Fartz R Us

Now that I am selling actual entertainment products to actual real live people, I am starting to understand that I had absolutely no intuitive grasp of people en masse. What do they want? What is really going to take off? What is really going to piss them off?

Overall, large groups of people, even those with expensive gadgets, will act almost exactly like a toddler. They want bright shiny objects, lots of blinking lights and happy sounds, they want to be told they're awesome, and, more than anything else, they love farts.

My next project: Flashy Ringy McFartenator, where a blinking cartoon monkey sings your praises in farts. Every time you touch him, he giggles. And farts some more.

The more revolutionary technology gets, the more it reveals that people actually haven't advanced emotionally since the stone ages.

I'm a turkey

I celebrated this great Thanksgiving holiday by working and avoiding family and social interaction. Life without a laptop seems completely unimaginable. Are there actually people out there who live in the real world? I’m probably asking the wrong crowd.

I wish that I had witty observations to report on the state of popular culture, politics, or other stuff people care about. However, my life has been spent completely absorbed in day job and secret night job (and no, I’m not a lady of the night, but I’m sure that would give me better stories). I’m pretty much becoming a complete bore, able to talk only about the state of my very very narrow field. Even politics have been boring ever since Obama got elected. Is it bad that I want Palin back? At least she stayed relevant long enough to give us this lovely gem:


Gobble Gobble

Yeah, that’s a dude slaughtering turkeys behind her. Not even SNL could have staged this shit.

I can haz sleeps now?

I spent the whole evening reading icanhascheesburger and writing promotional material for our iPhone game. This is a disaster waiting to happen.

Last Pirate Rant

Ok, final post on the pirates, and then I’m done. The obsession is unhealthy and unproductive, and I’m pretty sure I’m developing an internet addiction, with a nice dollop of RSI on the side. As my last pre-cold-turkey outpouring, I just need to get this off my chest. Here’s the list of common arguments I hear in defense of piracy. Allow me to explain why they’re wrong.

Dude, Apple totally suXorz! They’re a bunch of Nazis and I don’t want to give them any more money! Rage against the corporate machine! Yeah!

Well. First, let’s make the assumption that you actually bought your iPhone and didn’t beat up an old lady on the street to steal one. In which case, I hate to break it to you, but you already gave Apple a whole bunch of money. If you’re now trying to get back at them by NOT paying for my $4 app, guess who gets more hurt here, me or Apple? Seriously, word of advice – if you don’t want to give money to Apple, don’t buy their phone. Problem solved.


Dude, everyone overcharges for apps. I mean, come on, $4 for software? WTF! I’m trying to teach the greedy bastards a lesson.

Short answer: if you can’t afford $4 for a game, you can’t afford an iPhone. Return it and learn to manage your money.

I don’t want to pay for something before trying it. Once I try it for free, I’ll buy it if I like it. (Right…)

Ok, kind of see the appeal of this argument. You don’t want to spend money unless you know what you’re getting. However, this argument does not hold much water. We’re talking about a couple of bucks here. Do you take a bite of a muffin before buying it? Do you see a movie before paying for a movie ticket? Do you try a cup of coffee before buying one? Yeah, didn’t think so. And unlike the items listed above, you can use an application for an unlimited amount of time. Asking to pay to try is not unreasonable here.


But… software isn’t a muffin! A muffin has concrete costs per item, whereas software you make just once and can sell an unlimited number of times, never having to work again!

Not exactly true. There is an oft-rehashed summary of some concrete software costs which scale with the number of users (hosting fees, bandwidth cost, support time, etc.). But there’s also the fact that you can spend months writing something with absolutely no return. That’s a huge investment. If your product hits it really big, then yes, you’ll figure out how to make money, pirates or no. If your product is completely unpopular, then, well, tough luck. You played the lottery and lost. Again, pirates don’t really come into the picture here.

However, if you’re somewhere in the middle of that range and not quite making enough to make a living, losing customers to piracy can make that crucial difference. That’s the crucial amount that can discourage indie developers and new ideas. If people can’t make a decent living off decently popular apps, soon enough the only people making these applications will be large companies that can make the huge investment. Perhaps some people would prefer it that way. However, for people who claim to hate the large corporations, this is probably not the result they were expecting. If you want new, original ideas from indie developers, you need to pay them for their efforts.

Ok, glad I got all that off my chest. These are all things I would never say to a pirate directly, of course, because I know there’s no point. In the end, people just like free stuff. And there’s really no reasoning with someone who can defend their right to steal my work directly to my face. Enjoy, dude. You need it more than I do.

Life Lessons from Auntie Lux

And here is the promised list of Don’ts in Dealing with Pirates. Let’s hope someone else learns from my obsession. Pirates are elusive and skittish creatures who should not be approached lightly.

1. Don’t accuse the pirates. They attack when cornered. It is not a good idea to go on a torrent site (which is distributing the fruits of your labor, for free) and suggest that they send YOU a donation for using your software, rather than to the guy who took 2 minutes to crack it. You WILL be inundated with vile unprintable commentary that will question your right to be on the site, the size of your reproductive organs, your sexual orientation, and potentially your mother’s weight. All of this will inevitably be misspelled and will hurt you more than it hurts them.

2. Don’t send a Cease and Desist letter to a site that makes its money distributing stolen software. Sure, they’ll pull the offending item for a day. But the pirates will come back, and in greater numbers. This is a fleeting victory.

3. Don’t Google your product name every hour. Yes, it’s getting pirated. Yes, there are more pirate sites up every time you look, in every conceivable language. Yes, you are becoming completely obsessed and Google in your dreams. Seriously. Just. Stop.

4. … hold on, Googling…

5. Don’t become emotionally involved in other highly publicized IP cases. Calm down. Tetris is doing ok, whether or not I flame a forum full of teenage boys who feel like they have a God-given right to free video games. For your sanity, just stay out of it.

6. Finally, and most importantly, do NOT give away any identifying details when approaching the pirates. They will retaliate.

Tomorrow, the much shorter list of dos.

Arrr!

As all five of you probably know, my better half and I have created a game for the iPhone, now for sale in the iTunes store. We passed a critical milestone a couple weeks ago – we got pirated.

This turn of phrase has confused people in the past, so an explanation. Someone bought our application from iTunes, and then hacked the file and shared it with other on torrent sites, which means that thousands of people have now downloaded it for free. The worst part? Whoever does this generally posts a guilt trip on the site: “I put a lot of work into hacking these, you guys. Be a human being and donate some money to me! Here’s my Paypal link!”

Let me tell you – when you pour your heart and soul into something, getting pirated is about as flattering as getting mugged and then seeing your valuables for sale on a street corner. However, I have learned something along the way. For everybody’s benefit, I present what I have learned from my time with the pirates. Who, unfortunately, did not look like this:

Well, maybe they did. Who knows? They’re online. From now on, I’m assuming that all the weasels stealing my stuff look like Johnny Depp. Shirtless.

Tomorrow: How to deal with pirates. And how to NOT deal with pirates (hint: truth is not the way to go).

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I picked the worst time to do this blogging marathon. Life is draining right now. Draining to the extent that I can’t even joke about it. Draining to the extent that I don’t even want to talk about it, but I can’t stop thinking about it, so I can’t talk about anything else either.

You can see how that can be detrimental to all this blogging I’ve resolved to do.

Somehow, this just made me feel better:

http://www.despair.com/wetodevi.html

Now I need to send Despair some money.

Super!

Welcome to the 30 day blogging desperation extravaganza! As much as I hate gimmicks, it seems that I need a gimmick to get anything done. So here goes 30 amazing days of uninterrupted blogging! Feel free to flog me (not in a sexy way) if I lapse.

Oh, and yes, this counts as an entry. Making the resolution is always the hardest part. Plus, this beach volleyball game is intense. Come on, tiny white bikinis! Show the communists how it’s done!

Twittelated

I've been completely sucked into Twitter. There's an amazing power in expressing yourself in under 140 characters. Brevity is the soul of Twitter.

I'm back, baby, I'm back!

I recently found out that people still go to this site. Who knew? Well, I’m never one to disappoint my fans, so rejoice, people of the Internet, for I am back, if a bit rusty.

I have done very little writing recently, as I’ve been spending all my time doing everything I can to escape the corporate world without escaping the world of money. Authority does not agree with me. Which is just fine, because I don’t agree with it, either. I’ve been spending all my time working on starting a business with my taller and hairier half, who is working on it full time. All those things they say about starting a business are true. It is all-consuming, terrifying, exhilarating, and I feel like I actually have a purpose in life. So much effort is invested, and so much emotion rides on success or failure. True, making video games is not exactly saving the world. But it’s pretty much a given that I’m not going to save the world sitting in my cube and being mismanaged by multiple managers. So I’m fighting for my freedom. And hopefully soon, I’ll get to take a printer out into a field and beat it with a baseball bat, Office Space style. Damn, it feels good to be a gansta’.

The Fourteenth Tale

Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale is a classic gothic suspense tale, the eerie love child of Jane Eyre and Fall of the House of Usher. Like so many good books, this one begins with a mysterious letter to the narrator, the bookish biographer Margaret Lea. The letter is from Vida Winter, the legendary writer famous for the fantastical stories she spins both in her novels and her interviews. After a lifetime of hundreds of invented biographies, she is haunted by a plea from a long ago interviewer: tell me the truth. At the end of Winter’s life, the truth begs to be free. And thus begins the memoir that unravels the mystery of the greatest living writer in the English language, as well as Margaret’s own dark secret.

Vida Winter’s life begins only as a subplot. The main heroes are the tragically eccentric lords of Angelfield manor and the demons that haunt its halls. The story starts with a neglected brother and sister and the affair that consumes their lives whole. Meanwhile, two feral twin girls roam the estate free to pursue every destructive whim, while the house and all its inhabitants slowly fall into a state of complete isolation and depravity. Only a complete tragedy can mold one of the wild twins into Vida Winter, the world-famous writer. The denouement concludes with a juicy plot twist that turns the story on its head.

Throughout the novel, Setterfield expertly weaves in the theme of twinness, that paradox of duality and completeness. Sister and sister, life and death, lies and truth. One cannot be without the other, but what happens when one half is taken away? Through the metaphor, Setterfield explores the psyches of people whose lives have been irrevocably broken in half, but who must muddle on just the same. The macabre tale tugs on familiar heart strings as the characters desperately long for completeness. The roller coaster plot pulls us in, but it is the characters’ poignant yearning that holds us in and does not let us go.

Procrastinate My Heart

So I decided to come out of hiding with my blogging alter-ego and volunteered to write a book review for my company newsletter. Yes, my software company newsletter. The newsletter being the company’s last desperate pretense that we’re not sinking fast under the weight of bills and stupidity. But I figured that a writing assignment is a writing assignment, and I’m not exactly Candace Bushnell, so I should take what I can get.

I’ve been avoiding writing this review for about a week now. I’ve ignored a couple of reminder emails, and then a couple of high priority (!) reminder emails, and then, unable to bear the guilt any longer, sent a quick email full of apologetic exclamation points begging until 5pm today to do it. And it’s now 10:30pm. And still no review. I’ve started this thing about ten times in ten different ways, and none of them seem quite appropriate for my grand debut as the newest book reviewer of the latest sinking software company in the greater DC area. There’s just too much expectation to live up to.

And the book? Well, the book was pretty sweet. I picked it up on Friday, and emerged from my haze on Sunday night, with visions of ghosts and incest dancing in my head. In short – I highly recommend it. In long – well, I’ll just have to keep working on that.

Yummo!

This is pretty amazing.

To summarize: Jesus is lord, I believe in him for no logical reason, He came here as a wee little baby and then died for us, trust in Him make me omnipotent.

We’ve all read a these things a million times. The writing is flat and trite. You can almost imagine the author – eyes glazed over, that fervent conviction draining the humanity out of her voice.

No big deal, right? We’ve heard it all before.

Except for the name on the article. Anne Rice. Yes, THE Anne Rice. She of the ambiguously sexual vampires and immortal murderous children, the baroque, beautiful language that blooms from the page like a putrid flower, dripping with blood and sex. That Anne Rice. It turns out that decades after Lestat drank his last maiden, years after Tom Cruise gazed lustfully into Brad Pitt’s dead eyes, their creator found her Creator. That’s right, Anne Rice found God. That marked the end of the Vampire Chronicles, and she decided to dedicate all her writing to Him. Anne Rice turned into The Church Lady.

Whether Church Lady or Vampire Lady, I have a feeling that Anne Rice is not a very nice lady at all. Maybe it’s the Anna Wintour haircut. And yet, I can’t help but be a little envious. Can you imagine a life so full of passion and contradiction, letting every whim, every idea fully consume you and define your identity? Consider me a sane person wondering – is insanity the truest form of freedom?

Beep Beep

Today, I am nursing a rather severe case of the ragies, that minor condition that sometimes afflicts the gentler sex whereby they want to rip everything around them into shreds. I was going to amuse you today with a list of all the things that are pissing me off (noise, computers, people, animals, sunshine, abstract concepts), but realized it was just making me more mad. So instead, here are some bumper stickers.

My pit bull ate your honor student

Daddy's Little Slut

I Y Dick Cheney

I'd rather be f#*%ing Matt Damon

It doesn't take a war to run over a bicyclist

Save the Earth – Eat the Cows!

I'd rather be doing my taxes

Save a tree – eat Ralph Nader

I'd rather be drinking – oh wait, I am!

Chew cud. Because an appendix is a terrible thing to waste.

Urban Angst

When living in the city, the illusion of privacy is precarious indeed. I am used to waking up to the sounds of garbage trucks rattling the walls of my apartment. I look forward to opening the windows and smelling garlic frying at the Thai restaurant next door. This morning, I groaned when I heard the distant chanting of a protest in front of the Scientology building. But in spite of the constant reminders of the proximity of others, I always felt like this space was my own, a private sanctuary. I never see my neighbors, I have my TV on at ungodly hours of the night, and I still can’t get used to pulling the blinds closed when I change.

Alas, all dreams must end sometime. We got a knock on the door at midnight last night from the downstairs neighbor asking us to “not walk so loudly.” For historical record, we were not rehearsing our Riverdance routine. Just the kind of normal occasional walking two very sedentary people do. Barefoot. And yet, there she was, at our door, asking us to not “walk on our heels.”

It was a rude awakening. We spent the next hour tiptoeing around gingerly and whispering to each other, wondering what else our neighbors can hear.

I need a vacation.

Fire bad, tree pretty

Yesterday, I was dragged to see 10,000 BC. I went under the condition that I could write a scathing review afterwards. The condition was agreed to under the second condition that I don’t mock the movie while watching it. After spitting and shaking on it, we entered the theater.

Unlike the movie, the review will be brief. I will just say that I did not uphold condition number 2. Fortunately, neither did anyone else in the theater. As for the scathing, I will just say that the movie would be 80% improved by eliminating all dialog. I want my cavemen to grunt, not speak vague accented English. And, honestly, the plot is not that complicated. Guy likes girl, girl gets kidnapped, guy gets girl back. Do we really need painfully stilted dialog, narration, AND subtitles? I was half expecting to see blinking neon signs. As boy stares longingly at girl – HE LIKE HER! As girl runs in slow motion, breasts bouncing rhythmically – SHE PRETTY! Now that I think about it, that was basically the narration. So I have to give it points for clarity. Maybe 2 points (out of a hundred). 4 more points for the herd of mammoths stampeding down the side of a pyramid. Ridiculous, but pretty freaking sweet. That brings it up to 6 points. If you choose to watch, for the love of God wait for the DVD to come out. Then watch on mute.

Oh Captain, My Captain

Check out this article on the cesspool of crazy that is the Hillary Clinton campaign. I don’t want to say I told you so (mom), but, really, I told you so. Now, I don’t want to fall into the trap of voting for a president I would want to have a beer with. Realistically, I will never have a beer with the president (I don’t like beer). My subconscious president test is – would I want to work for them? What kind of boss would they make? Here is my completely uninformed and subjective analysis. The candidates better pay attention, because the uninformed and subjective masses are going to be deciding the election. Here’s hoping the primaries will be over by then.

From his demeanor alone, I would have guessed ol' GDub is the incompetent boss that needs to be managed. For example:

GWB: Uh, we need to take care of the situation in, uh, whaddayacallit…

Lux: Iraq, sir?

GWB: Yeah, right, Iraq. We’re need to do that surge thing.

Lux: Actually, sir, we decided to pull out.

GWB: Oh yeah? Ok. Great. Great job. Uh, hey, wanna get a beer?

Ah, a girl can dream. Alas, we all know Bushie did not turn out to be the incompetent doofus who lets smarter people do his job. No, he’s the incompetent doofus who lets evil people do his job and is always right because Jeebus tells him so. Fortunately, we have burned that bridge already. Let’s move on and see what the future might hold for us.

The Maverick. This is just not a good nickname. Would your want to work for Tom “I’m Crazy” Cruise in Top Gun? This is the man who will walk into your office at the end of the day wanting to talk policy. You will present well researched ideas and he will listen intelligently, nodding and staring at the floor. He will ask intelligent questions. You will talk for hours. At the end, he’ll thank you for your thoughts and advice and pat you on the back with a smirk. The next day, you’ll read in the paper that he did the exact opposite what you advised. Oh, and that you’re fired.

Oh Hillary. I want to like her, I really do. And yet I see her as the woman who, as the boss 3 times removed from you, storms indignantly into your office with three flustered lackeys rushing behind her, demands that you take out your latest report, and berates you for using the wrong font. In the meantime, the company goes bankrupt.

He listens to you, respects you, and brings you donuts. In return, you have to be ready to do the dirty work, because he stays above it. He’ll make you feel like there’s a bigger purpose to the mind-numbing work you have to do. Every once in a while, a halo of white light will seem to shimmer around him as he speaks.

I swear I’m not an Obamabot. I don’t love any candidate unconditionally. I don’t even love myself unconditionally. But be honest - who would you want to work for?

Easy, breezy, beautiful

Recently, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of people who love their jobs. Now, I don’t know any of these people personally, but I see them on TV all the time. You know who I’m talking about. The middle aged woman who teach art class after curing her arthritis. The 22 year old fashion magazine executive slash supermodel whose lipstick lasts all day. The handsome chef advertising knives in a busy kitchen while serving seared scallops in white wine sauce. All those happy, attractive people surrounded by bustling activity and warm colors and just loving the hell out of their lives. I do hate them, but the advertising is working. I want their lives. But does such a perfect workplace exist?

A little closer to home, I wonder about those overenthusiastic folks at my own mind-numbing job. The ones sending out mass emails peppered with exclamation points. Ten thousand users! 200 simultaneous logins! Five million dollars saved! Seriously, I wonder? Do they really give a crap? Or are they pretending like I am? I would prefer to believe the former. Maybe every person has a destiny, and some people just love business process management more than a fat kid love cake. However, the pessimist in me tends to believe the latter. Which is rather dismal. We are all shuffling through life, pretending to care in order to get our daily bread. It all seems a bit eerie, like a group of toddlers behaving well while the teacher is out. Who are we trying to impress, exactly? Sure, there’s the person who hands out the paychecks – but what if he also doesn’t care?

Obviously, there’s a bit of a morale problem at my workplace. I have to believe that something better is out there. But I don’t think I’ve ever been there. And I don’t know anyone who has. Someone, please tell me that there is happiness outside of TV commercials.

I'm cute; Bush still sucks

First, the good news. In the past couple of weeks, all sorts of people have told me that I look like this:Cuuute, right?

...


And now, the bad news.


Oh, and this.


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What.
The.
Fuck.

The Bunnies of Enlightenment

Last night, as I was falling asleep, an incredible bit of insight hit me like a anvil on the head. You see, I’ve been on a quixotic quest lately to find my path in life. It turns out that spending forty hours a week in quiet desperation in order support a cushy yuppie lifestyle just isn’t doing it for me anymore. Weird, I know – I make it sound so good. I mean, I love five-dollar lattes, sushi nights and Anne Taylor sweaters as much as the next girl, but the price was getting too steep. Plus, it was all starting to feel a lot like a consolation prize for the daily suffering.

So it’s time to seek something better. But I don’t just want slightly better. I don’t just want a 10% reduction in banging my head on the keyboard and 20% increase of my DSW budget. No no. I want meaning, purpose, and all that gay shit. I want to see rainbows and sunbeams as I hop, skip and jump on my way to work, holding a briefcase. I want bunnies and deer to run through traffic to eat out of my hands while choirs of angels sing Hallelujah. I want to live the dream, dammit!

There was only one roadblock on my way to bunny-filled bliss. I had no idea what job could actually make me happy. What office building would keep a petting zoo in its lobby, a security guard watching for my approach over the security camera and then mouthing “Release the bunnies” over the walkie-talkie? And more to the point, what do I actually like enough to keep doing it day in and day out? Conventional wisdom says to do what you love, but what if all you love is doing the crossword, browsing through blogs, lurking in online discussion forums, and mounting the glorious high horse of advice columns?

And this is when it hit me. Are you ready for this?

I love the Washington Post.

I live and breathe the Washington Post. I would marry the Washington Post and have little Lux Posties babies. The Washington Post has been staring me in the face from my computer screen for years now. Seriously, it doesn’t get any more obvious than this. This is my Eureka moment. I’ve got the answer, people.

Now be vewy vewy quiet. Here come those wabbits.