matt's blog

I haven't used Vox for quite some time -- come find me over at http://mattbaume.com.

On July 9th, I start work at the company I've wanted to join since I was 14.

YAY.

It's just like Live-Journal! My Vox is now entering stealthy friends-only mode, with top-sekrit posts that only my friends and neighbors can see, because I don't want the people I'm insulting to know that I'm insulting them. Whee!

Seamus, whose name almost looks like Samus, growls at journalists who repeat politicians' (false) claims that players must engage in mayhem when playing Grand Theft Auto.

Of course it isn't true. Any well-adjusted preteen could tell you that you are free to either create a ruckus or remain below the radar; either shoot a prostitute, or ignore her. Just like real life!

But it's also not entirely true to say that players aren't rewarded for killing hookers and shooting cops. They ARE rewarded, but not by the game, at least not directly: the reward is that committing crime in the game is FUN. The reinforcement of antisocial behavior doesn't happen in the game world that actually becomes hostile to players who inflict harm. The reinforcement is in players' own minds, which are stimulated to glee by their participation in violent fantasy-enactment.

You know how, when you see a pigeon in your path, you shoo it away? It's kind of fun, even though nobody's paying you to do it. Same in GTA, except that instead of frightening a bird you're ending a person's life. And I think that's what makes GTA's "awfulness" so sticky: we'd like to think that, if challenged to commit murder, we'd decline. But here's proof that we wouldn't.

I can't be sure, but I think that's what might qualify GTA as upper-case-A Art.

James has been away all week on business, so I'm going a little companionship-crazy at the moment. It has just come to my attention that a boy on whom I had a constant low-level crush in college has just moved to San Francisco. And I want to be all friendly and invite him out to meet folks -- I remember how hard it was to move to a city and not know anyone -- but I also, upon reading his profile, have come to realize that we would probably never in a million years be able to stand each other, even as casual friends. 

"Hobbies and Interests: Just the usual stuff: going out to eat, movies, gym, drinking with friends and socializing, dancing until dawn etc etc."

Oh God. The horror. It's just occurred to me that this is the most I've ever known about this lad, more than I ever managed to glean from my droopy glances at him across lecture halls. Compare his life to my hobbies and interests, most of which involve anxiety and discomfort and hiding as far from the world as possible, preferably in dark and confined secret places. We share nothing. Well, nothing aside from drinking.

And the worst part: I still want to make overtures of friendship and invite him to Dolores Beach and stuff. Not because I'm a nice person -- a nice person would leave him the hell alone and let him make his own friends, friends he'd actually like. If we ever did hang out -- if I ever was able to somehow con him into having the slightest interest in spending time with me -- I would only wind up being very mean to him, because I'm unable to control my unpleasant spite when someone's personality doesn't dovetail with my own.

No, I only want to invite him out because I like being in the presence of cute boys. I'd be the worst kind of friend; the kind whose primary concern is for the style of your hair but not the content of your character.

This makes me very melancholy, because it's not the kind of thing that would have occurred to me when I was 21 -- my dumb craving for his friendship back in college is evidence enough of that -- and I wonder now how many boys I used to treat that way, before it finally occurred to me that my boyfriend might be doing the same to me.

Here's my latest angry email to Muni. I am promised that these complaint letters have an impact.

Hello,
Unfortunately, I didn't write down the bus number -- I was simply too angry at the time to remember to do so. And I couldn't get the driver's number, because he had covered up his uniform with a jacket. But I've complained about this driver's difficulty adhering to schedules in the past; all you would have to do, to find his number, would be to look up my prior complaints about timeliness from a few months ago. Here are the details of the latest problem:
Monday morning, I was waiting for the 33, eastbound, at Fulton/Stanyan. The night before, I'd sprained my foot, and so I was walking slowly and with a limp. I was the only person waiting at the stop, but when the 33 arrived, the driver pulled up well past me; when it stopped, I was about even with the back of the bus.
I walked down the sidewalk towards the front door -- slowly, and with a limp, since I'd injured my foot. As I put my first foot on the step of the bus, the driver chose that moment to close the doors so that my body was jammed between them. A few seconds passed, during which I expected him to open the doors. He didn't. I had to push them open myself to continue boarding the bus.
I didn't exchange any words with him -- I just wanted to get on the bus, go to work, and put the incident behind me. Aside from pushing open the doors that had been closed on my body, I didn't indicate that I was unhappy. But the driver said, as I was boarding, "you need to calm down."
An apology would have been nice -- for making me limp down the street, for slamming the door on me, for not opening the door once I was stuck between them. But telling me to calm down, when I had responded completely calmly and dispassionately to his awful customer service, was probably the worst thing he could have said.
To make matters worse, this driver had, as usual, delayed the start of his run by 10 minutes so that the bus on the next run had already bunched up immediately behind him. That's an issue I've complained against many times with no resolution, so I'm resigned to it never being fixed. But a driver who treats riders this poorly is simply astonishing.
Thanks for your attention to this issue.
Matt Baume

I am once again in the news: Matier and Ross mention me in their column today, and I also appeared on the local CBS affiliate. All this attention is very neat, especially as it's focussing attention on what I think is a large serious problem that needs fixing (Muni's failure to hold drivers accountable, and their lack of transparency when it comes to customer service).

But I'm finding it pretty stressful, too. These old-media news sources are uncomfortably one-directional -- the people reading the paper or watching the news can't easily respond to me. On a blog, the comments make it so easy to participate, and everyone has ownership in the conversation. That doesn't mean that everyone gets along and reaches a satisfactory agreement; but there's at least an exchange of ideas, and once in a very rare while, that exchange is positive. On the other hand, with one-way media, the message seems to float in from far, far away, fixed in time like a painting. Being able to respond to commenters on blogs would be like a painting that pops to life and asks, "well, what do you think I'm smiling about?"

Whoops. I just compared myself to the Mona Lisa. Probably a good sign that it's time to get over my 15 seconds of fame.

Hey, let's all try this Firefox plugin called "Medium." It sits at the side of your browser, and lets you chat with your friends and lets you see what your friends are browsing. Sounds kind of neat, right? I guess.

As an added bonus, they store all of your viewing history on their own servers. I can't see anybody having a problem with that.

So, this fabric store is selling a TOTALLY CUTE heavy green fabric right now:

But it's kind of expensive and I don't want to buy it unless I can think of something to use it for. It's probably too thick for a garment ... any ideas?