Here is Jim Henson's Academy Award nominated short film Time Piece. Very weird, very creative, and, at times, very fun. It's nearly 9 minutes - well worth the time.
Recently I was looking up the word "raconteur" when I came across the Wikipedia article for storytelling. The picture used to illustrate the article was Millais's The Boyhood of Sir Walter Raleigh, which depicts a seafarer or sailor telling Raleigh tales about the sea.
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 storytelling, 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.
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.
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 variety. 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.
Fable III, 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 Fable III, I did the following things:
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.
2. Belched at children and danced with strangers.
3. Bought up property like the recession never happened.
4. Played on a miniature D&D board and participated in a narrated adventure.
5. Cross-dressed with a beard and a suit of armor.
Fable III 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 Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare.
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.
The following things happened in Red Dead Undead or while playing it:
1. Called Blackwater, one of the towns, "Undead Hell," to which D replied, "I think this is more like 'Undead Heck.'"
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.
3. Accidentally got my horse killed.
4. Whistled for a new horse and got my old horse, recently undead.
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.)
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.
7. After I screamed and jumped at the sound of the razor, I decided it was probably time to call it a night.
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.
I listen to music a lot. 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.
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 Wizard of Oz 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.
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 Titanic. 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!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
Happy Friday, everyone.
(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.)
