tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-166358852024-02-28T15:37:10.584-06:00Adamant's FireA Dissertation on Life and Other Things Suspect.
(Updated MWF)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.comBlogger166125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-15623355551986881842011-07-06T16:26:00.000-05:002011-07-06T16:26:51.506-05:00Why I Can't Stand Star Wars Anymore<i>Originally posted <a href="http://onedivinemachine.tumblr.com/post/7241864372/starwars">here</a>, on my tumblr <a href="http://onedivinemachine.tumblr.com/">onedivinemachine.tumblr.com</a>.</i><br />
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<img src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnthc5Y6Yl1qaskk6.jpg" /><br />
I'm a <strike>fairly</strike> pretty big nerd. I love to play video games, especially RPGs (I have a $1/hr of gameplay standard - otherwise I usually feel like I don't get my money's worth). I love Magic: The Gathering so much I've had to swear it off, and it's all I can do to keep myself from buying a new booster pack every time I pass by the "impulse buy" isle at Walmart. I like to play complicated, two- or three-hour long board games with my friends. I'm a big history nerd (<a href="http://onedivinemachine.tumblr.com/post/314041292/formspring-me">it's kind of my thing</a>). And as a child growing up in AMERICA, I grew up on and loved <em>Star Wars Episodes IV-VI</em>.<br />
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My fascination with the original<em> Star Wars </em>trilogy was more than just a love for the funny robots, the big furry monster, and the cool superpowers. I remember sitting in front of the TV one summer with a blue legal notepad and writing down things to watch for in a list on the left ("R2 Beeps," "Lightsabers," "Laser Blasts") and leaving space on the right to write down tally marks for however many times those things happened/appeared throughout each movie. It was incredibly nerdy and incredibly pointless, but I enjoyed the films enough to watch them as many times as it took to fill out my little form. I went back to school before I could really get started, but I remembered thinking I was going to be pretty cool if I could cite all of my statistics to my friends (how weird my perceptions of cool were).<br />
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I saw the entire prequel trilogy in theaters, and I had posters of Ewan McGregor and the Battle of Geonosis on my bedroom wall. I didn't like the prequel trilogy nearly as much as the originals, and I did outright dislike the third movie. Even so, I did honestly like <em>Attack of the Clones</em> and all of its huge battles. It was a mixed bag, but I took it for what it was and went on with my life.<br />
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My falling out of love with <em>Star Wars</em> really (and oddly) began in earnest with <em>Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</em>. I went and saw it with my mom opening weekend, and was utterly incensed at how inane it all was. I wasn't even upset about the ultimate supernatural force behind the plot (after God, uh, eggs, and Jesus in the first three, aliens didn't really phase me). The plot was insane, Harrison Ford was really old, Cate Blanchett's accent was atrocious, and Shia LaBoeuf <em>swung from tree-to-tree with monkeys. </em>The movie was so terrible, so cynical, such a pandering mess, that I couldn't get any enjoyment from it.<br />
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Once I saw the cynicism, I couldn't un-see it in Lucas's work. From the pandering of <em>Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</em>, to the evidence that the putting the Ewoks in<em> Return of the Jedi </em>was a <em>marketing</em> decision (because cute toys sell better), to the complete disregard for continuity among the movies out of laziness, my dislike for <em>Star Wars</em> grew out of my disgust with George Lucas. Everything he had touched was tainted (except for <em>Jurassic Park</em> - that bun was almost out of the oven by the time Lucas got his grubby hands all over it).<br />
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<em>Then</em> I saw the devastating RedLetterMedia reviews of Episodes <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI&feature=channel_video_title">I</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfBhi6qqFLA&feature=channel_video_title">II</a>, and <a href="http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/star-wars-episode-iii-revenge-of-the-sith/">III</a>. Talk about exposing the rotting, hollow center to a series gilt in pretty CGI. After watching these, it confirmed what I had already suspected: these movies don't make sense; they are artistically bankrupt; they disrupt the mythology, look, feel, and message of the series; and, oh yeah, <em>they don't make any sense.</em><br />
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Even after all of this, I could still hear about <em>Star Wars </em>without cringing, and I still referenced it very occasionally in conversation. Hearing someone talk about George Lucas would annoy me, but somewhere in my heart was the little girl with her notepad, her eyes glued to the original trilogy, enjoying every scene, every minute.<br />
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Then I snapped.<br />
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I was reading an <a href="http://io9.com/5787832/the-heroine-of-gods-war-makes-han-solo-look-like-a-boy-scout">io9 review for <em>God's War</em></a> by Kameron Hurley with the headline "The heroine of 'God's War' makes Han Solo look like a boy scout." I understand that blogs run on clicks, and for io9, a nerdy sci-fi blog, putting a name like Han Solo in the title is cash money. But besides the tiniest similarities, Han Solo and Nyx, the main character of <em>God's War</em> (which I bought and have been reading), are absolutely nothing alike. The situation is completely different. Her status is completely different. Her behavior is completely different. The politics of the world she is in are different, and have helped make her character different, and so on. This is apples and oranges stuff.<br />
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In addition to the comparison being completely inaccurate, no matter the qualification, comparing Nyx to Han Solo in the first place is <em>boring</em>. Again, I know how blogs work, and contrast is a legitimate way to frame something readers don't know about. But are we so unimaginative that Han Solo, who, in retrospect, was a pretty tame idea of a rogue with gray morals, is the only archetype people can understand? Why are we still using <em>Star Wars</em>, when so many great sci-fi films have come out before and since that fill out archetypes much better? Is it because we credit <em>Star Wars </em>with the invention of the archetypes? Because even that's not quite the whole story, though it may get close. The review wouldn't have annoyed me even half as much if the reviewer had mentioned even one other cultural item. But it's as if drawing the throwaway comparison between Nyx and Han Solo was enough, the work done. And really, it was - the whole point was to get some extra clicks. I admit, I clicked for that very reason.<br />
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What bothers me about this isn't that <em>Star Wars</em> still has cultural currency. By all rights, it <em>should</em> still have purchase, because it changed a lot in cinema. It's not that it doesn't deserve its dues. It's that, to paraphrase <a href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_angrynerd_geekculture/all/1">Patton Oswalt in his recent Wired editorial</a>, we simultaneously live in a culture that places special importance on creativity and originality, but also in a culture that places pride in planting a flag on something that has come before. Geek culture is a snake eating its own tail.* Geek culture is masturbatory. Geek culture is fiercely territorial for things it claims but does not create. It depends on a wide and (sometimes) deep library for its cultural references, and it depends on the same library to understand it. It is self-referential, self-important, and self-congratulatory, and it isn't concerned with creation that does not include recycling bits of other people's work.<br />
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The io9 review, as benign as it really is, flipped my switch from "tolerate and sometimes participate in" to "loathe and cringe at the sight or sound of" <em>Star Wars</em> and large swaths of geek culture in general. The idea that something that has been proven, through analysis and the words of its creator, to be creatively bankrupt in dozens of ways and can <em>still</em> command the respect that it does, even knowing what we know, makes geeks, nerds, "enthusiasts", and whoever else falls into that category, stubborn and sheltered. The switch io9 flipped (again, it's still very benign) has changed how I see the references to <em>Star Wars</em> or to <em>The Legend of Zelda </em>or to Batman. It's all part of the same recycle and reuse that fuels entire industries which run on nostalgia and fear of disappointment in the new.<br />
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This isn't a hipster argument. This isn't about the mainstream making nostalgia and obscurity into commodities. This really isn't even an argument, as I'm trying to express, not convince. The point I am trying to get to is that I am of the opinion that <em>Star Wars </em>(among myriad other geeky icons), as stunted in growth, commercial in sensibility, nostalgically revered, and crassly cynical as it is, has infiltrated and modified our cultural assumptions for the worse. We are constantly comparing apples to oranges to <em>Star Wars</em> or to some other famous tidbit, when the degrees of relation are so distant they can't even be considered to exist in the same plane.<br />
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Walker Percy once used the analogy of the postcard experience. People travel to see the postcards image of sights and landmarks. But what they don't realize is that the trip is never going to be fulfilling, because they are going to see exactly what they and millions of others have seen before. Going to the Grand Canyon and standing at the railing, looking down at millions of years of formations, isn't experiencing something new and personal - it's experiencing 1/n^nth of the full experience. Going off the beaten path gets you closer to the 1/1 experience, and gives you the chance to be fulfilled by your adventures. <em>Star Wars</em> is a 1/n^nth experience. It saturates our current pop culture, being the go-to for references, archetypes, etc., so much that it makes people lazy, expecting or desiring nothing better. Those movies are everywhere. When I finally started to notice, I couldn't help but feel nauseated and unfulfilled.<br />
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I understand my opinion is largely impractical. There really hasn't been in a time in history when the present isn't scouring the past for inspiration, if not outright recycling, and I am not under the illusion to the contrary. I am also aware that I am just as much a participant in the nostalgia machines and nothing-new industries, and that I am just as responsible as the next human being for giving people like George Lucas my time, devotion, and cash - making this a self-indictment and not just an opinion. I also do not begrudge anyone for loving this culture and claiming it as their own. It simply isn't for me, and everything I've expressed here applies to how I see the culture and isn't an attempt to interpret anyone else's experience. But maybe, just maybe, I can break some of the cycle by refusing to keep participating in what I see as the mindless repetition, the knee-jerk references, and the tired cliches of <em>Star Wars</em> that have seeped into our culture.<br />
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But likely not.<br />
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*I do disagree with Patton that <em>Star Wars</em> was ever uncool or not mainstream (have you seen those box office numbers?) and that one group can own or even has the right to own any part of pop culture. People are territorial about all sorts of things, but that doesn't mean they have any <em>right</em> to it.<br />
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Image <a href="http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://imgclub.org/images/oslnlby0vb.jpg&imgrefurl=http://wareznuke.com/movies/16065/fs-single-link-star-wars-i-vi-collection-dvdrip-axxo-rapidshare-warez&usg=__bRP46yezSfn1QSS9YgEXaMORL5U=&h=953&w=1033&sz=210&hl=en&start=1&sig2=hu8if4fy4stCsz6kE0zSDQ&zoom=1&tbnid=NSsC4sGVJ7HQ7M:&tbnh=138&tbnw=150&ei=OzoSTu7WO46WtweZy5TlDQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dstar%2Bwars%2Bi-vi%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG%26biw%3D733%26bih%3D735%26gbv%3D2%26tbm%3Disch&itbs=1&biw=733&bih=735">via</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-41814826172137137552011-05-31T00:46:00.001-05:002011-05-31T00:50:05.705-05:00Impossible Summer Reading List Review: Joe Haldeman's The Forever War<i>As with all discussions of books read from my Impossible Summer Reading List, this will be unabashedly spoiler-rich. Proceed at thy own peril</i>.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nVaaesDi4m4/TeRlfXLZESI/AAAAAAAAAPE/mKQYs1X4JJw/s1600/Photo+on+2011-05-30+at+22.13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nVaaesDi4m4/TeRlfXLZESI/AAAAAAAAAPE/mKQYs1X4JJw/s320/Photo+on+2011-05-30+at+22.13.jpg" width="189" /></a><i>The Forever War </i>(1974) was suggested to me by a friend, not by premise, but by a half-amused half-serious teaser that resembled the following: "They smoke pot and have sex a lot in it. So it's awesome." Yet <i>The Forever War, </i>for all of its divining of a dystopian future, feels heavily weighted by the past.</div><br /><b>First, a</b> (long-ish - sorry) <b>summary</b>: William Mandella (which, in an odd aside just pages from the end, is revealed to be a corruption of "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala">Mandala</a>") is drafted as part of the Elite Conscription Act to fight in a space war against the Taurans, a never-before-seen alien enemy. The monotony and strangeness of space war is immediately shown through the casual sex amongst crew members and smoking army-issued marijuana.<br /><br />The novel focuses intensely on the day-to-day brutality of space. The first major stint of the novel is spent with Mandella's platoon in training exercises on Charon, where many soldiers die simply from the environment and equipment malfunctions. When they finally meet the Taurans with the impossible order to capture one alive, the alien force lines up for the gory slaughter, apparently never having encountered the human variety of combat.<br /><br />When Mandella's group finishes its first campaign, they are allowed to go back to earth, but not without a harrowing description of Earth as a place so violent and repressed that peace doesn't have a meaning anymore. They will barely recognize their home, they are warned. The earth has grown twenty years older during their two year tour, an effect of star speed relativity. This is all told to them by Captain Siri, a homosexual man wearing makeup (more on this later). Instead, they could reenlist and get double, triple, quadruple pay, depending on their assignments.<br /><br />Mandella decides to go Earthside anyway, and finds just how much of a mess the earth is in. His father dead, Mandella moves in with his mother. He buys a gun, learns how the new currency (kilocalories) works, and decides to blow his pension on an airship ride around the world with Marygay Potter, the only woman in the service with whom Mandella felt any connection. While they're on their tour, they stop in Britain; while there, Mandella sees a gang of boys try to rape a young girl, and shoots and kills one of them. Deciding that they shouldn't risk going to mainland Europe, they both fly back home. Mandella goes home and finds his mother's "friend" Rhonda in his mother's apartment and quizzes her about their relationship. He finds out that Rhonda and his mother are lovers, and that Rhonda is actually his earth age (as opposed to his twenty-years-younger relative age).<br /><br />This proves to be too much for Mandella, who goes out west to Marygay's parents' collectivized farm (because a dystopian future wouldn't be very dystopian without a dab of communism). While staying with Marygay, the farm is attacked by Mad Max-ian ruffians who kill both of her parents. The two reenlist, and, in a double-crossing by the military, end up in a completely different assignment. The two are severely injured on a mission, and, after convalescing, are promoted to different commands and separated, knowing full-well that the light speed relativity would likely kill one or the other before they can reunite.<br /><br />The last stint of the novel follows Mandella in command as a Major Mandella, a long way from his humble beginnings as Private. Instead of showing the difficulties of leadership over a crew not much younger than he (he had only four years of relative service, but he had been enlisted since the beginning of the war in 2007 and the mission would end somewhere in the neighborhood of 3143), the focus shifts to the cultural difference between Mandella and his crewmembers - the main one being that they, through a eugenics program back on Earth, were all programmed to be homosexuals, and Mandella was not.<br /><br />The book ends with Mandella finding that Marygay, long thought to be dead, has survived through tricks of relativity. Oh, and the war with the Taurans was a complete misunderstanding, and no one really knows who shot first. And humanity is not really a species anymore, rather than a bunch of clones based off of one set of genes, all named Man. Man has established some heterosexual breeding planets in case this is a genetic mistake, and Mandella finds Marygay on one of these. Happily ever... something.<br /><br /><b>Now, my thoughts</b>: <i>The Forever War </i>is thought by most to be a meta-narrative of Joe Haldeman's time in Vietnam. In the book's most brutal elements, from the senseless death to the soldiers' reactions to death, from the hatred of the government to the feeling of the nation's best and brightest being wasted on a useless war, this does come through.<br /><br />But what about <i>The Forever War </i>as a science-fiction novel? The science is certainly there, with tachyon lasers, microton grenades, and, most importantly, light speed relativity. The following is from the teaser on the back of my 1991 copy (pictured above):<br /><blockquote>SPACE WAR IS HELL... Especially for Private William Mandella, drafted into a brutal interstellar conflict that raged millions of light years from Earth. But battling a savage alien enemy was not the hard part. Nor was fighting alongside a promiscuous co-ed cadre of misfits who considered Mandella a degenerate. </blockquote><blockquote>The <u>real</u> test would be coping with the astonishing changes the Earth would undergo during Mandella's tour of duty. For while the loyal soldier aged mere months... his home planet was aging centuries.</blockquote>A very compelling teaser, and an idea that sparks the imagination. This teaser drew me in and was the reason I decided to commit to the book so fully.<br /><br />It took me until about the second act (right before Mandella went back to Earth) to figure out I wasn't going to like this as a novel. The reasons range from the substantial to the technical. A short list of my worst grievances:<br /><br /><b>The dystopian future looks like a 1970s evangelist's apocalyptic laundry list.</b> Dope-smoking in the military? Check. Promiscuous sex between co-eds in the military? Check. One world currency regulated by the United Nations? Check.<br /><br />Most prominently throughout the second half of the book is the specter of rampant homosexuality, employed through government brain-washing to keep people from having children. The only thing that truly horrifies Mandella is the homosexuality, and it seems to be mostly due to the lack of partners for himself.<br /><br />Several times throughout, Mandella thinks that the war can never end, because as bad as everything is on Earth, the entire economy would collapse, and things would be even worse. In other words, the Space Military Industrial Complex had inserted itself into the world economy, making violence and military power a prerequisite to have a barely stable society. There are nods to the power of the UN, not necessarily as a one-world government, but as a force that is able to single-handedly plunge the world into a war with an unseen alien race in space. These messages are powerful, both as warning and commentary, but they are shunted aside to focus on the looming threat of government-sanctioned homosexuality. Which brings me to the next point:<br /><br /><b>The muddle gets messaged. </b>The government pulls dirty tricks, kills off the best and brightest, begins wars that have no meaning, and makes moral depravity the norm. The first three are blatant lessons from Vietnam, and I have no issue with them. But moral depravity represented by joints and cohabitatin' co-eds seems far from the worst that could happen in this world.<br /><br />This is only exacerbated by the situation with Mandella's mother. When Rhonda tells Mandella the truth about her and his mother, Mandella thinks, "I felt very hollow and lost." Later on in the passage, Rhonda berates him for the way he feels. "You think, because your mother is sixty, she's outgrown her need for love? She needs it more than you do. Even now. Especially now." A cogent point. Even so, Mandella leaves for Marygay's farm, seeking to leave his mother and never return.<br /><br />Or maybe none of this is the point, and it's just about a soldier who returns home to find it's not his home anymore, and that he can never truly find home again. This is likely the actual message, but there's a lot of interference with the frequency. Regardless, <i>something</i> obviously resonated with people more versed than I, as its Hugo and Nebula awards show.<br /><br />And let me be clear, I am well aware that I am an alien from the twenty-first century. Saying "what's the big deal?" shows my bias in ways that are just as obvious to me as they are to anyone who reads this. Even so, sex and drugs, as bad as they can be, are not nearly as heavy as death, war, destruction, and greed. For Haldeman to focus so completely on the former rather than the latter seems like an opportunity missed.<br /><br /><b>Haldeman is not Hemingway. </b>Ernest<b> </b>Hemingway knew how to understate profound truths with beautiful simplicity, but even a fan of Hemingway knows that the staccato rhythm of his works can wear down the most determined and interested reader. Haldeman aims for this profound simplicity; instead, he writes passages that simply do not work, and his characters - even Mandella, the voice of the entire book - are paper thin. They speak similarly, and conversational exchanges couldn't be read without backtracking to understand who was speaking. Combined with the sometimes exhausting technical conversations, Haldeman sounds less Hemingway and more Clive Cussler.<br /><br />This monochromatic story-telling is most insufficient when Haldeman means to portray emotion. I did not understand until the word "love" showed up over halfway into the book that I was supposed to care about Marygay Potter, or at the very least understand that Mandella did. He says, more than once, that he cares for Marygay more than any other person in space or on Earth, but when Mandella mentions "love" (he never actually says that he loves her, just that he possibly could, perhaps maybe?), I was still unconvinced that I should give a damn about their relationship. At one point, Mandella meets with a sex therapist (when all of his shipmates are gay and he's the "Old Queer"), who tells him love is fragile and doesn't last, and that Mandella is a romantic for still caring about Marygay. Reading the conversation was one of the least convincing moments in the entire book. Even when Mandella and Marygay were together on their first missions, they were sleeping with each other and everyone else. At one point, Marygay was one of quite a few options for Mandella. That she became the object of his half-hearted affections seems arbitrary (perhaps that the character shares the author's wife's name was a nod to how it would all end).<br /><br />After all of this, there's still the problem of telling, hardly ever showing, with paragraphs upon paragraphs of detail about minor things that are dropped and never mentioned again within pages (the absorbed, mind-numbing monologue Mandella's mother gives about the kilocalorie system and how to get a job on the black market is one such grueling example). Before the sci-fi aficionados sweep in and berate me: I'm well aware that it is a long and storied tradition in sci-fi to come up with something completely original about the future and explain how it works in intimate detail, no matter how small the thing is. I also know that it's a rare gift to pull it off without coming across as a mad man mumbling nothings to no one but himself.<br /><br /><b>Final Thoughts</b>: There's a heart to this book that is below the science-fiction frame and the dystopian visage, and that is, at the center of it all, you can never go home again. The passage of time sweeps away everything familiar and leaves nothing untouched - even the one thing you stubbornly hold on to. The importance of Marygay, if we simply accept intent rather than attempt, is that she is, through her own determination and the power of her love, the one thing time could not erase.<br /><br />Mandella's name is a corruption of "mandala"or circle. More than once, Mandella speaks of cycles of war and peace. In the end, his life is a cycle with Marygay, as he begins and ends with her. However unartfully illustrated throughout, it <i>is</i> a beautiful sentiment - one that might just be worthy of the teaser on the back.<br /><br />Grade: C+Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-4096511813134375342010-11-30T01:47:00.002-06:002010-11-30T01:49:06.756-06:00Time OutIf you can't tell by my intermittent posts, I am drowning in the amount of work I have to do. I will be back to normal next week for sure, but until then I'm going to have to drop off the face of the planet.<br /><br />To tide you over, here are two of my favorite moments from Absolutely Fabulous, a British series that I recently acquired and have started from the beginning.<br /><br />Don't forget you can ask me shiz at formspring.me/adamantfire. I will have enough time to respond to questions starting next week, so now's the time.<br /><br /><object width="434" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7gVEwjxYxGg?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7gVEwjxYxGg?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="434" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_yjdTo6JT8U?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_yjdTo6JT8U?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-86386403322448322582010-11-22T23:22:00.000-06:002010-11-22T23:22:34.661-06:00"The Night the Stars Fell"As most of you know, I have been reading part of a collection of nineteenth century daily journals written by an Associate Reformed Presbyterian minister as part of my grad school historical research class. [<a href="http://adamanthenes.blogspot.com/2010/10/sex-lies-and-murder-mystery-in.html">For a better introduction to the work, here is a podcast I recorded with some background.</a>] When I get passed the fact that I'm drowning under the work and the volume of work that still remains pushes me to the brink of my mental faculties, I have to admit that there is a lot in these journals that really interests me. The little glimpses into the life of a rural family and neighborhood in mid- to late- nineteenth century Mississippi can shed a lot of light on the history of our present customs, problems, and ideas, as well as show what we have lost, for better or worse. Subtle references to the present that only a historian can really grasp (e.g. referring to William Jennings Bryan, a very important figure in late and early nineteenth century political history, only as "Bryan," etc.), as well as referring to the writer's recent, local past (which in turn is the distant, obscure past to the modern reader).<br />
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One such reference occurred a journal from 1899 that I've been writing on. When eulogizing a man who died, Sam Agnew (the minister) referred to the fact that "Jim" was born "9 years before the Stars fell, which makes his birth year 1824." When I first read it without fully understanding it, I thought it was a Civil War reference. Of course, the Civil War began in 1861, but the connotation with "Stars," especially in that capitalized form, is political. When I came across it again, I decided to simply google the phrase and see what came up. What I found really caught me by surprise.<br />
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"The Night the Stars Fell" is a reference to the Leonid Meteor Shower that occurred in 1833. The shower was apparently so intense and awe-inspiring that it became a cultural phenomenon as well. The song "Stars Fell on Alabama," though written in 1934, is actually about the meteor shower. If it's important enough use as a landmark for births and deaths, it is fair to say that the event was a truly spectacular one and very important to nineteenth century Americans.<br />
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Here's a link to the song as sung by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong on <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-best-ella-fitzgerald-louis/id1109050">iTunes</a>, as well as a link to a <a href="http://www.historylecture.org/starsfell.html">more complete story</a> about the details of the shower itself. The picture below comes from the description of the event.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzHeT67a70aa3PpUH2xAkL8XyDEnTwwPs9CrR2iJVyzHxVmlw7MUmhbq35v7vd7raYZYnd_jcP5lROCr-sP9pBnh4Oi5UiNJsWKQQp_zzMzL13ZPxMXKgWUwszj-cFh8NeeXrM/s1600/Meteor+Shower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzHeT67a70aa3PpUH2xAkL8XyDEnTwwPs9CrR2iJVyzHxVmlw7MUmhbq35v7vd7raYZYnd_jcP5lROCr-sP9pBnh4Oi5UiNJsWKQQp_zzMzL13ZPxMXKgWUwszj-cFh8NeeXrM/s640/Meteor+Shower.jpg" width="404" /></a></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-64522204117242487262010-11-12T17:24:00.001-06:002010-11-12T17:24:57.443-06:00Into the Mind of the Puppet MasterHere is Jim Henson's Academy Award nominated short film <i>Time Piece</i>. Very weird, very creative, and, at times, very fun. It's nearly 9 minutes - well worth the time.<br /><br /><object width="434" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Eh4mRrwkxPQ?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Eh4mRrwkxPQ?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="434" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />Happy Friday!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-59849151494809995702010-11-11T00:20:00.001-06:002010-11-11T00:22:06.419-06:00Listicle No. 1: Favorite Animated FeaturesA long time ago over on VDCC, I decided to come up with a <a href="http://adamanthenes.wordpress.com/2008/06/09/yahoo-better-circle-up/">Top 30 animated films list</a>. I didn't actually make it all the way through, not by a long shot, but that's because I have trouble finishing anything I start. I've decided to finally right my wrong and, 2.5 years later, provide the full list here sans commentary. I would disagree with some of my decisions now (for instance, I don't even <i>like</i> - spoiler! - Ratatouille), but the list belongs to a slightly younger, more cultural criticism-minded me.<br /><br />Without further ado, in descending order.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TNuKNQnZRGI/AAAAAAAAAOM/pOrPw2TmD5A/s1600/Snow-White.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TNuKNQnZRGI/AAAAAAAAAOM/pOrPw2TmD5A/s200/Snow-White.jpg" height="150" width="200" border="0" /></a><br />30. Snow White<br />29. Ratatouille<br />28. Monster's Inc<br />27. The Emperor's New Groove<br />26. The Rescuers Down Under<br />25. Robin Hood<br />24. Howl's Moving Castle<br />23. Hunchback of Notre Dame<br />22. Charlotte's Web<br />21. Bambi<br />20. Iron Giant<br />19. Peter Pan<br />18. Finding Nemo<br />17. Jungle Book<br />16. Ghost in the Shell<br />15. Grave of the Fireflies<br />14. Shrek<br />13. Pinnocchio<br />12. Wall-E<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYdGWMMY8BOT3N3-Z3t9Iw7k2Xdky6xQlJa03MDBfd9MV2_Kx2d6qLhBXavbfcsnPHBwM7KiSn8H78-1OE2riKogMou1lcE0nOUB_gAK1YcUe5O1G1eUxSR8h_fhyphenhyphen8ExtkPA_k/s1600/mononoke.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYdGWMMY8BOT3N3-Z3t9Iw7k2Xdky6xQlJa03MDBfd9MV2_Kx2d6qLhBXavbfcsnPHBwM7KiSn8H78-1OE2riKogMou1lcE0nOUB_gAK1YcUe5O1G1eUxSR8h_fhyphenhyphen8ExtkPA_k/s200/mononoke.jpg" height="144" width="200" border="0" /></a>11. The Land Before Time<br />10. Princess Mononoke<br />9. The Fox and the Hound<br />8. Fantasia<br />7. Aladdin<br />6. Cinderella<br />5. The Little Mermaid<br />4. Beauty and the Beast<br />3. Toy Story<br />2. Spirited Away<br />1. The Lion King<br /><br />There they are! Disagree (don't hesitate) in the comments.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-61100676366174816782010-11-08T23:00:00.005-06:002010-11-09T03:33:48.035-06:00Stages of EmancipationAt this very moment, I am not filled with dread.<br /><br />Which is saying something, considering I have been been bouncing between apathy and dread, quiet and fear, for a few months now.<br /><br />Why? Oh, for different reasons. A few months ago, it had more to do with a heavy phase of anxiety and a <a href="http://adamanthenes.blogspot.com/2010/08/100-things-hows-whys-and-whatsits.html">swirling depression</a> I could not pin down that stemmed from self-doubt and a serious reexamination of who I am as a person. Now, I am looking into my future - the act alone being enough to make anyone pause.<br /><br />I have two paths before me. One has a job, the other a child's dream.<br /><br />Ever since I was a little girl, when I made my future job list on wide-rule notebook paper and Scotch-taped it to my wall in my bedroom at my grandmother's house, I knew I wanted to go as far as I could on any route my education took me. "Go until it ends," I hear the voice in the back of my head say. "Go until there is no more path."<br /><br />But the voice that says that is also the voice of a little girl who is reluctant to understand how the world works, and doesn't want to admit to herself that maybe following a dream for its own sake isn't really an option. Even if I knew how the path turns out, the decision would not be any harder to step off of it and potentially terminate all further progress to the end.<br /><br />It's the cliche which we all know. You stand in a room, facing your former, younger, more precocious self. She looks at you and asks, "What happened?" And all you can say is "Life." She calls you a sellout, you tell her that you didn't understand how it was when you were her, and now things are different. She says you are nothing like her, you protest but inwardly agree. Then she says she's disappointed, and you can do nothing but shrug.<br /><br />The road has diverged in my yellow wood, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I am not going to choose the road less traveled by. Yet I see more divergences in the road I am probably going to choose, and I see a diverse life ahead of me on this path. I see an opportunity to be young for once instead of the adult I've always been forced to be, and that's more exciting than any other prospect at the moment. A chance to be free and cultivate the relationships I've had to let sit and wither on the vine. A chance not to be a cynical angry person that my scholarship has almost forced me to be. A chance to work towards change instead of accepting how things became how they are now as a function of my degree.<br /><br />That's just looking forward, though. Looking back, I see some of the darkest moments of my entire life. The moments when I've felt most alone, most betrayed, most inept. Not all of that was because of the actual pursuit of my degree, but it has all in some way or another been triggered by my being here. There are a lot of moments I can't take back. There are a lot of words for which I can't apologize. I have lost so much ground so quickly, only to clamber back up the path to get to where I stand, and even now where I stand isn't safe. Going forward, and away from this, seems like the only sane option. Yet running doesn't erase the past, and the suffocating memories that I associate with some of my time here have not destroyed me. Even before I step forward, no matter my decision, I know I have to make peace with myself, lest I regret whatever decision I make.<br /><br />I don't have to be damned if I do or damned if I don't, but it's hard to see exactly how to go on without regrets. Making each step a sure one takes time and effort and patience, and I feel so short on all three. I feel like a tightrope walker. While I've never had a lesson, every step has, in its own way, been practice.<br /><br />I have not gotten to the point of being able to look my former self in the eye and honestly say, "This isn't a compromise. This isn't cynicism. This is the best." Until I get to that point, I will still be an off-and-on ball of anxiety. But I think I'm getting there, which is the best I can ever expect.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-49429128379317920952010-11-05T06:52:00.000-05:002010-11-05T06:52:32.701-05:00Wikiventures!: 20 Different Abstracts, 20 Different IllustrationsRecently I was looking up the word "raconteur" when I came across the Wikipedia article for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storytelling">storytelling</a>. The picture used to illustrate the article was Millais's <i>The Boyhood of Sir Walter Raleigh</i>, which depicts a seafarer or sailor telling Raleigh tales about the sea.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/Millais_Boyhood_of_Raleigh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="337" src="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/Millais_Boyhood_of_Raleigh.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
This is something that is in general taken for granted, but is actually a really interesting and cool thing that Wikipedia does. If asked what I would use to illustrate a concept like <i>storytelling</i>, it might take me a while to come up with something half as good as the Millais painting, but because of the power of crowds, an illustration was found that really struck at the heart of what storytelling means.<br />
<br />
So I decided to perform a little experiment. I came up with a list of words, random at first, then increasingly thematic, and tried to answer the question "What illustration was used to best evoke the epitome of the abstract concepts at hand?" In each case, I have used the first picture displayed next to first summary text on each page. The results are below the fold.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">1. <span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contentment"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Contentment</span></a></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Result: </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Creator:Adriaen_van_Ostade" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; font-size: x-large; text-decoration: none;" title="Creator:Adriaen van Ostade"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Adriaen van Ostade</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">'s </span></span></span><i style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The Drinking Peasant in an Inn</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> or </span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The Contented Peasant</span></i></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/495px-Adriaen_Van_Ostade_-_Le_Buveur.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/495px-Adriaen_Van_Ostade_-_Le_Buveur.jpg" width="330" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">2. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death">Death</a></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">Result: Skull</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/SkullFromTheFront.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/SkullFromTheFront.jpg" width="275" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">3. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life">Life</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">Result: Ugandan Ecology</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/800px-Ruwenpflanzen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" src="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/800px-Ruwenpflanzen.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">4. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love">Love</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">Result: Sir Frank Dicksee's <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>. (Interesting side note: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate">Hate</a> has no illustration.)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/DickseeRomeoandJuliet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/DickseeRomeoandJuliet.jpg" width="267" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">5. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surprise_(emotion)">Surprise</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">Result: Um... Something very German.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/425px-HimmelsstC3BCrmer_staunen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/425px-HimmelsstC3BCrmer_staunen.jpg" width="227" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">6. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anger">Anger</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">Result: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's <i>Rage of Achilles</i> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/477px-The_Rage_of_Achilles_by_Giovanni_Battista_Tiepolo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/477px-The_Rage_of_Achilles_by_Giovanni_Battista_Tiepolo.jpg" width="317" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">7. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope">Hope</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">Result: Hans Sebold Beham's <i>Spes</i> (Hope)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/Spes_or_Hope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/Spes_or_Hope.jpg" width="250" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">8. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_(mood)">Depression</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">Result: Albrecht D<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">ü</span></span>rer's <i>Melancolia I.</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/475px-Melencolia_I_28Durero29.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/475px-Melencolia_I_28Durero29.jpg" width="316" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">9. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound">Sound</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;">Result: "Bass drummer in marching band."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Thoth08BigasDrumEvansChalmette.jpg/450px-Thoth08BigasDrumEvansChalmette.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Thoth08BigasDrumEvansChalmette.jpg/450px-Thoth08BigasDrumEvansChalmette.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><br />
10. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradition">Tradition</a><br />
Result: A Polish Christmas dinner.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/Wigilia_potrawy_76.jpg/560px-Wigilia_potrawy_76.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/Wigilia_potrawy_76.jpg/560px-Wigilia_potrawy_76.jpg" width="298" /></a></div><br />
11. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth">Myth</a><br />
Result: Gustave Moreau's <i>Prometheus</i><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Gustave_Moreau_006.jpg/356px-Gustave_Moreau_006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Gustave_Moreau_006.jpg/356px-Gustave_Moreau_006.jpg" width="236" /></a></div><br />
12. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past">Past</a><br />
Result: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;"><span class="fn" id="creator"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Vassily Maximovich Maximov</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">'s <i>Everything is in the Past</i></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;"><span class="fn" id="creator"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br />
</i></span></span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Maximov_Everything_In_the_Past.jpg/787px-Maximov_Everything_In_the_Past.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="303" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Maximov_Everything_In_the_Past.jpg/787px-Maximov_Everything_In_the_Past.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;"><span class="fn" id="creator"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br />
</i></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;">13. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punishment">Punishment</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;">Result: Stocks.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Chapeltown_Stocks.jpg/800px-Chapeltown_Stocks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Chapeltown_Stocks.jpg/800px-Chapeltown_Stocks.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;">14. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt">Guilt</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;">Result: John Singer Sargent's <i>Orestes Pursued by the Furies</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Singer_Sargent,_John_-_Orestes_Pursued_by_the_Furies_-_1921.jpg/538px-Singer_Sargent,_John_-_Orestes_Pursued_by_the_Furies_-_1921.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Singer_Sargent,_John_-_Orestes_Pursued_by_the_Furies_-_1921.jpg/538px-Singer_Sargent,_John_-_Orestes_Pursued_by_the_Furies_-_1921.jpg" width="287" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">15. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will">Free Will</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Result: Dominoes.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e4/Toppledominos.jpg/800px-Toppledominos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e4/Toppledominos.jpg/800px-Toppledominos.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">16. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea">Idea</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Result: Light Bulb</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Crystal_Clear_app_ktip.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Crystal_Clear_app_ktip.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;">17. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought">Thought</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;">Result: Rodin's <i>The Thinker</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/56/The_Thinker,_Rodin.jpg/450px-The_Thinker,_Rodin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/56/The_Thinker,_Rodin.jpg/450px-The_Thinker,_Rodin.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;">18. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_(visual)">Perspective</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;">Result: "A sharpened pencil in extreme perspective."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Sharpened_Pencil.jpg/800px-Sharpened_Pencil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Sharpened_Pencil.jpg/800px-Sharpened_Pencil.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">19. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future">Future</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Result: The Last of the Spirits from Charles Dickens' <i>A Christmas Carol</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/The_Last_of_the_Spirits-John_Leech,_1843.jpg/388px-The_Last_of_the_Spirits-John_Leech,_1843.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/The_Last_of_the_Spirits-John_Leech,_1843.jpg/388px-The_Last_of_the_Spirits-John_Leech,_1843.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><br />
</i></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;">20. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge">Knowledge</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;">Result: Episteme, the personification of knowledge, in Ephesus, Turkey.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Efez_Celsus_Library_5_RB.jpg/450px-Efez_Celsus_Library_5_RB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Efez_Celsus_Library_5_RB.jpg/450px-Efez_Celsus_Library_5_RB.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-32649540066306852042010-11-04T01:14:00.001-05:002010-11-04T01:17:05.970-05:00Annotated iTunes No. 2: Sounds of Studying<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TNJOQfzSiYI/AAAAAAAAAOE/7Wy5DOPk1NU/s1600/Ping+Profile+Albums.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TNJOQfzSiYI/AAAAAAAAAOE/7Wy5DOPk1NU/s400/Ping+Profile+Albums.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>I almost always listen to music while I work. It breaks the silence and blocks out white noise. If I'm alone, it makes me feel not so. If I can't get away from other people, it makes me feel not so crowded. It's the best aid I've found for my wandering focus (that gets worse whenever I'm near anything electronic).<br /><br />I have many study playlists in my iTunes that fit different needs. Only specific types of music go into each. Here are some incomplete lists of the artists I listen to (it would take me a helluva lot more time to write down everything) in certain scenarios. My hope is that a) you'll see new music and b) be inspired to try adding some new music to your routine. If neither (a) or (b) happens, then I've still done another Wednesday post, and all is not lost.<br /><br />1. <b>Reading/Writing</b> - <i>Soft music without words</i>.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Artist Examples: Arms and Sleepers, The American Dollar, Tycho, Boards of Canada, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky, Sparrows Swarm and Sing, Instrumental Soundtracks (e.g. Heavy Rain, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, The Incredibles, UP, ), anything covered by Vitamin String Quartet, Apocalyptica, and some classical music (Delius and Gerswhin make appearances).<br /><br />Specific Songs: "Blue Orb" from W <3 Katamari.<br /><br />2. <b>Editing</b> - <i>Soft music with words</i>.<br />Artist Examples: The Fray, Little Dragon, Iron & Wine, Fleet Foxes,<br /><br />Specific Songs: "Tea Leaf Dancers" - Flying Lotus, "Aqueous Transmission" - Incubus, "Duvet" - Boa, "The Rat" - Dead Confederate, "Disintegration" - Lewis and Clarke (cover of The Cure).<br /><br />3. <b>Composing </b>(gathering sources, outlining, etc) - <i>a mix of soft/hard music without words</i>.<br />Artist Examples (in addition to everything listed under #1): Flying Lotus, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Loné.</span><br /><style type="text/css">p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px 'Lucida Grande'}</style> Specific Songs: "Make Love" - Daft Punk.<br /><br />4. <b>Time Crunch</b> - h<i>ard, fast, or trance-inducing music without words or with repetitive word sounds</i>.<br />Artist Examples: Daft Punk, MSTRKRFT, Flying Lotus, Junk Culture.<br />Song Examples: "Pjanoo" - Eric Prydz, "The Falling" - Sparo.<br /><br />5. <b>Creative Work</b> -<i> a mix of genres that follows no particular rhyme or reason, but has a lot of intense creativity in the music</i> (the philosophy being that that creativity inspires creativity).<br /><br />Artist Examples: Broken Social Scene, Coheed and Cambria, Passion Pit, Florence + the Machine, Tokyo Police Club, Drive-By Truckers, Hold Steady, Fleetwood Mac, Michael Jackson, RJD2, Panic! at the Disco, Frou Frou, Imogen Heap, Radiohead, Phoenix, Sufjan Stevens, The Dear Hunter, The Wombats, The Felice Brothers, Mos Def, Matchbox Twenty.<br /><br />Specific Songs: "Kingdom of Rust" - Doves.<br /><br />6. <b>Repetitive Mindless Work</b> - Set to random and hope for the best.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-66824945970501707872010-11-01T22:28:00.000-05:002010-11-01T22:28:29.466-05:00"Drunk" is probably a more apt descriptor than we truly realize.I'm too bogged down to do anything meaningful tonight, but I do have some ideas for the next time around. For now - my favorite of the Drunk History videos on YouTube. There are a good handful on there. If you decide you like, my suggestion is to start from the first (with Michael Cera as Alexander Hamilton) and work your through.<br />
<br />
<object width="434" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jL68NyCSi8o?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jL68NyCSi8o?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="434" height="344"></embed></object>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-73289873208226838262010-10-29T11:00:00.018-05:002010-10-30T04:05:48.490-05:00Amusing Adventures in Variety!<span style="font-size: large;">Video games provide something every grad student needs but can't get out into the world to get. No, it's not sunlight (though I could really use some of that, I assure you). It's<i> variety</i>. There are many days when my classmates and I have said, "I have not been out of my [insert living space here] in [insert number] of days." It gets tiring and, for me and my roommate (whom I will refer to only as D here, for no particular reason), video games are a way to escape monotony. And escape I did! And it was craziness all around.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TMvc_DgNVvI/AAAAAAAAAN8/b1eOkBqDodk/s1600/fableiiiboxart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TMvc_DgNVvI/AAAAAAAAAN8/b1eOkBqDodk/s320/fableiiiboxart.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: normal;"><i>Fable III</i>, if asked, would say that it is about revolution, but in my eyes it's about discovering how many awesome things the game will allow you to do. The first half or so of the game (which both D and I are currently playing) is amassing troops to overthrow your brother, the king. The second half, one would presume, is what happens after the revolution. Today in <i>Fable III</i>, I did the following things: </span><br />
<br />
1. Married a pawnbroker so that I could start a family and get a better deal when trading to boot. But my soulmate/one-stop shop was kept away by his job (read: he was programmed to stand in the same place for 24 hours a day) and was unable to be lured to our bed to consummate his marriage with his hero princess wife. So I divorced him and he ended up hating me (typical, right?) and giving me a worse deal on all of his goods. I went on to immediately start dating the Town Crier.<br />
<br />
2. Belched at children and danced with strangers.<br />
<br />
3. Bought up property like the recession never happened.<br />
<br />
4. Played on a miniature D&D board and participated in a narrated adventure.<br />
<br />
5. Cross-dressed with a beard and a suit of armor.<br />
<br />
<i>Fable III</i> is enough to give anybody variety. The game is seriously addictive and is the kind of crack cocaine addiction that ends grad school careers. With the voices of John Cleese, Simon Pegg, Stephen Fry, and a dozen others, it's hard not to find it charming on top of all of the variety. But lo, I did not stop there! I had to have my dose of Halloween scariness and play <i>Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare</i>.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TMvdKWEEKyI/AAAAAAAAAOA/Tq6L9deInTM/s1600/reddeadundead.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TMvdKWEEKyI/AAAAAAAAAOA/Tq6L9deInTM/s320/reddeadundead.jpg" width="260" /></a></div>Picture it: it's 1911 or so, and you're in the dying Wild West - the last remnants of a bygone era. You come home to your wife and child and one of your farmhands is missing, having gone to town hours before. There's a storm outside, so you hope for the best that your farmhand, who is like family and is called "Uncle," has found shelter from the storm and isn't lost. Then, in the middle of the night, Uncle stumbles in, growling and clawing and chasing after your wife. You don't understand what has happened to Uncle yet, but you will soon realize that he is a zombie. You go out and shoot him, but not before he is able to put your family in danger. You are now on the hunt to find out what happened and whether there is a cure.<br />
<br />
The following things happened in Red Dead Undead or while playing it:<br />
<br />
1. Called Blackwater, one of the towns, "Undead Hell," to which D replied, "I think this is more like 'Undead Heck.'"<br />
<br />
2. Laughed at the signs reading "CLOSE THE DAMN BORDERS!" and one of the survivors claiming it must be the Mexicans who have infected the living.<br />
<br />
3. Accidentally got my horse killed.<br />
<br />
4. Whistled for a new horse and got my old horse, recently undead.<br />
<br />
5. Screamed when a zombie bear attacked me. (To be fair, I always scream when the bears attack me in this game, especially when they sneak up from behind.)<br />
<br />
6. After the bear attack happened, I said, "Dammit, I thought I was going to be an adult for this." To which D replied, "I'm sorry, did you just become a little girl?" as he turned on his electric razor.<br />
<br />
7. After I screamed and jumped at the sound of the razor, I decided it was probably time to call it a night.<br />
<br />
8. Felt my adrenaline start pumping mmediately after having two scares in a row and hearing the creepy Red Dead Undead music, which is basically two echoing piano notes being played. Even the damn music is desolate.<br />
<br />
9. Turned off the console and turned on a light.<br />
<br />
Happy Friday, and a Happy Halloween!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-20438982966127470312010-10-27T21:32:00.001-05:002010-10-27T22:44:49.625-05:00Because I'm a geek.The next two videos are for the video games I'll be playing for the next few weeks (once my head is above water) - at least until my one true love in the third video comes out.<br /><br /><div style="background:#000000;width:440px;height:272px"><embed flashVars="playerVars=showStats=yes|autoPlay=no|videoTitle=Fable III Launch Trailer" src="http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/5377179/fable_iii_launch_trailer.swf" width="440" height="272" wmode="transparent" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" name="Metacafe_5377179" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></div><div style="font-size:12px;"><a href="http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5377179/fable_iii_launch_trailer/">Fable III Launch Trailer</a> - <a href="http://www.metacafe.com/">The top video clips of the week are here</a></div><br /><object width="424" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dxfjuwd6WWI?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dxfjuwd6WWI?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="424" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><br /><object id="flashObj" width="386" height="312" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,47,0"><param name="movie" value="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="flashVars" value="videoId=648512368001&playerID=47033724001&playerKey=AQ%2E%2E,AAAACs5syck%2E,78rNhQXP3tgTPdl2qizABxM_IAHV3k_7&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true" /><param name="base" value="http://admin.brightcove.com" /><param name="seamlesstabbing" value="false" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="swLiveConnect" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=648512368001&playerID=47033724001&playerKey=AQ%2E%2E,AAAACs5syck%2E,78rNhQXP3tgTPdl2qizABxM_IAHV3k_7&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="386" height="312" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" swLiveConnect="true" allowScriptAccess="always" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed></object><br /><br />Happy Wednesday!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-7240474205386134322010-10-25T20:41:00.001-05:002010-10-25T20:41:45.290-05:00Taking a Break with the Golden GirlsGood laughs all around.<br />
<br />
<object width="434" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CEsEjvfjUFk?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CEsEjvfjUFk?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="434" height="344"></embed></object><br />
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Happy Monday.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-1071462131500638282010-10-22T23:00:00.000-05:002010-10-24T14:20:35.876-05:00Annotated iTunes: 13 over 75I listen to music <i>a lot</i>. I am one of those people who does not consider a day successful without music, and I constantly have something going in the background or (when I can) full blast. I have diverse tastes, but I have a tendency to listen to songs over and over again that I love or hit that part of the brain that loves addiction. I thought I would show a window into that part of my brain and show you the 13 songs in my entire library that are rated five stars (through an external program that rates on frequency and number of plays) and have more than 75 plays since July 2009 (which makes most of these songs recent discoveries, which in turn actually skews these results a lot). Each song is listed in ascending order.<br />
<a name='more'></a>13. "Hush" - Coheed and Cambria, <i>Year of the Black Rainbow </i>(77 plays)<br />
This song is everything I love about Coheed and Cambria. It starts out with a slow industrial-esque beat and turns into a crazy catchy pop chorus.<br />
<br />
<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9eV84WC6ZN0?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9eV84WC6ZN0?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />
<br />
Favorite Lyrics:<br />
<br />
<i>Cause there's just noone in this world<br />
Like you, my darling dear<br />
Can I go, and bring on this life without you?<br />
Let this be my dying wish<br />
Please give me more than this<br />
It hurts so, please I paid my price my penance<br />
Hush, there is no lover just enough to murder us<br />
I am your ghost.</i><br />
<br />
12. "Combat Love" - BEARBOT (79 plays)<br />
A mix between "Combat Baby" by Metric and "Digital Love" by Daft Punk, this is the only mash-up on the list. It's just a lot of fun and has some fun layers. <a href="http://www.thesixtyone.com/s/IxzTbNXKx5p/">Here's a link to the song on TheSixtyOne.com</a>.<br />
<br />
11. "Massage Situation" - Flying Lotus, <i>Reset </i>(83)<br />
If you've ever watched Adult Swim and seen the "bumps" (the black screens with white messages between shows) or the place cards (weird pictures with the Adult Swim logo embedded), you've heard Flying Lotus, and, more than likely, you've heard this song. Flying Lotus's specialty is awesome beats, rarely with words ("Massage Situation" is no exception), that are contagious and very cool.<br />
<br />
<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6oUx6wGCekM?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6oUx6wGCekM?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />
<br />
10. "Parisian Goldfish" - Flying Lotus, <i>Los Angeles </i>(91)<br />
This and #11 were often listened to back to back. The difference in the listens is probably due to me playing it for friends to trigger the memory of watching the very very very NSFW video. (The video below is the song by itself, and the link is the official VERYNSFW music video directed by Eric Wareheim of Tim & Eric fame).<br />
<br />
<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Hj2RIL4lgK4?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Hj2RIL4lgK4?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />
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<a href="http://videogum.com/24041/eric_wareheims_music_video_for/music-related-content/">NSFW Parisian Goldfish video</a>.<br />
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9. "Duvet" - Boa, <i>Twilight </i>(91)<br />
The first song on this list that I might describe as beautiful. The acoustic version is wonderful as well (second video). Easy on the ears and calming, which is often what the doctor's ordering.<br />
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8. "Bloodstream" - Stateless, <i>Stateless</i> (96)<br />
I absolutely love this song. The lyrics, the music, the singer's voice. It's soft and beautiful and aching.<br />
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Favorite Lyrics:<i><br />
I think I might’ve inhale you<br />
I could feel you behind my eyes<br />
You gotten into my bloodstream<br />
I could feel you floating in me </i><br />
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7. "You Rock My World" - Michael Jackson, <i>Invincible</i> (100)<br />
I didn't realize until I made this list that this song was from Michael Jackson's last album, but it fits in with some of his best work from his early solo career. Hard to resist an MJ beat. Music video below.<br />
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6. "Howl" - Florence + the Machine, <i>Lungs</i> (105)<br />
The first of four Florence + the Machine songs on this list. When I was first introduced to Florence, I was absolutely enthralled, and I played the entire album over and over again. I always liked "Howl," but the major bump in plays is due to a recent fascination.<br />
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Favorite Lyrics:<br />
<i>Screaming in the dark, I howl when we're apart<br />
I drag my teeth across your test to taste your beating heart<br />
My fingers claw your skin, try to tear my way in<br />
You are the moon that breaks at night for which I have to howl<br />
<br />
Be careful of the curse that falls on young lovers<br />
Starts so soft and sweet and turns them to hunters</i><br />
<br />
5. "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)" - Florence + the Machine, <i>Lungs</i> (107)<br />
The second Florence song that I ever heard. Her range in this one - as well as the meaning of the lyrics themselves - is an amazing tribute to the complex nature of her music.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nxO-yPQesA">Official video here.</a> (It's worth going to watch.)<br />
Favorite Lyrics:<br />
<i>This is a gift, it comes with a price<br />
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?<br />
Midas is king and he holds me so tight<br />
And turns me to gold in the sunlight</i><br />
<br />
4. "Drumming Song" - Florence + the Machine, <i>Lungs </i>(118)<br />
The first Florence song I ever heard, and one that will remain in my top ten favorites of all time. Primal, aching, beautiful, unique, and powerful.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpLXQorSQe8">Official video here</a>, which is also worth leaving to see.<br />
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3. "My Boy Builds Coffins" - Florence + the Machine, <i>Lungs </i>(138)<br />
This is a deeper cut on the <i>Lungs</i> album, but it's my favorite Florence song. I don't really know why, honestly. I like the music, the lyrics, and, of course, her voice. I guess that's all the reason I need.<br />
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<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/DrUi9bm6-3Y?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/DrUi9bm6-3Y?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />
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2. "Guns of Summer" - Coheed and Cambria, <i>Year of the Black Rainbow</i> (153)<br />
For those who don't know, Coheed and Cambria is my favorite band (how anyone could <i>not</i> know at this is beyond me). This song is from their most recent album, a prequel for their five-album story concept. "Guns of Summer" has an amazing drive. The drums are powerful and fast, and the guitars heavy. But it's the chorus and the last minute of the song that make it. Suddenly, after heavy playing, the chorus opens up and Coheed's typical catchy melody breaks free. The layered melodies at the end of the song make it one of the best in Coheed's discography.<br />
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<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/eTpeQetS9nE?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/eTpeQetS9nE?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />
<br />
Favorite Lyrics:<br />
<i>Cold as winter, guns of summer<br />
Point and watch them run<br />
Summer's will and debris in her son<br />
This is your last chance, will you give up?</i><br />
<br />
1. "Drips/Auntie's Harp" - Flying Lotus, <i>Cosmogramma </i>(159)<br />
Another Flying Lotus song. I don't know why I love this song so much. It fits into a second category of Flying Lotus song (the first being "cool," the second being "aural assault). The number of plays is mostly due to a day at work when I listened to "Drips/Auntie's Harp" on repeat for close to the entire eight hours I was there. It's hardly my favorite of all time, but it helps me focus which is very valuable in my world of books and writing.<br />
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<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8R8bivXvN6Q?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8R8bivXvN6Q?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />
<br />
What are your most played favorites?<br />
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(Written Oct 23; Posted Oct 24 @ 2:25 P.M.)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-26698233798423742202010-10-20T23:24:00.001-05:002010-10-20T23:25:09.242-05:00"Hans, are we the baddies?"<object width="360" height="240"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/q3JKcExmQlA?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/q3JKcExmQlA?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="360" height="240"></embed></object><br /><br />Happy Wednesday. :)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-11990934891826214772010-10-18T23:39:00.001-05:002010-10-19T03:42:26.996-05:00The creeping sensation that is my coming sports addiction.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TL0anrH2juI/AAAAAAAAAN4/tT3esZXIxus/s1600/Cliff+Lee.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="147" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TL0anrH2juI/AAAAAAAAAN4/tT3esZXIxus/s200/Cliff+Lee.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>I have never been a sports hater. I played basketball and softball for most of my middle school, junior high, and high school days, so I have a fondness that comes from my actual understanding of the games if nothing else. While I found the machismo on display in the NFL and NBA off-putting, and that the complete dismissal of the WNBA as a legitimate professional league depressing, I have always had a soft spot for baseball (its counterpart was my favorite to play), though I hardly ever watched it. The only time a sport would come across my radar would be in the case of some huge event (e.g. Michael Jordan and the Bulls in the early 1990s, the home run race between MacGwire and Sosa, etc.).<br /><br />But that was before I went to an SEC school, where sports are religion. Now that I am at one, it's hard to get away from it. My grad school classmates are obsessed with sports. Every gathering turns into a recounting of recent sports events that, being on the fringes, I could only eavesdrop in on and randomly impress with (or show an embarrassing lack of) my knowledge. It actually became a sore point, considering that my limited sports knowledge made me have to sit out of at least half of the conversation at every social gathering.<br /><br />But it really wasn't by lack of choice that I began to take an interest. Even with my obvious social disadvantage, I didn't set out to do research like some anthropologist trying to understand a foreign culture. I just started paying attention. The 2009 World Series, when the Phillies and the Yankees faced off, was the real turning point. My roommate wanted to watch it and I was unopposed. Neither of us had a vested interest in the outcome (besides the fact that, as everyone in my program proclaimed, "no one who has a soul wants the Yankees to win"), but the series was really entertaining and dramatic, and that sucked us both in. By the end of it, we were heartbroken when the Phillies lost, even though I hadn't spared one second to think about them before the series began.<br /><br />On a lark during the summer, I decided to not leave an SEC school without having gone to an SEC football game and bought season tickets. I felt absolutely crazy doing it, but I knew spending the money would ensure that I go the extra distance to go to tailgating and games. Three games and a team hat later, I am riding the highs and lows of being at a school obsessed with its worst sports team (at least this year).<br /><br />And because I watched the 2009 World Series, I actually care about the Phillies. I recognize their names and faces, know some of their stats and, if they are pitchers, their best pitches. And because of the normal ebb and flow of professional sports, I now follow the Rangers, who were traded (in a roundabout way) Cliff Lee (pictured above), who I first saw pitch for the Phillies in the Series and is a native of Benton, a town only forty minutes away from my Arkansas home.<br /><br />I know people hate sports for different reasons (usually having something to do with them being boring, rich, overwhelmingly male, or all of the above), but, as skeptical as I used to be, I opened myself to the drama and excitement of sports and was affected in ways that I could not have predicted even a year ago. While I haven't brought myself to buy a Cliff Lee or Chase Utley jersey, that doesn't mean that a very stubborn, very Grinch-esque part of my heart hasn't been touched... or that I won't splurge on those jerseys in the future.<br /><br />Happy Monday!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-3178522864860952642010-10-15T23:00:00.004-05:002010-10-23T23:41:42.247-05:00Obligatory Filler Post<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I was on the road Friday and couldn't post, so I allowed the podcast to count as >1.<br /><br />My Friday absence, however, is duly noted.<br /><br />(Posted Monday, October 18, 2010)</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-74364998351894992562010-10-13T23:00:00.001-05:002010-10-14T02:17:49.085-05:00Sex, Lies, and a Murder Mystery in Mississippi: The Scandalous Tale of Blanche Webb [AUDIO]<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;">It's my first solo podcast, everyone!</span><br /></div><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhckT0Myb3IC12ELVOg71NnBl_q9drk8OT7ARUgEdjMGA5uVKA3ritYDwGiE7GWPVogTogNgvjyNLSSI5e9xn5SsbnybdRl6pL8W-_lnrWl0bKJCPuyvlgnhbgohPIpkyM0b6CS/s1600/Vesalius-Skeleton(crop).jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 215px; height: 248px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhckT0Myb3IC12ELVOg71NnBl_q9drk8OT7ARUgEdjMGA5uVKA3ritYDwGiE7GWPVogTogNgvjyNLSSI5e9xn5SsbnybdRl6pL8W-_lnrWl0bKJCPuyvlgnhbgohPIpkyM0b6CS/s400/Vesalius-Skeleton(crop).jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5527797261986579586" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;">Here's the PodBean description:</span></span><br /><blockquote>I am a history grad school major, and I’m currently in a research class in which we’re reading the daily journals of a semi-prominent Mississippi pastor who wrote between 1851 and 1902. I am responsible for reading the journals covering years 1891 through 1902. This podcast covers one very specific but very interesting and revealing event that takes place in 1891.</blockquote><blockquote>This is my first podcast ever! </blockquote>It runs rather long (around 19 minutes), but it's because I got into it and had some fun.<br /><br />Hope you enjoy! Happy Wednesday!<br /><div> <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0" id="mp3playerlightsmallv3" align="middle" height="25" width="210"><br /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain"><br /><param name="movie" value="http://www.podbean.com/podcast-audio-video-blog-player/mp3playerlightsmallv3.swf?audioPath=http://adamantfire.podbean.com/mf/play/vm4i2w/BlancheWebb.mp3&autoStart=no"><br /><param name="quality" value="high"><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><br /><embed src="http://www.podbean.com/podcast-audio-video-blog-player/mp3playerlightsmallv3.swf?audioPath=http://adamantfire.podbean.com/mf/play/vm4i2w/BlancheWebb.mp3&autoStart=no" quality="high" name="mp3playerlightsmallv3" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" align="middle" height="25" width="210"></embed><br /></object><br /><br /><a style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-weight: normal; padding-left: 41px; color: rgb(45, 162, 116); text-decoration: none; border-bottom: medium none;" href="http://www.podbean.com/">Powered by Podbean.com</a><br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-18728172856132605272010-10-11T23:00:00.104-05:002010-10-12T01:55:41.660-05:00Suicide, Hatred, and the Intersection of Exposure and Escalation [Updated]<div style="text-align: center;"><object height="256" width="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9GGAgtq_rQc?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9GGAgtq_rQc?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="256" width="350"></embed></object><br /></div><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Gays and lesbians committing suicide isn't really a new thing, but the current level of exposure kind of is. We've entered a more-than-likely short-lived era where people at the margins committing suicide means something to the mainstream. It's hard to tell if it is spectacle, sympathy, or shock, but getting the images of suffering young men (and perhaps women, though this current news cycle has few if any) into the heads of those who mistake design for choice, psychology for stubbornness, is a good thing.<br /><br />Yet there is always a reactionary pull that would rather put us in the stone age than endeavor to understand our fellow man. That pull is gaining strength, tensing, ready to spring. A devastating high-exposure hate crime in New York, <a href="http://www.baltimorenews.net/story/696481">where nine men tortured one man and two teenagers because they were gay</a>, has been revealed to the nation, and the nation is taken aback. But is the nation flinching? Is there any sense of responsibility among those who have helped perpetrate the kind of thinking that would lead to such a crime being possible?<br /><br />Perhaps in the case of <a href="http://www.havenbrookfuneralhome.com/sitemaker/memsol.cgi?page=profile&section=info&user_id=257282">Zach Harrington</a>, <a href="http://www.queerty.com/suicide-oklahomas-zach-harrington-19-kills-himself-after-hateful-town-meeting-20101010/">a 19-year-old who stood up for something and could not bear to live knowing what had risen to meet him</a>, a direct line of cause and effect can be seen by those who have refused to see much else. As in the case of the men who committed a hate crime and the man who committed suicide, no one made them do what they did. No one forced them to the point of harm. But to disown the rhetoric that helped to justify what has happened is in many ways as dangerous.<br /><br />There are at least two movements that will result, or at least gain force, from what has happened. One is positive. People are banding together, trying to give a support net to those who feel they are alone and trapped in a hostile world. <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?id=5661740">Athletes are speaking out</a> against bullying. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GGAgtq_rQc">Hundreds of people have dedicated videos</a> to those needing to hear a supportive voice. These are good things - one seeks to remove the reasoning for some of these suicides, while the other seeks to help those unsure of the value of their existence.<br /><br />But the other, more sinister movement is one that thrives on misanthropy. This is the one that feeds off of deplorable hate crimes and the thought of less like-minded individuals on earth, even if it results from an unbearable suffering. This is where exposure and escalation meet, with each extending in opposite directions. Time will tell the effects, but we will see at least a few more waves as a result of what has happened, both negative and positive, before the media's waters lie still again.<br /><br />It's hard knowing that it always gets worse before it gets better, that there will always be suicidal actions borne out of feelings of anguish and self-hatred, that not everyone will change. But we can hope that out of the tragedies and sick actions taken against people who seek only to be themselves, good can come.<br /><br />Until Wednesday.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Update</span>: This is one of the best "It Gets Better" videos I've seen, and it illustrates my point about disowning rhetoric.<br /><br />Sarah Silverman:<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><object height="256" width="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WM6xbW1DZyM?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WM6xbW1DZyM?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="256" width="350"></embed></object></span><br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-33113350200069139922010-10-08T23:23:00.001-05:002010-10-08T23:27:03.970-05:00Convalescence in Oz and Other More Worldly Places<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TK_t5Z9MR5I/AAAAAAAAANs/mltA6BUrj0E/s1600/the-wizard-of-oz-2-1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TK_t5Z9MR5I/AAAAAAAAANs/mltA6BUrj0E/s200/the-wizard-of-oz-2-1024.jpg" border="0" height="150" width="200" /></a></div>Today was kind of a sick day for me. After going to the class for which I TA, I headed back home and started cleaning the living room. For my entertainment while doing so, I cracked open my 70th Anniversary <i>Wizard of Oz</i> Blu-ray. As soon as the movie started up, I was transported to my childhood in the early 90s. When I was a wee little thing, my parents had taped the 1989 50th Anniversary TV Special, which had a very neat documentary about the film narrated by Angela Lansbury. I remember the commercial at the beginning telling people to fill out their census. I remember the fast food commercials in between featuring fish sandwiches in clam shells (which I'm pretty sure were narrated by Eartha Kitt). I remember the Salad Shooter commercial. I remember watching it with my grandfather until the tape was nearly worn out.<br /><br />It was that last memory - sitting beside or with my grandfather in his chair, watching and singing and laughing along with the movie - that was most with me when I was watching today. It was what I remembered at key moments in the film, and what made my eyes sting with tears that never actually came. The only other movie I watched with him more was the second VHS tape of <i>Titanic. </i>That one I would stick in the VHS player and my grandfather would always ask, "Are we sinking the boat again?" To which I would always reply, "It's the best part!"<br /><br />I have run my self to the bone these last few weeks. I felt my limit coming on Wednesday night when I was staying up late trying to finish an assignment that was a few hours past due. When I woke up early then next day, I felt like I was physically hollow yet heavy. It's a familiar feeling, one that I've encountered many times in undergrad after pushing myself too far to be functional anymore. After my class (where I was basically told that I had been assigned the wrong book) and after disappointing news from work (work harder to get the same amount of pay), I felt it was time to let go for a day or so.<br /><br />I went to bed somewhat late last night (I've almost become nocturnal, so it was hard not to), went to class this morning, came home, watched the Wizard of Oz, and felt like I was five again. I fell asleep during the movie, and ended up taking a nap directly afterward. It was glorious.<br /><br />When I woke up again later today, I knew I had things that needed to be done, but I took my time working on them. I'm still not done, but with my sleeping schedule, it won't be a problem to finish them soon.<br /><br />So a retreat to Oz and back and a convalescent period in my living room has gotten me from about 25% to 80% or so, which is pretty damn good for one day.<br /><br />Happy Friday, everyone.<br /><br />(If you want to help me out by giving me fodder for blog posts, don't be shy to use formspring.me/adamantfire. I won't answer/write on everything, but you never know what I'll use.)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-64771251890985918922010-10-05T23:48:00.003-05:002010-10-05T23:51:32.973-05:00Michael Jackson has become my patron saint of productivity.<span style="font-size:100%;">Working hard on grad school work. I've written 26 pages in two days, and I'm only a little over halfway done. If only I won some sort of prize for hitting 40 pages in three days. Listening to Michael Jackson on repeat has simultaneously done wonders for my productivity and ensured that his songs are still playing on a loop in my head even if I don't have the music on.<br /><br />Happy Wednesday.<br /></span><br /><object data="http://cuteanimals.todaysbigthing.com/betamax/betamax.swf?item_id=4236&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="270" width="360"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain"> <param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"> <param name="movie" quality="best" value="http://cuteanimals.todaysbigthing.com/betamax/betamax.swf?item_id=4236&fullscreen=1"> </object><br /><div style="padding: 5px 0pt; text-align: center; width: 480px;"><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:100%;">[<a href="http://cuteanimals.todaysbigthing.com/">Cute Animals Videos</a>]</span></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-48924810844694966622010-10-04T11:04:00.000-05:002010-10-04T11:04:11.266-05:00A Promise to Myself and #59<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TKm0mzBa7MI/AAAAAAAAANc/0r810624dYc/s1600/string-around-finger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TKm0mzBa7MI/AAAAAAAAANc/0r810624dYc/s200/string-around-finger.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>I've been lamenting my absence from this blog, considering it's my only official persona online anymore (all of the others being defunct or abandoned). Since I know people who blog every day, and I have been reading the 120-year-old diaries of a man who wrote nearly every single day of his life for 51 years in the 19th century, I've felt a creeping inspiration. <br />
<br />
So. I've decided to split the difference between blogging every day and my inevitable laziness and promise to post three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I can't promise that they'll be much good at that rate, considering how hectic my life is now, but they will never be a one word post. I'll give you something good, whether it's a story link, a video, a picture, or an actual honest-to-God blog post. There will be many times this semester when sparse posts will take every ounce of my being to post due to how much of my time is spent doing grad work (on the aforementioned diaries alone, I'm spending about 22 hours - that's reading and then doing a written exploration - on each diary year <i>every week</i>). But it's my promise, more to myself than to anyone who's reading this (you're more than welcome to come along, however).<br />
<br />
To make good on my promise and make this more than just an update post, I thought I'd update you all on how <a href="http://adamanthenes.blogspot.com/2009/10/one-hundred-ways-to-fail-one-hundred.html">#59</a> is going.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">________</div><br />
I decided to try whittling and carving as a way to pass my time in the apartment (where I am 95-100% of the day) that wasn't video game related. From what I knew of the hobby, I really didn't need much, so a small investment would get me pretty far. Once I developed some skill, I could decide whether I wanted to get deeper into the hobby or go ahead and do my mastery project (I'll explain in a minute) and call it done.<br />
<br />
I made several mistakes when I decided my approach to #59. The first was my underestimation of the hobby itself. Whittling and carving is pretty intense. Background noise while working is okay, but it requires concentration and time. Almost every project that I could do that appeals to my standards for carving takes days, weeks, or even months to complete.<br />
<br />
My second mistake was honestly thinking whittling and carving were the same thing. They most certainly are not. Carving has a refined connotation that whittling does not have, due to the methods that are used to achieve the final product. Whittling is about controlling your knife but not worrying about the rough edges. Whittled pieces look blocky and have a lot of flat planes on them. That comes from mainly using one kind of straight-bladed knife throughout the entire project. <br />
<br />
Carving, however, is a different beast. Carving is all about control, smoothness, continuity, seamlessness, and presentation. Carving tools are designed to make smooth cuts, or at the very least mask where you made subpar ones. In general (from my brief, mind-boggling look at the books I have), a whittled project is more likely to be painted, while a carved project is more likely to be stained. Whittling is more folksy; carving more professional. Whittling naturally has a whimsical and unrefined feel; carving is dramatic and stately. These are wide generalizations, but it's what I've been able to skim from the top of such deep and ancient skills.<br />
<br />
Imagine my surprise when I started ordering whittling and carving supplies and resources only to find out from the books coming in that I didn't buy the right thing. So I splurged when I shouldn't have and experimented with tools themselves without the book telling me what to do. I found out very quickly why most pieces, whether they start out more as whittling or carving, end up using both. The good woodworker, a voice in the back of my brain told me, would be able to master both. <br />
<br />
My third mistake came from my location. I live in an apartment, and noise travels quickly (I got six noise complaints right after I got the newest Coheed album). Woodworking, at its more advanced levels, refuses to be quiet: mallets start coming into play, as well as drills, sanders, saws, etc. Spacewise and soundwise, this hobby can quickly become incompatible with the fruits of "budget-living." I'm far from the mechanical bit, and I'm still a bit away from the mallets (if only because I can't afford one and the carving tools that come with it). It's the spatial part with which I'm having a fit. My roommate and I barely have enough time to clean or enough room to walk as it is. Building a workstation of the type suggested by virtually every magazine and book I have looked at is simply impossible (unless I put stuff out on the balcony in the cold weather).<br />
<br />
My fourth mistake, and possibly the one that will cost me the most time, was overestimating my ability to work on my mastery project. My #59 Mastery, at least on the whittling side, was going to be a chess set. I don't know what it will be on the carving side, or what my whittling mastery project would be if I carved chess pieces, but I have this vague wonderful idea of a detailed chess set with oversized pieces that would become a family keepsake.<br />
<br />
I'm currently working on a turtle. It was a template with a plaster model. When it came, it basically said, "Go at it and have fun." I've spent three hours on said turtle in total, and it's coming out of the wood. But I have absolutely no creative experience in the realms of drawing, painting, or sculpture. There is a learning curve that I did not foresee, whether because of my own overconfidence, my lack of knowledge, or both, and I have turned what I thought would be a year-long hobby into a multi-year multi-stage possible obsession, in which I apprentice myself vicariously to the men and women who write books on carving and post on woodcarving forums. This is all to say, my mastery project, the project that, when completed, will allow me to cross #59 off of the list, is a multi-year project from where I stand today. It's all very daunting to say the least.<br />
<br />
Feeling discouraged, I decided to just go to town on a block and see what came out of it. I had no idea what I was doing or what it was going to be. I had an inkling that a boat would be kind of neat, so I began whittling it more and more into the basic shape. I realized that my tools were wrong for carving out the curved middle of the project, so I had to order even more tools. When I finally got them in and was able to really dig in, I was able to make in about two nights a little boat. Misshapen, yes. Crude as well. The inside bottom of the boat is grooved and rough, while the outside is sanded and a little pock-marked. The bow and stern are not symmetrical. I slashed my hand four times and stabbed my thumb and middle finger twice in the process. Ugly as the whole process was, I still fell in love with my boat.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TKn4Y1CNi9I/AAAAAAAAANg/BiQ-2XygW94/s1600/IMG_0026.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TKn4Y1CNi9I/AAAAAAAAANg/BiQ-2XygW94/s320/IMG_0026.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"> <i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">The inside of the boat. The piece of wood on the left is about two inches longer than the single piece from which the boat was created.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TKn4eAwPj9I/AAAAAAAAANk/KGrw1eB3ukw/s1600/IMG_0027.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TKn4eAwPj9I/AAAAAAAAANk/KGrw1eB3ukw/s320/IMG_0027.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The underside of the boat. All of the visible shavings are from hollowing out the inside.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i> </i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TKn4jhqPZWI/AAAAAAAAANo/5Bo0_7zoqgk/s1600/IMG_0025.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_5Hg_r6pfhno/TKn4jhqPZWI/AAAAAAAAANo/5Bo0_7zoqgk/s320/IMG_0025.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>We didn't have any bandaids Paper towels and packing tape was the next best thing. The bandaid situation has been taken care of with a package of awesome Transformers band aids.</i></span></div><br />
My confidence having been restored, I have decided to soldier on. Once I finish that damn turtle, I might feel invincible. It's too late to turn back now, anyway.<br />
<br />
Any of you get into a hobby that got over your head in about two seconds?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-24572726603239132902010-08-28T22:18:00.002-05:002010-08-29T04:27:15.786-05:00100 Things: Hows, Whys, and Whatsits<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/100ThingsButton.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/100ThingsButton.png" width="200" /></a></div>When I first started my list of <a href="http://adamanthenes.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20List">100 Things to Do Before I Die</a> back in October of last year, my friends had two reactions: they asked if I had really made a “bucket list,” and they promptly told me which items they had completed. Several said that they would contemplate lists of their own, or that they admired my will to even attempt something so ambitious but they could never do so themselves (for the record, I disagree vehemently).</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">I really had no idea of what to expect when I made my list. I had only a few ideas when I began it, and I didn’t let myself get up until I had finished it. Several ideas turned into a hundred. When I finished it, I told myself I couldn’t change it, which immediately led to those moments of regret (“Why the hell would I make chain mail [#73] <i>and</i> a suit of armor [#74]?”) and worries about sheer possibility (finish a novel [#87], learn a second language [#63], and, er, #1). I felt some of the options I had were too stupid to be life goals (ten Halloweens with beard-wearing [#94]), or were too materialistic to really be worth accomplishing (seven mention “own” [#99, 92, 91, 81, 79] or “buy” [#67, 66], and those are only the ones that are <i>explicitly</i> about acquiring).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">After I made the list, I would only remember bits and pieces of it. I’d have to return to the list to know what the hell I had written, and each time be surprised by what I found. Half of the list is in some fog of amnesia, and most of the other half is on hold until I have the means to complete it. A small part of the list, such as watching all of Mystery Science Theater 3000 [#89] and drinking 250 different beers [#85], are ones I am constantly working on and toward.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I was in the first semester of grad school when I completed the list. To put it bluntly, I was in an existential depression about the path I had chosen and my prospects along that path. Things had happened in my personal life that had threatened to upend the precarious balance my life had been put in by leaving home and to uproot what I had thought was my foundation. It was a scary time for me, being in a new place with adult responsibilities, and suddenly being saddled with problems that I could not possibly solve. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The time that I would have spent reflecting upon my list was taken away and has been on hold literally until now, nearly a year later. And yet, while the reflection upon on what my list could mean was on hold, the list itself began to have its effects on my life. Moments where I would have spent unproductively moping about my situation were suddenly filled with purpose. Instead of sleeping the semester away, I stayed up and watched movies. I wanted to go out with friends to the bar because I actually had a mission to drink. I went to more concerts than I have in my entire life in my first semester, simply because I had a purpose.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And while it’s really taken me until now to climb out of that funk, I partly owe it to my 100 Things in the first place for making it out in one piece. I never thought it would mean much to me. I think I had originally envisioned it as a more of a rainy day endeavor than something that gave me drive and purpose. But here I am, planning for beards on Halloween and making blueprints for suits of armor as if it were as serious as finishing grad school or finding a job. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Sometimes the things you do on a whim end up being the best things you ever did.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-42693057143405155892010-07-21T21:43:00.002-05:002010-07-21T21:44:21.565-05:00Welcome to the Echo Chamber<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/the-scream-edvard-munch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/the-scream-edvard-munch.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A fellow grad student that I follow on Twitter said that Roger Ebert retweets (that is, he basically shows tweets he likes to his own followers verbatim) writers, artists, poets, and the like whose writing is like "bad high school poetry." To which I replied the following:</span></span><br /><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's like being able to listen in on someone's echo chamber, or looking over his shoulder and seeing what he sees in the mirror.</span></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Essentially, retweets do two things. One, they carry news like a virus, spreading from one person to another until almost every person on Twitter has at least seen whatever tiny piece of information has caught fire. The other is what I've hinted above - it creates a perfect reflection of a person outside of herself. It is a portrait created through negative space. When Ebert retweets writing, he is showing what he is drawn to and what speaks to him. A rapt follower can hear echoes of Ebert in his retweets. Regardless of whether the echoes are of his heart, his sense of irony, or his own brand of wishful thinking, they are significant.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;font-size:small;">But there is a danger to the echo chamber, and it's not just a Twitter phenomenon. It's the same phenomenon that populates the local sections of newspapers, and it's the same phenomenon that has kept television news so gossipy and literally incredible. Retweeting becomes a metaphor: the information, or the "tweet," comes from pundits and editors. The retweeters are other pundits and editors. Just as Ebert, a writer and critic by trade, retweets fellow writers and critics, Fox News "retweets" The Drudge Report and Olbermann "retweets" the Huffington Post, and vice versa.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;font-size:small;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;font-size:small;">These echoes are dangerous because they have a tendency to become louder than their source. When two phones are put on speaker phone and made to face one another, and then someone utters a single sound, the phones will echo back and forth into each other, becoming so loud they are a single undulating scream. This scream, when translated into words, slanted viewpoints, agendas, misunderstandings (in other words, when it is translated into "human"), is misleading and corrosive.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I used to be just as much a victim of this as anyone else. I mainly stick to Twitter for my news now, but there was a time when I only read blogs. They would report on each other as if the thoughts of other men and women in their living rooms "interpreting" AP press releases was worth something more than the key presses it took to blurt it out. Because what I read mostly aligned with my political beliefs (and if it didn't, I tried to read with an open mind but I often read opposing viewpoints ironically), I stopped reading so critically. I became a bit hollow, and that hollowness was filled with other people's echoes. Yet their echoes were only echoes of others, and those others' echoes were echoes of yet others, and so on and so forth until all that was left was a single, undulating scream. If this is what I was reading, then with what kind of corrosion was I filling myself?</span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I stopped reading political and news blogs more because they were taking up too much time than that I had some sort of epiphany regarding their effect on me. That doesn't mean, loyal Twitterer that I am, that I don't fall into the trap again every once in a while. But whenever I see a political blog or see pundits on TV, I try to remind myself that, almost always no matter who they are, the words they say come from a hollowness filled with echoes. </span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16635885.post-39885640067372365942010-07-21T09:19:00.008-05:002010-07-21T12:40:48.632-05:00The Contrarian and His Ego<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/ArmondWhite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><img border="0" height="124" src="http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q169/Adamanthenes/ArmondWhite.jpg" width="200" /></span></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Some of you might not be acquainted with film critic Armond White, but it only takes a simple search at </span></span><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/author/author-2725/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Rotten Tomatoes</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"> to get a snapshot of the kind of critic he is. He agrees with the Tomatometer (the aggregate rating for any film on Rotten Tomatoes based on positive and negative reviews from individual critics) only 52% of the time. Not that critics should submit to groupthink, but White's reviews are almost always deliberately contrarian. Famously, he lauded Transformers 2 for visuals and attacked Toy Story 3 for its commercialism. He praised Clash of the Titans (don't even get me started) by saying that it showed "a better sense of meaningful, economic narrative than the mess that Peter Jackson made of the interminable, incoherent </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Lord of the Rings</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"> trilogy."</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">For once, instead of being forced to look at White as an inaccessible contrarian who gets page views from his dissent, we can finally hear his reasons for his rather heretofore inexplicable role in professional criticism. Whether his reasons are good or not is not really the point. </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">How</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"> he answered is the actual wonder. While he says that Roger Ebert, one of the most internationally famous, well-written, and prolific critics, "destroyed film criticism," and while, when asked what other critics he would suggest others read, he could offer no one but himself, it seems obvious that White answered with his ego rather than his heart. Regardless, the interview is worth reading, if only because it is of a professional who seems eternally disgusted with his profession.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"> </span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">[/Film] </span></span><a href="http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/07/20/armond-white-i-do-think-it-is-fair-to-say-that-roger-ebert-destroyed-film-criticism/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Armond White: “I Do Think It Is Fair To Say That Roger Ebert Destroyed Film Criticism”</span></span></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07331961951316180787noreply@blogger.com0