The yummy and the profane

Few sites have as straightforward a domain name as this one. Just another iteration of the popular rule that if you can imagine it, it exists on the Internet -- and it's swearing at you for no good reason.

Bleeding heart

I'm working on an essay for Jew-ish.com that promises to be the most personal thing I've ever published anyplace other than here. It's about Jewishness and compulsive overeating, which seem correlated, though mostly through semi-anecdotal evidence and studies from quite a few years ago. I mentioned in therapy today that talking about my struggle with food addiction is a way of cutting through the shame of that insidious, widely misunderstood problem, and I think that's true.

It's possible that opening my heart in a piece of writing that the whole world can theoretically see isn't the wisest move. But I think there are some advantages to our tell-all Internet culture; one is that if the majority of people give TMI, it's no longer such a faux pas. I doubt anybody will decide not to hire me because they Googled my name and found me waxing philosophic about my Lexapro use or disordered eating.

It's certainly possible, but I think the positive aspects of putting it out there outweigh the negative ones. It's not like there's anything online that truly impugns my character. Talking about struggle, making it public, means it's no longer a secret. It also suggests a readiness to deal with things directly, to come out of isolation and embarrassment and work with myself as I am, not as I wish I was. That's why I chose my friend Michelle's recent picture of me as a Facebook profile photo:

My decision to take off my glasses makes this a slightly strange portrait, but what I focused on when I first saw it was its unsparing nature. It's easy to see my weight here: It's in my face, my cheeks, my chin. This is how I actually look, and while I'm not doing cartwheels about it, I'm trying to view this image with clear eyes and a peaceful mind. This is what I'm working with, and it's hardly perfect, but it's not a disaster, either. It's a pretty decent place to start.

White pages

Sasha redesigned her blog, transforming its aesthetic into something strikingly minimalist. Makes me want to tinker around with mine. We'll see. Maybe something new for 2010.

I'm also still thinking about buying MazelTofu.com, a domain I've wanted for a while now. The concept: a site devoted to Jewish vegetarian cooking, including recipes, test-kitchen adventures, and anecdotes. I'd probably build the page using WordPress; I'm just concerned that it would be frivolous to buy cyber-property during a low-income month. Perhaps posting the idea here will prompt me to finally act, before someone else nabs the URL.

Comment of the week

Regarding my recent blurb about Randomocity, Anna "Flamingo" writes:

I catch your blog while surfing and typically enjoy reading it, however, gotta disagree with you about the title: I LOVE it :)

Randomocity is one of those words that's used occasionally in internet slang, but has never really been given an actual definition. Also, I've never seen it used in any respected media outlets. Really there's nothing unfortunate about it except for some obscurity that a little thought can accommodate for: Random, Anxiety, Velocity, City... any of those words could come into play I'm guessing.

I can say that I am more interested in seeing Randomocity than many of the films I've seen trailers for recently. Soundtrack please :)

And of course she's absolutely right. The word "randomocity" existed, at least on the Web, before the filmmakers came up with the title. We can only hope the movie lives up to Anna's interest (and mine). (About the soundtrack: Many of the film's Internet fans are begging for it, too, but there doesn't seem to be one yet. Maybe with enough online pressure, they'll think about putting one out.)

The prettiest charts and graphs you've ever seen

Last night, Reed told me about Information Is Beautiful, which contains a truly magnificent amount of data organized into gorgeous visual representations. It's nerdbait, sure, but also a nice demonstration of how satisfying a solid site concept, well executed, can be.

"That's low, JDate. That's low."

Blogger Sasha Pasulka, aka Evil Beet, whom I've known since our teenage years, got attention from Gawker for this Yom Kippur-themed beauty:


As if there weren't already enough reasons to wonder about JDate. In other Sasha news, she gave a shout-out to the Kibbutz in her Yom Kippur post, where she links to this blog and my housemate Steven Blum's. It's always impressive when people as successful as Sasha remain so grounded and generous.

Obama's speech, live-blogged

Courtesy of the Times. Liz and Shaul wanted the president to take a stronger stand on the public option, but both agreed it was a decent speech. Liz summarized it as follows: Obama told the Republicans to stop being assholes, and made it clear that he intends to get some kind of reform passed. I think that about covers it. I did like the way he used the letter from Ted Kennedy to segue into the notion that health-care reform is a moral issue. That was a typically smart, powerful Obama move.

Modern anomie, thy name is Facebook

A friend just posted Peggy Orenstein's March Times piece on her Facebook page. (Where else?) I wonder whether another social networking site will eventually dethrone it, or whether it'll take a Luddite backlash to end its quiet reign of terror.

Once again, we take the blame

Hilarious. Thanks to Mai Li for the tip-off.

The man behind the curtain

According to NPR, it's getting harder for those who spew bile online to maintain their anonymity. As someone who's been cyber-harassed, I appreciate that.

A superb "Arkanoid" clone for Mac

Arkanoid, colloquially known as "Breakout" (it's basically Pong solitaire with several twists), has long been one of my favorite retro arcade games (of which I admittedly have many). Imagine my joy, then, to discover that a fantastic clone of the game exists for Mac -- and it's free! The graphics and sound are top-notch, and the "special" bricks -- the ones that spice up what would otherwise be a deadly dull game -- are quite creative. As an added bonus, the large assortment of boards is littered with nerdy homages to icons of the computer and video-game worlds, including this little beauty:


Also worth noting: Hardwood Euchre, a 15-day trial version of which you can download for free. It's well designed, easy to use, and fun to play. In fact, the game is enough to make me want to assemble a Kibbutz euchre club. (For those who didn't grow up in the Midwest: It's like bridge but with fewer cards.)

Finally, a Joust clone that's truly superior

If you're nerdy like me and love retro video games, and if you have a particular thing for Joust -- the early-'80s sci-fi classic in which you endeavor to ride a space ostrich to victory -- then you'll love Glypha III, which changes the visuals and music (in awesome ways, I'd argue) but remains incredibly loyal to the way the characters move. Now all I need to find is a decent Mario Bros. clone, and maybe an Asteroids replica, and I'll be a happy man.

Update, 1:32 a.m.: Here's that Asteroids clone I was looking for.

Lost in Translation Party

Among Web sites destined to waste at least five minutes of your time, it's way up there. One of my recent "parties" proved particularly successful. I wish I had the money to put it on a T-shirt.

Hot critic-on-critic action

Yesterday Roger Ebert retracted his defense of New York Press film critic Armond White's negative review of District 9, the new Peter Jackson-produced sci-fi film that functions as an allegory for apartheid. Ebert seems to have been influenced in part by White's positive take on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which Ebert has spent weeks (though it feels like months) disparaging -- presumably with good reason, though I haven't seen it and won't.

Whatever you may think of the alien-robot flick, there's little doubt that if someone were to write a thesis on it, the writing would sound like this excerpt from White's review:

Based on the original 1980s Transformer toys by Hasbro and subsequent TV cartoons and comic books, the Transformer movies expound on this cultural plenitude. Their fascination with technology—the way common objects rearrange, expand or shrink as if having a benevolent or malicious life of their own—drives the stories.

Bay is an ideal director to realize this peculiar genre, which remakes the surfeit of adolescent commercial media as a means of multimedia gratification.These cars, trucks, motorcycles and planes—both human-friendly Autobots and dastardly Decepticons—metamorphose fast, but their transfiguration is like the mechanical toy descriptions in E.T.A. Hoffman: fantastic and uncanny.

Both White and Ebert address the real usefulness of the popular backlash against White's takedown of District 9. The incident makes it clear that Rotten Tomatoes -- which listed White's review, for a time, as the only negative one in existence -- can cultivate critical groupthink, such that dissenters are seen as willful contrarians or simply humorless grouches.

As someone whose taste is more predictable than White's, I appreciate dissent but am not always confident that calling a writer-director-producer like Jackson "intellectually juvenile," as White does, is the right way to go. Though if that's what you think, more power to you. I'm just saying ad hominem can get old for the reader, unless the reader likes the smell of blood in the air. Yet the whole mini-scandal helps Rotten Tomatoes addicts think more critically about the site, and about whether the big percentage at the top is worth paying so much attention to. And that's a good thing.

Beware of app

Facebook application developers, you've gone too far.

Extreme makeover

Slate's Farhad Manjoo has a modest proposal for Facebook. I particularly like this:

Facebook's home page is divided into two main sections. In the center, there's a quick-moving list of real-time updates. On the right, there's a stream that updates more slowly, labeled "Highlights." The trouble is, it isn't clear how Facebook decides which items deserve to be called highlights. For instance, yesterday someone I barely knew in college posted pictures from her friends' recent trip to California. Because those friends—who aren't my friends—posted several comments on one of the photos, Facebook assumed that the picture was a hot item. Now it's in my Highlights section—but I don't know anyone in the photo.

Wanted: Facebook addicts

Stories like this always make me think of a classic, and prescient, Far Side panel:

A relic of my tween years -- for iPhone!

As touchArcade.com reports, The Secret of Monkey Island, Ron Gilbert's landmark 1990 pirate adventure game, has been reworked for everyone's favorite smartphone, and the results are impressive:



I loved Monkey Island when I was a pre-adolescent video-game fanatic, and I still have great affection for it. It's beautiful graphically, its clever, geeky sense of humor influenced mine, it boasts inventive and memorable music, and it's about as well plotted as any game I've played. (Loom also comes to mind.) I'm glad to see it updated in such loving fashion, and I especially appreciate that the iPhone app lets you switch to the original version instantly at any time during gameplay. Hope somebody gives Monkey Island 2 similar treatment. (Hat tip to Jay V. for posting the article on Facebook.)

My thoughts exactly

Embarrassment of riches

The latest New Yorker features not only a review by Malcolm Gladwell of Wired editor Chris Anderson's new book, Free (about the Internet phenomenon of something -- music, information, etc. -- for nothing), but also a profile by Ariel Levy of Nora Ephron, with an emphasis on her soon-to-be-released Julie & Julia, in which Meryl Streep plays Julia Child.