Always gets a replay
Never tilts at all
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball
~ Pete Townshend’s “Pinball Wizard”

(The Who begins to play at the Superbowl halftime show)

Mother: Okay, which ones are these guys again?
Me: The Who.
Mother: And what do they play?
Me: Well, this song is Baba O’Riley, although most people think it’s called teenage wasteland.
Mother: What do they play that I would know?

(brief pause)

Me: You know this one. It’s the theme song for CSI New York. Who songs are used for all the CSI theme songs.
Mother: Even my favorite?
Me: Sadly, yes.
Mother: They do all of them?
Me: Yes.
Mother: Wow, I wonder how they got them to do all three?
Me: The songs were hits before they were used for the shows, Mom.
Mother: They were? When?
Me: 70’s.
Mother: They weren’t written for the shows?
Me: No.

(A few songs play - including an excerpt from “See Me, Feel Me”)

Me: Oh! You might have seen Tommy. That was all songs by The Who.
Mother: What was that?
Me: A musical with Ann-Margaret.
Mother: Like Bye Bye Birdie?
Me: No, Mom, it was called Tommy.
Mother: And who was in it?
Me: Ann-Margaret, Tina Turner, Jack Nicholson, the guys from The Who…
Mother: Ann-Margaret and Jack Nicholson?
Me: Yes.
Mother: And it was a musical?
Me: Yes.
Mother: When was it?
Me: Mid ’70s.
Mother: Really? Wow. I don’t remember it.
Me: You were too busy dragging me to Barry Manilow concerts against my will.
Mother: It wasn’t against your will, you loved them.
Me: You have no proof of that. I maintain I was forced.
Mother: You still know all the lyrics.
Me: Yes, that’s why I couldn’t learn math - there were Barry Manilow lyrics taking up room in my head. I hope you’re happy you kept me from being a math genius.
Mother: Your Dad made you listen to Bob Dylan and his songs are way longer.
Me: Don’t try to confuse the issue with your fuzzy logic. You’re why I don’t know math.

(Half-time show ends)

Mother: That wasn’t so bad. I really do like musicals. I wonder why I didn’t see that one.
Me: It had good music in it?
Mother: Ha. Ha. Who else was in it?
Me: Elton John.
Mother: Is that the one where he’s in the really big shoes?
Me: Yes!
Mother: Oh, I did see that, then.
Me: I am so impressed.
Mother: I think your Dad took me to see that at the old Tropicaire drive-in.
Me: You remember where you saw it, but all you remember about the movie is Elton John in big shoes?
Mother: We weren’t really watching the movie.
Me: What were you…oh jeez, TOO MUCH information!!
Mother: Come to think of it that might have been when your brother was…
Me: Waaaaaaaaaaay too much information! Way! Too! Much!

“The idea that a game is anything more than a game… You know, there are people who are basically unbalanced who are going to misuse a game and have bad results. If a golfer who insists on playing during a lightning storm gets hit by a stroke of lightning and is killed nobody says, ‘There’s golfers dying by the droves being hit by lightning!’ You can overdo what you really like, and if you’re unbalanced you go overboard.” ~ Gary Gygax

7th Circuit Upholds Prison Rule Forbidding Inmates to Play Dungeons and Dragons

Not even making that up.

“Cheer up, the worst is yet to come.” ~ Philander Chase Johnson

It’s Friday and, regardless of the last two weeks, Friday demands levity. So, passing on some links from other sources.

First, just when you thought your 80s flashbacks were bad, we get The Sara Carlson Experience which proves no matter how horrible Miami Vice and Solid Gold were, America can’t hold a candle to Europe when it comes to TV shame.

Is that why my night elf dances like that? God, I hope not. So many flavors of wrongness.

Next, I cannot stress enough how NSFW this safe sex ad is, but it’s cute, creative, and naughty in all the right ways (I believe it’s French, but another source says Russian).

“Among my most prized possessions are the words that I have never spoken” ~ Orson Rega Card

Kitty is experiencing a loss of inventory issue that really highlights some of the reasons it’s so hard to pitch Second Life as a professional medium. Anyone who has ever tried to explain Second Life to someone in a business sense runs into a barrage of issues, and some of them are so fundamental to those who deal in data-as-commodity that it becomes embarrassing to fess up to the elements were Linden Labs drops the ball.

Let’s face it, maintaining customer data is the most basic of all online responsibilities between platform and user base. Web hosts, gaming, social platforms — all of these know that maintaining the integrity of their customer data is their bread and butter. They have procedures for recovering losses and the big players generally have backup systems for their backup systems.

When I had an inventory loss issue over a year ago, I had to make three separate customer service contacts before I was given the information that re-established my inventory. Three. And the procedure itself is simply idiotic (clear cache on SL and system, go to a low-activity/lag Linden sim, wait X minutes for your inventory to load and see if your items are magically restored). Really? That’s the procedure? I do the SL hokey pokey and I turn myself about?

Now, try explaining this in a board room, or in a phone conference. Try pitching the idea to advertisers or potential investors that virtual goods have value, just like real-world goods. Then try explaining that when those goods disappear the consumer has no real recourse beyond crossing their fingers and following some silly procedures. Then do the math on why corporations cannot deal with the Linden Labs model.

The really sad thing? This is not just a fail on LL’s part, it’s also a missed opportunity.

Pssst — hey, Linden Lab. Want to increase the number of paid accounts overnight? Offer paid accounts the ability to back-up their inventories once a week and give them one free “restore inventory from most recent back-up” per year. After that charge them $X per back-up. Sure, it’s something you should be offering in the first place, but your user base has so little faith in you and so little trust in your ability to maintain our data that most of us would probably pay extra just to have some assurance that you’ve got a baseline motivation to provide the illusion of security. You could CHARGE US EXTRA for it.

“I hope we never live to see the day when a thing is as bad as some of our newspapers make it” ~ Will Rogers

How this works:

Headline: “How the latest trend/technology can KILL YOU!”
Story: Bad/stupid people do bad/stupid things they would have found a way to do anyway, but in this case used trend/technology.
Comments: More proof cousins shouldn’t marry.

Twitter is the new ebil. I’d defend it, but I got bullied into using it in the first place so I don’t feel that passionate about it. I defended video games, Prince albums, and the interwebs. The next generation gets this one.

Hat Tip: Sean