticed. This week I’m going to some big robot convention in San Jose, hopefully I’ll be able to get something more substantial from that instead of just letting Eve do the research while I add TV references.

And it turns out I need help with the TV references as well. I found out this week that for years I’d been mis-remembering the most important thing to any Generation X aspiring trendy hipster: Brady Bunch trivia. See, I always thought that when Jan made up the name of her imaginary boyfriend, she chose “Ron Glass“. And I always thought that was awesome. What better way to get attention away from Marcia and stick it to your uptight mom and homo dad, than show up at the big dance with a black man 20 years your senior?

And then when she showed up with the big black afro wig, that just knocked it over the top. Jan had gone past living out some predictable mid-70’s white girl Mandingo fantasy, and had blossomed into a true nubian princess.

But I was looking around the web, and it turns out the name she picked was George Glass. Who’s way more boring. Still, it turns out he was an associate producer for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? which I guess is kind of funny.

What was almost as good as Serenity was seeing the trailer for the new DOOM movie which is going to be out at the end of the month. Hot damn, I can’t wait.

As much as I love the Resident Evil movies (no, really), they still cling to this idea that they’re somehow real movies. They think that deep down, they’re still horror movies using a videogame franchise as the basis for their stories. This is a mistake. And if the trailer is any indication, the braintrust behind DOOM has escaped that trap and made the first true videogame movie that is going to kick so much ass. They’ve got The Rock, who’s awesome; they’ve got the chainsaw, which is awesome; and they sure as hell better have the first-person sequences in the movie, and not make that just a gimmick for the trailer. Because that’s what’ll make this not just another cheesy sci-fi action flick, but a truly transcendently cheesy sci-fi videogame movie.

I didn’t even like Doom 3 that much and lost interest after about a half hour. Looking back on it, they had the reverse problem — it’s a mindless videogame that thought that deep down, it was a sci-fi horror movie. Some games — Half-Life 2 for one — can pull that off, but the Doom guys couldn’t. So the whole thing came across as bland and uninspired. And really, really dark.

In other Martian news, The Pixies Sell Out is coming out on DVD tomorrow. It’s a DVD of last year’s tour with, I’m assuming and hoping, brief interviews and such. There’s a clip from the DVD on ifilm.com which rates a big “meh.” But it was still a good show.