I miss SPAM?

Gmail is excellent at filtering spam. I've started to miss the amazing community of assholes known as Spammers. They still bombard me with their demands to click on their links. I have 804 right now, these are the gems from the first two pages. Charm someone tonight by reading these in your best poet's voice. They're short and to the point -except the one with Russian literature.

1.
Get pretty strong bone-on!
Make her feel your wang

2.
Make it intense
Genital growth secrets

3.
Women prefer steel in your pants than gold on your hands.

One more question, count, he said, which beg you to answer in all sincerity not as a future mason but as an honest man.
He went in a traveling coach with six horses, surrounded by pages, aides de camp, and an escort, along the road to posen, thorn, danzig, and konigsberg.
There is everything, everything in her, continued this man.
Anatole kept on refilling pierres glass while explaining that dolokhov was betting with stevens, an english naval officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the outer ledge of the third floor window with his legs hanging out.

By the way, a quick google search reveals this talk of Anatole is an excerpt from Tolstoy's War and Peace. Nice try Spammer but your copy lit and paste failed to fool the filter.

4.
Be a love rhino
Bring hot-rod to life

Mark that book

This is my favourite bookmark. The winner of last year's Toronto Public Library competition in the 10 - 13 year old category. Varvara's bears are amazing, the touch of red, and the frog saying "kwaa" is a great touch.

Her use of space seals the deal for me.

I'm an amateur bookmark designer myself, having done pixel portraits of the members of my book club last year. Actually, I was thinking of starting a deviant-art account for my pixel work.

I rediscovered that site recently and was very impressed by the variety of artists and overall organization. I hope to see Varvara's work on there one day.

In other book news, Novemeber produced a great book reading streak. Haruki Murakami's Wind Up Bird Chronicle, Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, and yesterday I finished Greg Costikya's First Contract -a unique mix of light science fiction and economics.

I found Costikya at this incredible independant games blog.

I've only known Any Rand's Atlas Shrugged to make economic philosophy the grounds for a novel. In Costikya's book Earth's economy is ruined by the introduction of aliens and their superior technology. The protagonist seeks to put himself and Earth back on the economic map. It didn't change my life (the bar for all fiction) but it was unique enough to leave an impression.

I liked the author's political agenda. He seemed to appreciate the right-wing's emphasis on individual power for change over the conditions of their life and a left-winger's cultural sensitivity. It was the only science fiction I can think of where the lead was not a white male or hot female robot.

Western Civilization

Mouse

Caught a mouse with a wonderfully simple Tip Trap.

I find mice to be beautiful, inventive, creatures living tragic, frantic lives. It's a pity they're such a health hazard or I would leave food out for them.

I would like to go on record saying.

If I find out that you kill mice I may:

Calmly ask why you would destroy life.
OR
Punch you in your f*cking face.

*If you are a cat then I understand. But you may want to see someone about that sadistic "toy with them" instinct.

My Dating Advice

If I were to add a chapter to the Great Book of Dating I would write about the cold shoulder.

Many people are amazed that they are attracted to people who spurn them. Are we drawn to rejection? Common macho dating philosophy encourages one to resist the urge to call back and never appear available. In this clip, Jon Favreau fails to do that and that makes it a comedy (Swingers. 1996)

But there is another way to give the "cold shoulder". Genuinely have a life of one's own. Remember that the project of this life is yourself. You should be busy, doing things that interest you and when others ask for your time it should be difficult to fit them in because you are busy doing the things that you are passionate about. If your time is precious then you are attractive. If you are doting on someone, waiting for their next command then you have become uninteresting.

In summary, there are two ways to be alluringly unavailable. One is to play the game and pretend you're disinterested and busy, the other is to live a genuinely busy, interesting life.

Bonus Advice:
Additionally, if you want someone to find you interesting simply ask them questions.

The Kind of Surveillance I Can Get Behind

This site (DineSafe Toronto) allows you to look up any restaurant in Toronto's public health record.

Also, the police put Toronto Crime Statistics on a map. Wow! Two cars have been stolen near me. I'm not sure if this information makes me feel safer or simply acknowledge that crime is everywhere.

Problem - Video Game Skin Tone

I'm making a video game for fun using Construct. I've run into a problem -what gender and skin tone do I choose for the main character?

I decided to:

A. Leave the gender of the main character ambiguous. Use an androgynous figure and never mention 'he' or 'she' in the game.

B. Make the game randomly generate the skin tone of the main character.

Then I ran into more problems:
-How many skin tones should I include? Four? Three? Five?
-Are these hairstyle androgynous? (personally, I only think one of them captures that look)
-Should the user be able to choose their skin tone? (including a "doesn't matter, randomly assign my skin tone" option?)

These are problems that mainstream games do not deal with. They simply use white male, white female large breasts, or Italian plumber.