Jamie Antonisse

"Most of the things in my wallet make me seem really enlightened... yet I obviously use a fork to eat my yogurt."

-John Brennan III

Pure poetry, John. This describes almost everyone I've met in the IMD!

I have a lot of admiration for a wide range of people, I really do.

But I don't have many heroes, at least not by my own definition. To me, a hero is someone who has earned my unmitigated respect, a rational human being (real or imagined) whose choices, in their context, mirror those I'd like to make in my own life.

So while Batman is clearly a hero, he isn't exactly "my hero." [ed. note: it's the batarangs... don't you realize how silly the batarangs are, Batman? Don't you see?] Celebrities don't usually count either... they're so distant, so nebulous and so "managed" that I just can't bring myself to feel a close connection to them. I've never sat under a blanket, crying about a mouseketeer... it just doesn't seem healthy.

My list of heroes is a private tally that includes four, maybe five people.

This last Wednesday, I met a possible addition to that short list.

A little background: As I mentioned before, I've been working on this B-Game project called Wrath of the Transperator with some folks from the IMD (and one talented Business School student). A large part of our job has been in keeping active on the TIG forums, you know, for PR reasons... so a few days ago I posted a song I made, "Boss Fight", as a taste of what the game would bring.

Yesterday, I logged into the forums, just to see how things were going, and saw this.

You might miss it at first... right in the middle of page two. Is that....? No..... is that.... really....?

So I finally finished Bioshock, just in time for the spoiler-filled narrative review in Danny Bilson's class tomorrow. Is this sort of entertainment-cramming exceptional to video games? Are there English majors out there, staying up all night to read the last Harry Potter in advance of some all-revealing J.K. Rowling seminar? Who cares, on with the review.

I realize I am late to the party on these things, but I just recently discovered N, a well-made little Flash game that has driven better men than I to the brink of insanity. At first, it barely made a dent in my schedule. But slowly, the clever level designs and the huge payoff of the simple control scheme drew me in. So here I am, bleary-eyed from listening to the entire Girl Talk album during my latest round of spectacular deaths. The combination almost lobotomized me. But I have come back to the Blog before I pass out to rattle off some thoughts about failure and replay in games.

Well, I'll make this short. I'm jealous.

I want to be writing for RJ's blog. More specifically, I want to be writing this and this and this.

I've come to a difficult point in my blogging life: specifically, I've become aware of the blog as a potentially powerful tool. As anyone creative knows, POTENTIAL is a downer. All the things you COULD do tend to cripple your ability to properly DO anything.

Beating out the entirety of YouTube, this was the stupidest thing I saw this week.

Congratulations, billboard. It was not enough for you to be absolutely devoid of meaning. You've managed to imply that recycling is somehow controversial, that this woman did something WRONG that must be justified.

Perhaps someone accidentally combined these two billboards:

I just lost three hours of work. It's my own damn fault, but if I hadn't been distracted by chat windows, facebook games, web comics, link aggregators, et al, it wouldn't have happened.

The details aren't worth repeating. The point is, I'm taking a sabbatical from the wonders of the web. It's overdue: for weeks I've found more and more time has been disappearing into the maintenance, collection and dusting of my imaginary extensions.

So I will check my email twice a day, in which time I will allow myself to move my cars in Parking Wars exactly ONCE. I will not play Packrat. I will not sign into Gmail chat or AIM. And, unless compelled for a particular assignment, I will not touch the blog or wiki. All my work will be offline. I will write letters and bake bread. I will learn to play "November Rain" on my acoustic guitar. I will do most of the above.

I'll be back in a week, a better man.