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Mailbag, March 2004 |
 ere
are some of the best mails from March 2004, with my
frequently-extensive comments following each mail. There were dozens of
good mails this month, but since I'm trying to keep these mailbag pages
to a reasonable length, and since I quoted and talked about quite a few
of the emails in daily updates after they arrived, there aren't all that
many on this page.
Mails are arranged in chronological order, with the earliest on top.
I did not retract my initial comments, which were spurred by my interest in The Punisher, which I compared to various early trashy Arnie movies. However, I am not using "trashy" as a dismissive insult. Sure it's an insult, of sorts, but those early Arnie movies are trashy in a good way. Like The Terminator, the best of the lot, they have to substitute clever writing and acceptable acting and hard-nosed violence for big budget stunts and special effects. They're very cheesy, since you can see the low budget nature of them bleeding off the screen from every bad costume, poorly-dubbed voice over, and cheaply-staged car crash, and while I wouldn't go so far as to say those things enhance the films, they don't ruin them either. At least no more than big budget movies with good special effects are automatically great just because the CGI looks real. Do fans like the first 2 Star Wars movies more, or the first two prequels, which were made for about 100x the cost? Since this email I've updated the reviews section, and written up a dual review of the two Conan movies Arnie starred in. The second one, Conan the Destroyer, is painfully cheesy, but the first, Conan the Barbarian, was the best sword/sorcery movie ever made until the 3 brilliant LotR films came along. I enjoy Conan the Barbarian quite a bit, even though it's cheesy enough to enjoy with crackers and wine.
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This mail is in reference to this article, which collects various blog comments I've made about Playboy magazine over time. And as Angel says, I did refer to the old models as "heifers" at one point, but only to make my point that the playboy models from back in the 1950s were huge, compared to the women of today. Go read the entry from December 21, 2002 on the Playboy article page for the full story, but basically some survey says that Playboy models are getting more boyish and less curvaceous over time, based on the reported measurements. First of all, those reported Playboy measurements are almost certainly bullshit. Half the women in there are listed as 36-28-36, which means her actual measurements are something like 37 hips, 29 waist, and 36 bust, which they round off a bit to achieve their dream woman figure. Secondly, the women of today have much tinier waists than in the old days, and narrower hips as well since they are into exercise, dieting, and regular regurgitation. They'd have smaller busts as well, if not for implants. Those 50s centerfolds are fat, at least by today's standards. True, "heifer" is a bit of a stretch, and yeah, they're beautiful and if I were single I'd probably leap at the chance to date any one of them. But comedic exaggeration and snarkiness is what I do on the blog, for the entertainment value. At least in theory. As for Angel's question about what type of female body I like best... I've talked about that plenty of times. I like fit, slim, athletic female bodies, but not so fit as to be emaciated and sexless, like those ultra marathon runners. I like a girl to be in good shape; not just skinny because she starves herself, and while ideally she'll not be so thin as to have no butt or boobs, I'd take a tri-athlete over a 50s Playboy model any day. Hell I'd take her over a 2004 Playboy model 90% of the time as well, though in all honesty I haven't actually seen a Playboy Centerfold in recent memory, so I'm speaking of the prototypical Playboy model type; busty, blonde, big haired, and dumb. For all I know, Miss March 2004 might have been a tall, slim raven-haired beauty with exotic features, straight hair, a high, firm ass, 34B boobs, and a perfect six-pack tummy, which would put a lie to most of this post. And yes, that's a quick thumbnail sketch of my ideal female body type, though I might give her red hair if I'm allowed to create her from scratch, like a new Everquest avatar. Does this mean I could never be attracted to a woman with a different body type? Of course not; I'm just trying to answer Angel's question without going into infinite detail or weighting it with "a tight butt is more important than boob size" type comments.
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I appreciate people still remembering I once had a D2 column, and I still get mail about it on occasion at the D2 site, but I don't think it's coming back. I thought it might when I was playing v1.10 beta for a while, but the problem with my old column was that while they were funny (or tried to be, at least) they were also full of expert game info and advice. That's a problem since I've not played the game much since v1.10, haven't played on the realms at all since long before v1.09 was obsolete, and simply don't have that knowledge anymore. I occasionally think about regaining it, which wouldn't be hard or boring; I'd just start playing the game for several hours a day, spend time on the realms, in the D2 site forums, updating the Diabloii.net site content, etc. But then common sense asserts itself, and I realize that I simply don't have the time to devote to that. I need to keep working on my fiction since that's what I'm going to derive any future income from, and while an hour of D2 once or twice a week is a nice break, I can't let myself indulge anymore than that. The alternative is to go back to writing D2 columns once every 2 or 3 or 4 weeks, but not doing them as I once did. I liked the way I did them, but there's just no way I can do that now, since as I said, I'm no longer expert enough about the game to be authoritative and interesting. And since we've got several columnists now who write about D2 without ever actually writing about the game itself, I don't see much point in throwing myself on that pile. Though every now and then, I get an idea that would turn into an adequate D2 site column... I just never quite get around to writing it.
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I was amused by this one, but at the time I was receiving quite a bit of email on a daily basis, and never quite got around to replying to him. And now it's months later, and I'll never know what he was going to ask me at all. Generally speaking, I'm not real interested in carrying on long email exchanges via this site, since I figure if I'm going to spend that much time typing, I should be working on my fiction, or at least getting blog material out of it. I am, of course, completely unfair about this, since when I happen to mail or receive a mail from someone on a subject I want to talk about, I expect them to reply to me at length, since after all, it's something I want to talk about. But hey, at least I realize and admit that I'm unfair about it, eh? Also, your odds of getting me to reply to something are much improved by just mailing it and asking right off. This goes for me and for most people who get a lot of email; time is short, patience is limited, and while you don't want to waste your time typing out a long thing and being ignored, we don't want to waste our time reading a mail that's about a future mail, which we have to reply to in order to maybe hear what you were going to ask in the first place. Spit it out, keep it short, and if you don't want all or some of it mentioned on the blog, just say so and I'll always respect that. I never print anyone's full name or email anyway, and while I would if it was an insane mail or a death threat or something , I won't in any reasonable situation.
If you would like to be included in a future mail bag, give it a try. |
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February 2004 -- April 2004 -->
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