From Nathan of The Zone, and other City Folk

While Maddie and I continue to languish in the weedy backwaters of Gamecube provincialism, Kei, Mordecai, Corinne and Nate have moved on to Animal Crossing: City Folk for the Nintendo Wii.

Here is a link to Kei's recent post about her cosmopolitan life.

Here is a photo of Nate's house, sent directly from his Nintendo:


And here are photos of my living room in 90210. As you can see, I live on the moon:






My house is so big! Will I ever abandon being a hot shot in the country for a new life of impoverished city squalor? Perhaps little Dylan will someday feel the need to attend graduate school...until then, we'll be staying put.

Homes: Past, Present and Future

My virtual friends in 90210 spent Thanksgiving morning getting wasted down by the wishing well and viciously hunting a turkey named Franklin. Apparently, my character (Dylan [after McKay, obviously; seen below]) is some sort of vegetarian, peace-loving hippie square because not only did he NOT drink, but he also spent quite a bit of time helping Franklin escape his gory, sustenance-providing destiny. In an expression of gratitude, Franklin gave him a set of turkey-themed furniture.

Here, you can see the top floor of my house, pre-Franklin:



This is where Dylan goes to hang out with his stuffed bear collection and totem poles. It's also a good place for reading Marxist critical theory while sitting in a rocking chair. Cozy, right?

Below is the same room, but now decorated almost entirely in Franklin's "Harvest Collection:"



It doesn't really come through in the photos, but all of the furniture has PINK CLAW FEET. I don't know. This really gives me the creeps. It's like Franklin thanked me for not eating him by transforming my house into his corpse. Yes, I am quoting the passage in Hal Foster's Design and Crime (2002), in which he quotes Adolf Loos's Ornament and Crime (1908):

"The Gestamtkunstwerk does more than combine architecture, art, and craft; it commingles subject and object: 'the individuality of the owner was expressed in every ornament, every form, every nail.' For the Art Nouveau designer, this is perfection: 'You are complete!' he exults to the owner. But the owner is not so sure: this completion 'taxed [his] brain.' Rather than a sanctuary from modern stress, his Art Nouveau interior is another expression of it: 'The happy man suddenly felt deeply, deeply unhappy... He was precluded from all future living and striving, developing and desiring. He thought, this is what it means to learn to go about life with one's own corpse. Yes indeed. He is finished. He is complete!" (15)

Tomorrow, I'm pawning the entire set at Tom Nook's. Thanks-given present or no, that turkey is not going to guilt me into living with his pseudo-memento-moris.

And, while we're on the subject of presents, promises and death....

In keeping with another, non-holiday tradition, I recently sent a friend an email reminding him of the fact that I plan on spending the post-corpse portion of my life haunting him. It said:

"When I am a ghost, all the places I will live are all the spaces in your brain between rational thought and primal terror."

He responded by sending me a photograph of his brain, so that I could become familiar with my future home :

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!