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01/19/01
Not like yesterday...

It's really scary how much of your mood and the decisions you make can be affected by something as simple as the weather.

Yesterday was cold and stormy. The weathermen (with their fancy-pantsy AccuWeather and Doppler Radar) were predicting it might snow in Austin, which is almost unheard of. There was a bad winter storm coming and everybody was bundling up.

Then, this morning, I wake up super-late and find it's beautiful and sunny outside. The birds are chirping. The toilet's not running. Nobody at work even notices that I came in more than an hour late.

I'm looking through the window and the trees are swaying in a cool breeze.

And all of a sudden, life seems pretty peachy.

Somebody wrote me this morning and said they ordered a limited edition book from Penny-Arcade and that made me happy.

A box of Krispy Kreme glazed donuts is sitting five feet from my desk. Some fresh coffee has been brewed and I'm having my first cup.

Electronic Arts, who had been neglecting us a bit by not sending us their last few games to review, sent a box that is about three feet by three feet FULL of EA Sports games for PlayStation, PlayStation2 and PC. FIFA, Madden, all kinds of goodies. It was waiting on my desk when I arrived.

Tonight, the LCP is going to see the Upright Citizen's Brigade perform at the Bad Dog Comedy Theater and our parent theater company is even pitching in to partially pay for the tickets. We may even do laser tag or karaoke after.

Last night, Rebecca and I watched the fourth episode of The Sopranos boxed set that I managed to scrounge up the money for over the weekend. It keeps getting better and better (I'd seen a lot of the second season, but not much of the first) and at the end of the episode, after Jackie's funeral, they play one of my favorite Mazzy Star songs.

U2 tickets go on sale tomorrow for Dallas, and I'm thinking I may get to go.

I'm booking a flight to Washington D.C. for management training (motto: "You'll lead, so we don't have to!") today. It'll be a nice break from the office.

Next month, I've got tickets for a sold-out Weezer show in Austin.

There are moments when life seems insurmountable. Where it just throws crap at you at a relentless pace and you feel as if you're drowning.

There are other times, a lot more rare, when life conspires to make it up to you. When life puts so much bounty in front of you, that you feel blessed and feel like you can go on for a while longer without complaining.

It's not just about material things -- life suddenly gives you a $20 winner in the scratch lottery or sends you a bag of money. Usually it's just the accumulation of good moments and things that just work out right. And when it all happens in one day, it's tough not to notice that things are just going your way.

You don't have to be angry. You don't have to be sad.

Life is trying to cheer you up. Life is trying to entertain you and make you understand that your life can be a collection of great moments interrupted by a few moments of bullshit. Not the other way around.

Well, this almost ruined my perfect day: Daily Radar's parent company is being sued by Nintendo for publishing an unofficial guide to one of its Pokémon games.

When you publish a guide that calls itself "Unofficial," it's like you're automatically admitting you're stealing from the "Official guide."

Daily Radar's response -- to stop covering any Nintendo news until the trial is over, is understandable (though not really related because the lawsuit is not about their news coverage), but a little overwrought.

The idea that Nintendo is suing at first seems pretty absurd. They beg for press coverage, send out tons of press releases and screen shots of their games and then turn around and get mad when those images are not used the way they want.

On that issue, I side with Daily Radar, but the thing Nintendo has issue with has nothing to do with news coverage or product reviews. Daily Radar's parent company was obviously trying to cash in on the Pokémon craze with its "Unofficial Guide" by using Nintendo's copyrighted work. Now, there's lots of unofficial strategy guides out there and typically, these guides do nothing but encourage people to pick up the games and play them all the way through. In that sense, Nintendo should be glad people have enough interest to create a guide to one of their games.

But, on the other hand (and there's about six sets of hands at work here), a guide to a game that uses images, characters and copyrighted work that can be found in an existing "Official" guide, is obviously something that is meant to steal some thunder (and cash) from the original source.

So I don't know. But what I do know is that Daily Radar's assertion that "we can't respond to the lawsuit on our site" is bogus because they go out of their way to present letters supporting their case (with one or two dissension amid dozens of supporters), they explain how wrong Nintendo is, and then they have a regular feature showing "what we would have covered" if not for the lawsuit. This is like Web-based blackmail. They're holding news content hostage and teasing readers with what might have been. That's just juvenile.

If our newspaper gets sued by Bush's people for something we covered, does that mean we stop writing stories about Bush as president as petty revenge? That's just cheating the reader. That's ignoring news. Daily Radar is trying to build a case as a martyr by saying, "Well if they can sue us over a strategy guide, they can sue us over anything we publish, so we're not going to risk it." That's a simplification and a misdirection. Daily Radar is trying to play the victim prostrating itself before the big, bad corporation, while neglecting to inform its readers that its parent company is a big company with deep enough pockets to mount a suitable legal defense.

Oh, and publish "Unauthorized" strategy guides.

Despite some serious missteps in the past, I read Daily Radar and I like a lot of their content. But, they're falling prey to something victimizing a lot of gaming publications in print and on the Web. They want to write for adult video game enthusiasts, but they refuse to grow the fuck up.

Damn, I didn't mean to get off and rant, there. Sorry.

Have a great weekend, okay? I'll see you all on Monday.

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Shitty shitty,
dang dang.