Tsunami Relief. "Across the country, everyone from chefs to college kids are mobilizing to show support for tsunami victims," report Rachel Emma Silverman and Elizabeth Bernstein in The Wall Street Journal. A youth-service group called "Do Something," dosomething.org, has set up the Kids Tsunami Relief Fund, and is urging kids to "make the bed, take out the garbage or serve parents breakfast in bed in exchange for donations from mom and dad." A New Years' celebration in Brooklyn was turned into a tsunami benefit, when a pair of college roommates, "inspired by a college friend who had survived the tsunamis, sent out e-mails to the 350 invitees of their New Year's Eve party asking them to bring donations." They raised $550. SurfAid International, www.surfaidinternational.org, meanwhile, is mobilizing "the support of the global surfing community."

More traditional charities -- such as americares.org and doctorswithoutborders.org -- reportedly are stunned by the response. American Red Cross, redcross.org, alone says donors had "pledged $75 million ... as of Sunday morning. Catholic Relief Services, catholicrelief.org, has raised about $14 million; Save The Children, savethechildren.org, ($13 million); World Vision, wvi.org, ($8.6 million) and Mercy Corps, mercycorps.org, ($8 million). Retailers including Wal-Mart, Safeway and Whole Foods are collecting funds for the American Red Cross, while Amazon.com, since last Tuesday, has "replaced much of its homepage with a plea for donations, also to the Red Cross, and reportedly had "raised nearly $12.2 million from more than 151,000 donations as of yesterday afternoon."

Of course, collecting donations is easy relative to the task of "ensuring goods are transported to the people in need." Some folks are taking that matter into their own hands. For example, members of the New Jersey Buddhist Vihara in Princeton, NJ, most of whom are from Sri Lanka, filled their own "6-foot by 40-foot container" with "canned food and rice, bandages, Advil, powdered milk, baby bottles, pots, pans, plastic plates and utensils." When it arrives in Sri Lanka in about 25 days, "it will be picked up by a brother of one temple member who will help distribute the supplies." Then there's Geoffrey Dobbs, who was swimming when the tsunami struck and miraculously survived it. He's set up Adopt Sri Lanka, adoptsrilanka.com, to bring quick aid to "small coastal villages." All told, some $100 million dollars has been raised by U.S. based charities. (Note: just click on any of the above links if you'd like to make a donation).

Pac-Mon. One of the hottest videogames online today is being gobbled up not by gamers but by "artistic types," reports Sarah Boxer in The New York Times (12/27/04). The game -- Pac-Mondrian -- is the "cybernetic love child of Pac-Man and Mondrian's painting, "Broadway Boogie Woogie." Like the original Pac-Man, Pac-Mon features "a chomping mouth" and Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde. But instead of the standard-issue "blue grid on a black screen," Pac-Mon's "maze is Mondrian's 1942-43 painting," and rather than the usual electronic beeps, the background sound features "the piano boogie of Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson, which Mondrian loved to dance to."

Here's how Pac-Mon's creators explain the concept: "Pac-Mondrian transcodes 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' into a Pac-Man videogame: the painting becomes the board, the music becomes the sound effects and Piet Mondrian becomes Pac-Man." So, the idea is that players take the part of the artist himself, as he deconstructs his own painting -- eating away the various "square flecks of color" until "there's nothing left" but the underlying "yellow grid." High-hat cymbals sound as the " mouth runs into the red, blue and gray bits," and "saxophones wail" when attempts are made to consume the "colored blocks within blocks," which serve as "doorways into and out of the painting."

Pac-Mondrian was designed by "a Toronto art group, Prize Budget for Boys, pbfb.ca, for a contest sponsored by the website, rhizome.org ... It did not win, but two prominent websites -- metafilter.com and boingboing.net -- picked up Pac-Mondrian's website. Soon thousands were playing the game and passing it on to their friends." Various weblogs and other sites -- eyebeam.com, beadesigngroup.com and watercoolergames.org -- began discussing the deeper meaning of the game. Among the most "simplistic interpretations of Broadway Boogie Woogie" is "that is represents the grid of Manhattan." Inspired by this, the games "inventors say they have made two other versions of Pac-Mondrian based on the maps of Detroit and Toronto." If you'd like to try your hand at Pac-Mondrian, you can find it at pbfbca.prizebudgetforboys.com/rhizome_commission/play.html.


Tim Manners, editor