Eric Scott Matthews

Netflix Drama

So Netflix screwed up big time. Again. Apparently recalling their entire Dr Who second season, who knows how many copies. There's even a complaint about it in the review section(now deleted).  I have been a loyal customer of theirs for years even though they have gotten more expensive, increased the delay in shipping new movies, and have become lax in weeding out copies with scratches and skips in a lot of their more popular rentals. This and they totally screwed up some of their DVDs.

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The deal is this: Rental places buy the rights to make their own copies of DVDs for rentals. It's cheaper easier for them to replace scratched and broken disks. But with a high volume and low quality control, sometimes they screw up. This time the screw up was accidentally recording over the end of the funny, campy Dr. Who Season two disks by splicing in a gruesome scene from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre at the end. Personally I was more amused than pissed. It’s not like I watch DR. Who on dates or with a bunch of friends. It’s more a guilty nostalgic pleasure mixed with a fascination for the new occasional homo-sensual subplots, and my super crush on John Barrowman (Torchwood is not available in the

US

even on the BBC, nor is it out on DVD yet— the bastards).  So anyway, I’m considering selling out and going to block buster, which has pretty much the same deal as Netflix after their lawsuit and hard time getting into the internet rental market, except they allow you to return your rental DVD to one of their retail locations and get an immediate replacement, lessening the one problem with mail DVD rentals: the inability for a spontaneous rental. Of course, until everyone starts direct downloads…

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Anyway that’s my taste of consumer endorsements for the day.

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Swell Plans

I have been geeking out lately with my new copy of Adobe cs and a few books on design and typography. Yea, seriously, that’s why I have been mia on the blog front. I am actually watching video lessons on the use of InDesign and reading books on the difference between kerning and leading and how to use black and white color in text. (The next book is on web design, I promise!). It’s not the most exciting blog topic, I know, but the good news is that at the least all of this might lead to a new blog design in the next few months.

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Sure, to be more interesting, I could bitch about how hard a time I have had it at work last month, and how I have been trading time lately between figuring out how to change a perception problem with my incoming boss and considering if it is even worth it. Or I could blog about politics and gossip, of which there is plenty right now, but that really isn’t my bag. Of course, I could always blog about how I got drunk last weekend and ended up making out with my ex-boyfriend in the bathroom of a restaurant that shall not be named—only to get our balls busted by the owner who happens to be a friend of ours after the bouncers reported us.  (No, Tina, don’t get excited, it wasn’t Alex.  It was the other one, and we don’t talk about him on the blog).

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So it is not as if there is nothing going on. I’ve even been on a date or two this week.  Of course, the actual birthday is coming up (as opposed to the myspace birthday which for some reason was listed as Oct 1^st and caused some amusing confusion amongst my more peripheral friends).

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Tonight Nick is throwing Stewie a birthday party, because he birthday is ironically the day after mine, and Friday seemed a more appropriate date for it. Hopefully someone will take some pics for you guys.  Tomorrow Gary Bell arrives for a night or two of frivolity tacked on to his work trip.  Saturday night Jon is hosting what looks like will be a very fun and possibly classy (and by classy I mean no plastic cups) 40^th birthday party on Saturday— funny how in the days of evites and instant messages how much a simple paper invite sent usps can feel so special to me.

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So that’s the plan. If you plan on stalking me (I am still interviewing for a stalker to be featured on my new site whydontihaveastalker.com) please send me an Email and I will reply with directions to all of my planned social appearances complete with photos of places from which you can snap quick photos of me as I pass by.

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Typographic note:  Apparently cutting and pasting into Typepad does allow the retention of some formatting such as small caps for acronyms!  yay.

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Quagmire: the 24" iMac

quag‧mire Pronunciation[kwag-mahy^uhr, kwog-]
–noun

1.	an area of miry or boggy ground whose surface yields under the tread; a bog.

2.	a situation from which extrication is very difficult: a quagmire of financial indebtedness.

3.	anything soft or flabby.

So I ran up to NH on Friday and finally picked up the new iMac.  I know I was supposed to wait until my birthday, but that’s what credit cards are for.  And Alex was so gracious to indulge me in taking me up there (and buying me some accessories as an early bday present).  So most of this weekend was spent playing Christmas-morning.  Me geeking out over the new iMac and Stewie going a little nuts over his early bday present from Alex and Derek, a new travel crate, which is pretty much a doggie tent.  Makes me very much want to go camping with him, maybe Ptown next summer—how lesbian.
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I decided the new computer is actually male despite my search for a female name.  And after my duo nightmares of trying to download the contents of poor Precious (who hasn’t been quite right since I dropped a speaker on her and dented her casing) and resetting email and trying to remember SMTP crap and all the various passwords I need, followed by me pretty much drowning in the giant screen, I decided Quagmire would be a great name.  Now I just have to figure out a way to get the computer to make “giggidy giggidy noises and sing It’s Quagmire upon start up.  (and I will).
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The Naming

Music:  Luna de Fiesta-  Gypsy Soul

Ok at this point even I am already sick listen to me get all drooly over the new 24" iMacs and if  the 7600GT is really that much better than the 7300 Video Card.  So I am finally rushing off to NH to buy one today.

Yes, I am the kind of geek who will hitch myself on a 100 mile ride just to save a sawbuck in taxes and also the type to buy a computer on the first day of my credit cycle just so I have an extra week before I have to pay it off.  I’m also the kind of geek who compares video cards and clock rates to try and decide if upgrades are worth the trouble.   So I have been trying very very hard not to bore all of you with dull geeky blog entries the last few weeks.

But this weekend will be fuelled with migrating stuff from The Precious and possibly rumaging through old photographs to scan them in or other projects.  So you may find Pics of me with Cherry Plumb hair, or highschool graduation pics with me all Goth-ed out with whichever guy I was dating that week.

Don’t be surprised  if I start throwing in some short entries about new Tiger tips or try to put up a Stewie Cam with iSight or something equally geeky in the near future.

Any ideas for a name for the new girl?

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Are you Quirkyalone?

Always interested in new words, today I discovered quirkyalone on dictionary.com’s list of new words for 2005:

quirkyalone

Part of Speech:   noun

Definition:   a single person who is happy to wait to find the perfect mate or partner

Etymology:   2000

And, of course, there is a quiz.

Your score was 83. Somewhat quirkyalone (otherwise known as quirkytogether):
You are probably part of a mysterious group of people, the quirkytogethers. You share many of our quirky qualities, but you manage to find yourself, on a regular basis, in a coupled situation. Interesting.

What the hell is a quirkytogether?

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Spychips: A Book Review

The book Spychips is repetitive and takes a while to get where the authors want to take you, but the authors are earnest and you know they are heading somewhere important.  Eventually they do make their point.  And it is a scary point.
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It isn’t just well-meaning Big Brother governments who want to strip away your privacy.  It is also the ethically-challenged, dollar-driven Corporation that not only wants to sneak into our private lives, but is also already tracking us without our knowledge.
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Gillette, for example, has been caught hiding these spychips in their products already.  This is not just a security measure to protect their inventory from shoplifters.  These chips are different.  Unlike the normal security tags, these chips remain active even once you leave the store. And they have the ability to identify you from a distance and any other information they can get into their databases.  Remember when they asked you for your phone number at the check out?  Did you tell them your zipcode?  Did you use a credit card?  If the answer is yes, then that info is now attached to the spychip you just took home with your razorblades and someone can look you up with a chip reader and get that info. 
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Oh and when Gillette started this test they did it along with a camera built into the store’s  shelf so they can watch you as you look at their razors and determine your opinion or learn how you decide to buy it.  Security cameras are no big deal these days, but these are not just for security, they want to know everything about you from your hair products to your underwear, to how many condoms you go through in a month.

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Glom: Word of the day

For those of you that don't know I have a thing for words.  Not big pretentious $5 spelling bee stumblers, but instead the unusual, short ones thrill me, particularly those with interesting double meanings.

I came across "glom" today in an Internet forum.  From the context I saw it, I'm wondering if this old word has picked up some modern popularity on-line.

Anyone familiar with it?

From Dictionary.com:

glom    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (glm) Slang v. glommed, glom·ming, gloms v. tr. To steal. To seize; grab. To look or stare at. v. intr. To seize upon or latch onto something: “The country has glommed onto the spectacle of a wizard showman turning the tables on his inquisitors” (Mary McGrory). n. A glimpse; a look.

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all fun and games till someone bleeds

Music: A Thousand Beautiful Things-- Annie Lennox

I spent most of the weekend with Stewie.  Big surprise there.  Took him for an overlong walk to the South End where he enjoyed getting gang raped at a dog park.  Ok not really, but an awful lot of dogs seem to want to show dominance behavior with him.  And he takes it too, unless, of course, there is a ball around.  Rather than defend himself, he is all about defending things.  Apparently, Stew is not just a bottom, he’s a power bottom.   That little guy can really dish it out.  He completely frightened off the two, much larger dogs that live in the same building.  He may be small, but he is muscular and heavy, with a low center of gravity and he can became a snarling ball of teeth and possessiveness when he wants too.
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Then Saturday night, when Stewie accompanied Jonathan and me to a little roof deck get-together, Stewie proceeded to climb onto a dog three times his size and try to show a little dominance of his own.  Good thing I left his toys at home.
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It makes me wonder how much human sex and specifically how much gay sex is more about power and dominance than it is about actual lust.  We are, after all, both mammals.  People personify dogs all the time, thinking of them in human terms, but I have started to look at people a little more in doggie terms. 

Holy $!%%, Thanks Best Gay Blogs!

So yesterday my blog hits were way above average. A lot more.  My guess is all that extra traffic came from this. 

Thanks Ryan. 

Who said gays only "read" blogs for porn and gossip?

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And P.S. all of you who have found me recently and are sending me emails:  Thanks!  I really am trying to read and respond to them all.

Not So Private Thoughts

Muisc: Travelin Through-- Dolly Parton

I have been trying to figure things out lately.  It's not easy. 
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For someone who has a blog I have an oddly protective sense of privacy.  I get it from my Mom.  The difference between us is that I tend to err on the side of telling too much, because I think honesty is a better shield against things like rumor, than withholding information is.
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So recently when I started this project for work, which amounts to cold calling people to update a contact list for someone I have never met I got this uncomfortable feeling that I was intruding on someone elses life. 
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This blog thing is very wierd.  So is the amount of information you can glean about someone by googling them, doing a few quick company searches, and making a few phone calls.
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Then again, there is a certain strength in being vulnerable.

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PS. get Dolly's fab song free on itunes today.... and go see TransAmerica.  Why have I not reviewed that yet?