Box in a suitcase

My representative in the United States Congress is Carolyn B. Maloney.

I must admit that until today, i didn't know that basic, important piece of information.

I live in lower Manhattan, where the Congressional districts are tightly packed and unevenly drawn. The maps that are available don't show street names, so it is difficult to tell whether one lives in the 8th, 14th, or 12th district. The websites of the representatives aren't much help, either. I used the "Do You Live In My District" search on Rep. Maloney's site, which told me that I was "Maybe" in her district. I had to call another congresswoman's office in order to find out that I was, in fact, represented by Maloney.
That established, I tried to send Ms. Maloney my thoughts on her recent vote for the $700 billion bailout package.

Her "Contact" information is a web form, which requires you to select from a list of pre-determined topics (none of which are appropriate, of course) and type into a tiny box, rather than providing an actual email address. It asks you to subscribe to her newsletter, and choose from topics including "Animals," "Arts & Culture," "Breastfeeding," and "Israel." What it doesn't do is fill you with any confidence that the message has been delivered or that it will actually be read.

My message in a bottle dutifully floated away, I decided to call her office and see if there were a more effective way of having my tiny voice heard.
Calling at 1:45 on a Tuesday afternoon, I got a voice recording that her office was closed, but I could press "10" to leave a message in the general mailbox. Another lengthy recording later, I waited for the beep, only to get a third recording telling me that the mailbox was full, and I could not leave a message.

I suppose I can stop by in person sometime, perhaps slide a note under the door or stick a post-it on the glass.

It hardly seems like my representative is interested in hearing from me, much less actually representing me.

I hope there's someone good that I can vote for instead of her next time.

The hoodie / blazer combo is the best way to tell the world "I got a stylist to tell me how to look hip."

It really depresses me when people try to come up with an "appropriate" style for places where they are worried they won't look cool enough. It's like watching a frat guy try to dress goth for a nightclub.

J Allard already had his own style, but someone decided he needed to be cool if he was going to be the face of Xbox. It says so much about Microsoft.

Father Adelir Antonio de Capri, a priest from Brazil, disappeared in late April while trying to set a record flying suspended by helium balloons. It was a charity stunt, and one which went tragically wrong, most likely due to poor planning on the priest's part.

His body was found on July 4th, and with the news that his last transmission was a plea for help using his GPS, gadget blog Gizmodo decided it was time for some fun.

Gizmodo editor Jesus Diaz wrote a posting titled Flying Priest Found Dead in the Atlantic, God Positioning System Still Missing, accompanied by a picture of some party balloons floating in the water and the caption "oh my the fact that I was alive one second ago" (a catchphrase from Teen Girl Squad).
The whole post took a lighthearted tone, with phrases like "not much of el Padre has been found," and "another potential winner for the Darwin Awards."

Many commenters pointed out that this was a disrespectful and tasteless way to treat a man's death, but instead of considering that he might have stepped over the line, perhaps even that he should apologize, Diaz simply stated "nothing disrespectful here" in response.

I took the time to write to Gizmodo, something I normally wouldn't bother with, but this time, it seemed worthwhile.

My email to Gizmodo:

Today's post about the priest whose body was found was so tasteless and immature, I couldn't believe what I was reading.

I've been reading Gizmodo for years, and I really enjoy taking breaks from my day to follow what I've found to be one of the funniest and most informative blogs on the web. That's why I feel upset enough to write an email letting you know just how disturbed I was by the article, as well as Jesus' assertions in the comments that he wasn't saying anything disrespectful or wrong.

This isn't one of those "you've offended me" emails that Vice or Maddox would take as a badge of honor. I'm not offended, and you shouldn't try to be Vice Magazine.

I'm just disappointed that you decided that someone's death, a terrifying death that no one deserves, even if he's committed such grave sins as failing to learn to use a GPS, is funny. He's not even buried yet, his family and friends are still mourning him, and you treat it like a great way to have some laffs and sell some ads.

I don't know what to say. It just seems so out of character, so low. It feels wrong now even to read Gizmodo.

If you're not ashamed of publishing that, and not worried about how this man's loved ones must feel, then my impression of your site was wrong all along.

Yours,
Jayson Elliot (commenter name - permissionmag)

And Jesus' reply:

Nothing is offensive about that post or the one that preceded it. All the contrary. It doesn't make fun of Father De Carli. It just states the facts, period.

j.

Again, either refusal to see what he had done, or a complete inability to understand. I wrote a reply, pointing out that had it been someone in the tech community, such as James Kim, they would never take such a tone.

There's nothing tasteless about a picture of a bunch of party balloons in the water and a comedy catchphrase from Homestar Runner when you're talking about someone who just died? "Darwin Awards?" Because he made one fatal mistake, that makes him a figure of fun? Would you feel comfortable with Father De Carli's family and friends seeing what you've posted?

Can you imagine if someone had run a similar article when James Kim had died? Please try and show a little maturity and class.

Jayson

The reply? No reply. Just a banhammer at Gizmodo, so that my account can no longer be used to post comments.

It's a shame, but then, I suppose Gizmodo has given up on trying to play catch-up with Engadget, and is going to go for the "edgy upstart" badge instead.

Oh well, taking Gizmodo reading out of my daily routine ought to give me a bit more time for productive things instead. Not much of a loss.

There's nothing in the words "Space Invaders Extreme" that suggests you're about to have anything like a good time. Space Invaders may be the great-grandaddy of all shoot-em-up games, but that was thirty years ago, and it's been "updated" several times without success. Adding in the word "Extreme" doesn't help - it just suggests some Mountain Dew connection that I'm not comfortable with.

Starting the game up, then, required a bit of a leap of faith - but once I did, the intro screen gave that same reassurance that I felt upon seeing the first prototype of the 2010 Camaro in the flesh.
White bitmapped enemies scroll sideways along a stark black field, the only color being a minimalist yellow title on the top screen flanked by beautiful monochromatic hatch lines. The music pulses with mid-nineties technogenerica reminiscent of Underworld, the only overt sign that something new is about to begin.

Some things should never be remade. The film Bedazzled was perfect with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and the molestation it suffered at the hands of Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley should have earned it retribution at The Hague. Breathless was so audacious in its presumption to remake Godard's jump cut classic that I'm sure the French must still have a bounty on Richard Gere's head. No one can be happy about what has happened to Tab - if you see anyone drinking Tab Energy, just push them in front of a Red Bull truck and go celebrate with a real Tab Cola.
And yet. The Birdcage was superb, Little Shop of Horrors was even funnier with Rick Moranis, and Scarface, well, it speaks for itself.

The trick is to try and recreate the feeling one would have had encountering the original in its own time and place, not to simply remake it with modern references. It's a bit like the dialogue in Deadwood: real inhabitants of that South Dakota no man's land in the 1870s would have considered "hell" and "goddamn" to be the most outrageous profanities, but to get the same effect, audiences of 130 years hence needed much different language to get the appropriate air.

Space Invaders Extreme understands that, and playing it on the Nintendo DS gave me the same feeling I remember from the first time seven-year old me sat down to the original.
I'm sure there are rules to SIx, but they're no more important than the cycling images and animations that pass by in the background. Laser cannons, big blasts, bombs, varying sizes of enemies that split like amoeba, carry their own shields, or follow unprecedented patterns… exhortations to take out rows, columns, or colors for bonus points; all have some ambient purpose, but I don't worry about them any more than I worry about what the patterns and images in the distance are meant to be. It all runs together in a mélange of joyous shooting, shooting, and shooting.

The soundtrack, it turns out, is not just some background noise to remind the player that Karl Hyde exists. As you play, every action that you or the enemies take becomes a part of the score, so that I found myself shooting with a rhythm, the more excellent a noise to make. Hearing my shots cymbal crash into enemies was as satisfying as banging on kitchen pots with a wooden spoon.

If you do stop to examine the graphics, you'll see that the classic bitmapped enemies live in a world reminiscent of late '80s Vaughan Oliver album artwork, and it works perfectly. There is no surer way to go out of style than to stay up to date. The graphics of SIx feel like aesthetic decisions instead of technical ones, a distinction that I'm sure will make it as playable five years from now as it is today.

I can't call the gameplay purist - that would require, well, the original SI, I guess, but I can call it pure. There's no ridiculous messing about with storylines or justifications for the enemies - when the boss comes, it's announced as "Boss Attack - Ready?" When the calm female voice announced "fever time," I have no idea what it means except more shooting.

Space Invaders Extreme gives players a glimpse of what it was like to play Space Invaders for the first time. The feeling can best be expressed, appropriately enough, with a scene from War Games:

"What is all that stuff?"
"Trajectory headings for multiple-impact re-entry vehicles."
"What's a trajectory heading?"
"I have no idea."
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know, but it's great!"