Katamari Damacy

Katamari Damacy was sort of like Getting Things Done — it seemed like everywhere I turned someone was raving about it and at only $20 for a PS2 game, I figured why not. Now I can’t get the damn wireless controller out of my wife’s hands. Aaargh — everytime I bring a cool game into the house, I make the mistake of showing it to my wife and then its all over and I’m back to blogging rather than wasting my time, in this case, rolling over things.

Katamari Damacy is, in many ways, like Seinfeld — its a game about nothing. You start with a oddly shaped ball — the katamari. You roll over things and they stick to the katamari. As more and more things stick, the katamari gets bigger and bigger and you begin to pick up bigger and bigger things. Its a totally silly concept for a game, and just as irresistable as the first 500 hours you wasted playing Tetris and its many variants.

They shouldn’t let people make games like these. I’m sitting up at 2 a.m. in my pajamas gleefully rolling over cats and legos to build up my katamari thinking, “You know, I remember when I used to stay up late reading Aristotle.” Now I spend my time rolling my katamari around in a vain effort to please the Lord of All Cosmos and catch myself humming the soundtrack at work.

ROYAL RAINBOW!

Who Put Together That Moderator Lineup?

The funny thing about the fallout over this blogger conference in Nashville this past weekend is who in their right mind would ask Dave Winer to moderate a panel on “Respectful Disagreement”. That’d be a bit like asking Don Rumsfeld to host a panel on alternatives to force in achieving diplomatic goals.

Anyway, apparently it was classic Dave. According to this report, Dave told those attending this civility panel that if they didn’t like the way he was moderating things, they could leave,

Example. Early on, Winer semi-admonished Robin Burk from Winds of Change when she casually mentioned posters and commentors in the course of her comment. Winer stopped her and said he didn’t believe in dividing people into posters and commentors because he doesn’t believe in hierarchies.

That was a feel-good groaner in and of itself, but he became a hypocrite once disagreement started by playing the speaker card, saying he was the leader today and that if John Cox didn’t like it he could leave. Winer made the classic passive-aggressive mistake of starting out pretending to be incredibly permissive and then being forced to turn into Attila the facilitator to regain control.

And then, of course, he bitches today because Glenn Reynolds and others apparently took him at his word,

Before the conference we should make sure that the most flamey left-wing bloggers are present, the people who posted in the comments on Dean For America, for example; and urge them to hurl insults at our southern brothers and sisters, while we sit back and enjoy the scene (and leave early because we have better things to do).

Winer’s a flamethrower — its both his gift and his curse. Askig him to host a panel on respectful disagreement is just silly (don’t these people read his blog?)

There’s a nice sketch here which I think does a good job of describing the dynamic of conversations involving Winer.