Wherein The Stranger reveals how boring its writers are by pulling a "video games are SOOO BORIIIIING to watch".

You're so old. So very old. Try not to break your hips as you shake your fist at the most profitable personal hobby in the world, you olds.

I had hoped that the raining out of [first day of] Burning Man, would spark some global warning discussion about this area. (I live a couple miles away from Wadsworth, the place where cars are being turned back.)

Weather has been strange this year-- very very little snow all winter (different from other years where there's a small amount of snow and rain), and a bunch of rain this spring and summer (which hasn't happened in recent memory).

The hills here are usually uniformly brown year 'round except for a month or two in spring, and right now they are greener than in springtime.

While I haven't ever been to the event, I'm familiar with the playa from camping, and friends and I have been speculating about whether Burning Man would even happen this year. Black Rock is a gypsum flat, and for most of the year you can't drive on it; even when the surface is completely dry for weeks, cars still get stuck in mud because moisture underneath makes the surface unstable and vehicles sink.

There's standing water today, but they say it will be alright for vehicles tomorrow? Man, I hope so. The stores here are fast running out of drinking water and blunt wraps.

Anyone seen a good climate analysis on this area? Some explanation of the increased rain this summer?

"Amazon Twitches: Amazon paid almost a billion dollars for Twitch, a company that "allows gamers to share a live feed of their gameplay." If you've ever sat on a couch next to someone playing a video game, you know how thrilling that can be."

That's like saying that because listening to your neighbor talk about sports isn't entertaining that there can't possibly be a market in sports commentary or viewing.

This isn't about watching your neighbor play video games, it's about watching really funny people playing video games or really amazing gameplay of video games. It may not be your thing but ESPN may not be either.

Live feeds of gameplay on Twitch or Youtube are just the most basic form of reality television.

You at The Stranger should know a lot about the concept of reality television, having based your entire news model off of it and all.

I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert...

Change your expectations, Bono.

Anyone who disparages Twitch is deeply out of touch with a large subculture. Which is fine, but we all know what making fun of a small group of people makes you. It makes you a douche.

If you have to read one font critique in the "Kern Your Enthusiasm" series at HiLobrow, make it this:

Fontwise, Hermès, in its fragrant calfskin jackboots, is a bright smack across the eyeballs with a $3500 riding crop. It shits on Hotdog from the towering height of its authoritarian, bronze warhorse. Hermès enslaves Hotdog, and, finding its labor to be of less value than its incarceration, ultimately solves the problem of Hotdog’s existence — its blight upon the aesthetic landscape — by imprisoning it.

I was wondering whatever happened to Cintra Wilson. I never missed her advice column in the old San Francisco Examiner, and Winter Steele, her puppet show for MTV, was genius.

What @1, 3 and 6 said. Thousands of channels, many of them live. Thousands (often tens of thousands) of people watching or playing on each channel can't be wrong. It's immensly entertaining AND instructive. Did you even look at the website?

http://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Worl…

*immensely.

@5: That's a Big Country lyric.

@10, oh god, if Big Country ever wrote a song that went "change your expectations, Bono" I would be so happy.

Everyone's bitchin' about the Stranger's (shitty) opinion of Twitch and no one has anything to say about MEAT MOUNTAIN?!?!

I can't imagine how one would even go about eating MEAT MOUNTAIN. Unless you're a total slob, you'd basically have to spread it out on a plate - which you don't get at Arby's, and eat it with a fork.

MEAT MOUNTAIN probably doesn't seem as daunting if you've ingested plenty of COCAINE and MALT LIQUOR.

MMMMMMMMMMM Meat!!!!!!!!!