The Mooninites Land in Ballard?

Saturday, January 13. Mike Tyson is born. The Wall Street Journal prints its first cover photograph. And, on this day in 2007, aliens are among us.

And they are the Mooninites.

Made of lite-brites and taking their cues from the uncivilized, middle-finger-philic inhabitants of the moon - according to the gospel of Cartoon Network's popular Aqua Teen Hunger Force series of TV shows - they have arrived and acknowledged our presence with theirs. In Ballard.

The Canal is a newly-renovated event establishment, catering to what the technophiles would call "scalable" dining - for events such as weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, and corporate functions. It sits on the Lake Union exit of the Hiram Chittenden locks on the Seattle Ship Canal, built on the ruins of the old Hiram's restaurant.

It's beautiful, well-staffed, impeccably furnished, and replete with a fascinating view of sea foam churning through the locks, complete with Corps of Engineers rotating red lights near the big sea doors. It commands an air of good taste.

Which is why the strange multi-LED pattern displaying the Cartoon Network-created alien with anger-arched eyebrows and a raised middle finger seems all the stranger for being there, anchored just underneath The Canal's tasteful fancy-script sign.

The character is unmistakably a rendering of one half of Aqua Teen Hunger Force's angry moon residents, the Mooninites, the purple, cigarette-smoking, property-vandalizing half-pint, Err. In addition to being a semi-permanent resident of the moon, Err also bothers the Aqua Teens in their native habitat of New Jersey, often setting fire to random forests and vandalizing the house of Carl, the Aqua Teens work-at-home neighbor.

Identity confirmed, answers to other questions fail to appear. Who put him here, and why? And how?

I myself saw the angry alien art upon my arrival at The Canal on the 13th for a company function, and instantly scrambled up for a picture. A detailed shot of the underside reveals at least a semi-professional job with decent mounting and rudimentary weatherproofing. The final result, some ten feet up in the air, would have required a ladder to mount. Midnight vandals are a possibility, but with the weather being unseasonably cold, a new question forms. Who would bother?

A couple glasses of red wine later, I attempted to ask the intruder himself. Basking in his purple, obscene glow, I asked him from whence he came, and his purpose.

With his middle finger raised, as if to insult me for eternity, Err, our Ballard visitor, remained silent, contented merely to stand above all, godlike, and flip them off.

Which says a lot about a guy.

Any information on this little piece of parasitic art would be appreciated. Send any and all info this way. The art may or may not still be visible at:

5300 34th Avenue NW
Seattle, Washington 98107

Charles Cox and XNA Game Studio Express at GDC 2007

Just dropping a quick note: I'll be presenting an XNA Game Studio Express hands-on workshop at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this year.

If you're interested in trying your hand at game development with XNA Game Studio Express, and are planning on attending GDC this year, come on by for this introductory session and I'll show you how to get started! No experience necessary!

I'll be giving the workshop twice - once at noon on the 8th, and once at 2:30 PM on the 9th. Each session is two hours long. See you there!

Link to Event Details

XNA Game Studio Express Hands-On Workshop
Thursday, March 8 - 12-2pm
Friday, March 9 - 2:30-4:30pm
Charles Cox
Come see XNA Game Studio Express in action! Try Game Studio Express and see your creations come to life on Windows and Xbox 360. This workshop will include step-by-step instructions to get you up to speed on Microsoft's most recent game creation tool for casual and hobbyist game developers.

Inherent Bias: The Service Industry

Scrolling through MSNBC.com, I read the latest uptick on jobs in the U.S. as reported by John Schoen.

A choice quote:

Friday's report should help dispel concerns that the economy is replacing high-paying factory work with low-wage jobs like manual laborers and burger-flippers.

Instead, John reports, we're seeing an increase of healthcare services, business and professional services, and education services. New jobs in all of these areas are replacing lost manufacturing jobs, not burger-flippers.



So why does the graphic for this story show two burger-flippers taking the lid off the meatball station at a Quizno's? I said pepperjack cheese, kid.

Call me sensationalist, but I smell white-collar/blue-collar bias. Come on. You could have easily shown an office job. A nurse's station. A classroom. No. Apparently, when we hear the word "service", we immediately think of that thing that goes between two buns, lettuce, and tomato.

I'll admit it, I think that way too, perhaps as the common denominator of all of the "service" industry, but to me that means someone, somehow, somewhere, got their brand identity into the national unconscious, right in cell A46, between Mariah Carey and Do-It-Yourself Dry Cleaning.

I'm not sure I like the way that plays out - to me, it means the notion of a "service" industry dies a death in obscurity by ubiquity. What's a "skilled" service versus a "non-skilled" service? Do we know? With so-called "product" industries in this country suffering a cruel psychological blow with the recent "Bold Moves" at Ford and GM, most of what remains is service.

But the best image we can conjure up from our blessed media is two junior-highers short stacking the pastrami bucket before the lunch rush. I'm not trying to be mean to protectionists, but if we're going to spend all day screaming "save U.S. jobs", maybe we need to take a good long look at whether we really respect - or even understand - the jobs we're asking for.

Horrible Advertising: Clorox

I'm not sure what disturbs me more.

A: A little girl considers the bathroom the best place to put on her fairy costume and practice flying lessons right next to the creepy large-intestine-looking-waste-tube toilet. I mean, this is where Uncle Waldo comes over and sits down with a Boater's World and plays Meet the Press every Thanksgiving.

B: The advertisement ending with her flying and waving her magic wand right over the toilet as the shot fades to a placement of new Clorox Wand Cleaners, as if to imply that she's actually in the bathroom so she can dream of cleaning the bathroom. In a fairy outfit.

Both scenarios are scary, and the unfortunate part is they're both in this ad.

You know what else irks me? It's one of those toilets with a push button on the tank top, rather than a handle. Does any house you know have one of those? This kid and her family live in an office park.

Found in an in-line ad in this article.

Saddam's Execution Runs the Media Blockade

MSNBC won't tell you where to get the "pirated" cell phone video of Saddam Hussein's execution. They didn't even touch the story before more than two million people had already viewed the grainy, one-megapixel video that showed Saddam's last minutes and subsequent execution, limp body, snapped neck, and all.

Now that they have, they go on about more troops, a policy shift for the White House, and so on. Great. (MSNBC Article)

Here is a country in turbulent crisis, trying to head off full-scale civil war (am I allowed to call it that now?) - according to your view, already embroiled in it - and the last thing they need is any sectarian views on what should have been an impartial execution, they say.

Ignoring for a moment my contention that there isn't such a thing as an impartial execution, step back and ignore the talking heads for a moment. To me, the understanding of the impact of this video "leak" means more global impact than it does sectarian or national - Shiite, Sunni, American...

A man with a cell phone just held the United States and Iraq as PR hostages with a crappy VGA video.

Compare with the recent realization that Russia's entry to the WTO could be denied by the existence of a popular MP3-downloading site hosted in that country. An MP3 site, "AllofMP3.com", is holding trade policy in Russia hostage.

The power base is shifting.

Look at it this way.
No more barriers to content creation. Easy access to cheap video, audio, and text hardware.
No more barriers to distribution. Podcasts, YouTube, and Blogs.

To me means - why are the big media groups continuing to put the majority of their pressure on content creators? Answer: they aren't.

While we've all been tortured by in-theater "don't steal from the movie industry" ads, suggesting a shift to consumer scare tactics, and live under constant fear of what are seemingly random RIAA lawsuit-fests (really, you're alright if you're over 20 or so, the RIAA seems to like to prey mostly on children), what's really cranking in the gears of industrial K-street policy pushing is increased pressure on the last thing they've got control of: pipes.

And here's your first warning shot. U.S. Music Publishers Sue AllofMp3.com, the Russian MP3 download site mentioned earlier, for $1.65 trillion.

Read that again. No, I mean it.
Read it again.

One point six five trillion.

No longer in control of limiting supply, big money is on limiting flow of the existing supply through the pipes. In keeping with the strategy of "distributors are responsible for the content that goes through their pipes", the grand strategy seems to be to put rubber bands around each information vein until it dies and crumbles away.

But, as you can see quite simply, without blanket policy (which hasn't yet been successful), the number of distributors will grow faster than the number of lawsuits piling up on the table. And with that, it's obvious that there's only one real move left.

To go to Big Telco and plead their case.

And that's happening right now, and I'll bet you on it. Sure, the RIAA hasn't said one word about it. But why would they? The only way to restrict the flow is to gain access to the pipes. Right now, those pipes flow free. And they're going to stay that way if we do our jobs as global citizens.

One more reason to write your Congressperson. Now, of course, this issue is so hot the legislature won't even touch it yet, but that had ought to be another red flag.

I know there's a huge battle to be fought. But what the Saddam Hussein execution video tells me is that there's only one direction this thing will go as a matter of philosophy. Information will be free. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it's a matter of numbers.

As two million people watch a video the politicos in both Iraq and the US didn't want them to see, I can take something good out of even this most gruesome spectacle. We are becoming informed. Information is getting out. It is getting to those that want it. It is getting to them over the protests of institutions that have long expected their major power - secrecy - to last them far longer than it did.

We are no longer debating if our global access to information will be a possiblity. We are now simply debating how, and when.

And yes, I watched the Saddam video. You can too.