Smurf's up! or, I Wonder How Long It Took to Work in that Laborious Pun

They're Smurf a Fortune [BBC Magazine] The Smurfs celebrate their 50th birthday this week with a feature-length movie and new television series in the making. But what makes the blue goblin-like creatures so popular?

"The series wasn't just about sweet looking elves," says Mr Mechem. "Pierre Culliford wanted it to highlight things like racism and promote tolerance.

"The fact there was only one female Smurf in the village was used as a way to highlight and promote discussion about women's role in society and sexism."

However, these levels of complexity were lost in the television series, he believes.

What an amazing article. I have no particular affinity towards the Smurfs, aside from a brief but passionate obsession with the techno remix of the theme song in middle school, and I will never begrudge anyone else's passions, but there's something hilarious and wonderful about the half-ironic affection of the article.

And also...

Jacks of Science - Unintentionally Inappropriate Science Papers

The Annals of Improbably Research are always a great source of laughs. Most of which are comedic in a sad way because somehow scientists are getting research grants for absurd things like pouring out caffienated beverages on stuff when you are a poor student surviving mostly on a diet of caffienated beverages.

However, there exists another rare specimen of comedy in scientific literature: unintentional innuendo. To appreciate this low-brow/high-brow LOL-mashup, it helps to fall into a sweet spot of ignorance wherein you don't quite know the definition of a particular term in the given context, but you confide in the fact that the research is peer-reviewed so you know it can't be as it sounds!

Teehee. Surprises in viscous fingering.

Links catch up

I put together this entry nearly a month ago. Oops.


+ Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. The Vegetable Orchestra performs music solely on instruments made of vegetables. Using carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberophones and celery bongos, the orchestra creates its own extraordinary and vegetabile sound universe. The ensemble overcomes preserved and marinated sound conceptions or tirelessly re-stewed listening habits, putting its focus on expanding the variety of vegetable instruments, developing novel musical ideas and exploring fresh vegetable sound gardens.

+ Banksy art. As I was looking through this, it occurred to me that, in my mind at least, his skill as an artist was superceded by his message.

+ Kermit Bale. This made the rounds on the internet a few weeks ago, but it's still gold.

+ Dolphin Rings. I could spend hours watching this. There is just something so delightful about watching dolphins play.

+ The Butterfly Effect. A one-in-a-million close encounter with an insect convinces him that the theory is true: The fluttering of gossamer wings can change the world. This is a charming article (from the Washington Post, so you might have to log in) about a man who finds himself in the company of a red admiral butterfly.



Lastly, I am lightheaded with coughs. This probably won't be funny to anyone but me, but at the local grocery store, they had remedies for various coughs: Chesty Cough, Tickly Cough, and something else that I can't remember. Tickly cough! How accurately worded, how simply put!

Field of Weems! (t minus sixteen!)

Ewan McGregor on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.




I cam across this interview a while ago, and it has been a foolproof way to make me incredibly happy to be alive. The second part has been known to make me literally cry with laughter.

There can be no wrong in sharing this with the world.

Two nights left...

I have a bunch of tabs open that I'd like to get rid of. Here are a few random links!


+ Phillip Pullman's essential reading list. I'm mostly linking this for myself. I'd really like to pick up some of these books. Not only do I really want to read some of these for myself, I also just like to see what moves other people.

+ Orwell Diaries. George Orwell's diaries posted exactly seventy years after he wrote them. There are ongoing discussions in the comments whether he is observant or uninspired, with regards to his more mundane entries, but I like the feel of the every day.

+Anomaly. Hilarious, awful comic. It borders on the legitimately offensive, but (in my opinion) makes up for it in funny. As a point of reference, here is the very first strip:




+ YesStyle.com. Caters to Asian women, but has -- or so I'm told -- very nice petite clothing. Not quite my thing, but linked just in case someone mentions clothing woes and I can't remember the actual site name. (I'm also really entertained by the fact that, in a few days, I will be in a place where pants means underwear! Hilarious!)

+ 'I fell in love with a female assassin.' They met on a train and fell in love. Then Jason P Howe discovered that his girlfriend Marylin was leading a secret double life – as an assassin for right-wing death squads in Colombia's brutal civil war. With their story set to become a major Hollywood film, he recalls an extraordinary, doomed romance.

She then hit me with a confession that would both thrill and confuse me. She explained that in the months that I had been away in Iraq her role within the AUC had changed; she had joined the urban militia and become an assassin. Her job was now to eliminate informers and traitors. So far, she told me, she had killed at least 10 people in the area. I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, Marylin looked at me through the smoke as I exhaled, waiting to see how I would respond to what she had just told me.

Strangely, her confession did not have the impact one would expect; I did not recoil in horror. The months I had spent in Colombia and in Iraq surrounded by violence had altered my perspective. I don't think that I had become immune to death or suffering but I had certainly become less easily shocked. The difference between victim and victor, rebel and refugee, often felt like only a matter of perspective.

The most striking thing about this article for me was not the relationship, but the depiction of the emotional and physical space in which they tried to cultivate it. Both of them were damaged in some way, and everything, from the way they got together to Howe's retelling of the experience, is given meaning and shape through this particular article. I haven't heard anything about the movie (I don't think?), but it'll be interesting to see how they shape this narrative. There're double mirrors of influence, from the way Howe frames his initial impressions as a Quentin Tarantino movie and how he tries to relate to her through the lens of a video interview to how Hollywood will, in turn, interpret it. Interesting stuff.

Self Kiss by David Puel and Thomas Libe [photography]

Self Kiss by David Puel and Thomas Libe (not quite worksafe)

I currently can't post this alongside a sample photo, but I wish I could. These photos are a bit disconcerting at first (people kissing! kissing themselves!), but the choice of subjects and the range of emotions makes it so worth clicking through. It's a joy to look through them.

(A part of me wants to know how they did it, but another part feels like not knowing is part of the magic.)

Happy people are so amazing: Matthew Mitcham

Video: Mitcham's 6 dives, medal ceremony [from outsports.com]

A terrific 15-minute video edited from the worldwide Olympic feed showing all six of Mitcham’s final dives, the celebration after where he hugs practically every diver, the medal ceremony and him jumping into the stands to give his flowers and a kiss to his partner, Lachlan Fletcher.

:)

That little cup of sadness: "Is Jon Stewart The Most Trusted Man In America? [NYT]

Is Jon Stewart The Most Trusted Man In America? [NYT] It's an interesting article, and the end is particularly poignant.

Mr. Stewart described his anchorman character as “a sort of more adolescent version” of himself, and [co-executor producer Kahane] Corn noted that while things “may be exaggerated on the show, it’s grounded in the way Jon really feels.”

“He really does care,” she added. “He’s a guy who says what he means.

I've had this article up on my tabs for a week or so now, and I haven't been able to bring myself to write about it. There's a lot I wish I was smart enough to enunciate about sarcasm and genuineness and how it is too easy, too seductive, to replace the latter with the former. Irony for irony's sake is becoming one of my least favorite things (to hear, to use, to experience), and this article does a beautiful job showing that, for how it is generally perceived in media, The Daily Show is rooted in sincerity. The quotes from Stewart, from Corn and Colbert are all so honest and so telling. It's a pleasure to read.

Along those lines, the article also referenced the first Daily Show aired after September 11, and I thought it was worth linking.

Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres

... What no one had seen, not even Weber, was that at the order to fire Carlo had stepped smartly sideways like a soldier forming ranks. Antonio Corelli, in a haze of nostalgia and forgetfulness, had found in front of him the titanic bulk of Carlo Guercio, had found his wrists gripped painfully in those mighty fists, had found himself unable to move. He stared wonderingly into the middle of Carlo's back as ragged and appalling holes burst through from inside his body, releasing shreds of tattered flesh and crimson gouts of blood.

Carlo stood unbroken as one bullet after another burrowed like white-hot parasitic knives into the muscle of his chest. He felt blows like those of an axe splintering his bones and hacking at his veins. He stood perfectly still, and when his lungs filled up with blood he held his breath and counted. 'Uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, nove...' He decided in the arbitrariness of his valour to stand and count to thirty. At every even number he thought of Francisco dying in Albania, and at every odd number he tightened his grip on Corelli. He reached thirty just as he thought that he might be failing, and then he looked up at the sky, felt a bullet cave the jawbone of his face, and flug himself over backwards. Corelli lay beneaeth him, paralysed by his weight, drunched utterly in his blood, stupified by an act of love so incomprehensible and ineffable, so filled with divine madness, that he did not hear the sergeant's voice.

pg 325

to do

This was going to be a post about how much I hate myself etc, but I'm too tired of rumination to do it. So instead, here's a short term list of things I need to get done. Hopefully by Friday, a lot of these things will be crossed off. Actually, hopefully by Friday, this entry won't exist anymore.

Commissions:
+ finish and send out Lea's (in progress; just need to bake and paint)
+ start Sym's (who knows what's up with this one)
+ start Gina's (finalize reference photo / character)

Miscellaneous art stuff:
+ send out Claire's baby zilla shirt (in progress, will finish in a day or so :D )
+ start 5x7 acrylics series

Real life:
+ pack for London

Chocolate Cake in 5 Minutes! Exclamation point!

Chocolate Cake in 5 Minutes!


Ingredients:
4 Tablespoons cake flour
4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 Egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil
1 Mug


I haven't made this yet, but it's definitely going to happen at some point in the future. The curiosity alone is a huge factor. Also, I love reading comments to things like this. They range from "IT IS DELICIOUS CAKE YOU MUST EAT IT" to "Nice little contribution to American obesity." Oh, the internet.

Done at last!

completed and sent off August 9, 2008!


Detail shots:
Elbow tattoo | Drawn on Converses | Cigarette pack
Sketchbook

I hope they get to where they are supposed to go unharmed. *frets*

[BBC] Bad spelling 'should be accepted'

Bad spelling 'should be accepted.' [BBC] Common spelling mistakes should be accepted into everyday use, not corrected, a lecturer has said.

Mr Smith, a criminology lecturer, said: "Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I've got a better idea.

"University teachers should simply accept as variant spellings those words our students most commonly misspell.

The funniest part of the article is the Have Your Say section, many of which say something along the lines of, "Down with spelling errers and Americanization!"

From a less glib standpoint, there are actually a lot of really interesting things going on in the comments. For one, the British perspective towards the degeneration of English apparently includes American English. According to these comments, it's equivalent to txtspeak or typos, a lazy way of writing that is worthy of pet peeve status. I had no idea. (Although, it's interesting to consider that in light of "Britpicking," a secondary level of editing done within certain fan communities, transforming American writers' words into something passably British.) Second, unlike what I imagine American comments to have been, the British are not concerned about typos so much as people phonetically writing like chavs. There's an element of what accent you have and what that says about you in Britain that, for the most part, does not seem to be that huge in the US. (I could be completely wrong about that, though. I am, after all, from the Midwest and still in the Midwest.)

Oh, and for the record, I can't say I agree with Mr. Smith on this one. It would hurt my soul a little bit, if varients -- ha, see what I did there?-- became accepted rather than ridiculed.

Geekery abounds!

+ Anthony Giddens and Michael Foucalt action figures [geekery]. "Fully poseable limbs with special academic movement!" Thoughtful head movement, go!

+ From A to Zyxt [NYT]. A book review of a man who read the OED from, as the title says, A to Zyxt. If I had more determination and self-control, I would want to be Ammon Shea when I grow up.

“Some days I feel as if I do not actually speak the English language,” he writes, his verbal cortex overflowing. “It is,” he observes, “like trying to remember all the trees one sees through the window of a train.” Once he stares for a while, amazed, at the word glove. “I find myself wondering why I’ve never seen this odd term that describes such a common article of clothing.”

It's like my life, except with a slightly more expansive vocabulary. But only slightly more. Also, I really want to read this book.


+ Malwebolence - The World of Web Trolling [NYT]. Absolutely fascinating article of an outsider looking into the world of trolling.

As we walked through Fullerton’s downtown, Weev told me about his day — he’d lost $10,000 on the commodities market, he claimed — and summarized his philosophy of “global ruin.” “We are headed for a Malthusian crisis,” he said, with professorial confidence. “Plankton levels are dropping. Bees are dying. There are tortilla riots in Mexico, the highest wheat prices in 30-odd years.” He paused. “The question we have to answer is: How do we kill four of the world’s six billion people in the most just way possible?” He seemed excited to have said this aloud.

There's a really compelling thread of tension and mistrust on both sides of the interviewer and the interviewees, and Mattathias Schwartz really gets at the core issue behind why trolling is worth learning about. He doesn't just ogle at the weirdos who seem to hate life and each other, so much as try to understand why they do it and the motivation/philosophy behind it. His outsider perspective does him credit; just as he is keenly aware of the ramifications of online cruelty in the real world, he is also aware of how people project themselves on the internet do not necessarily reflect how they are in real life. Even for someone like Weev, who has come as close to becoming the online identity in person, there are hints where that tendency to bluster and bluff come into play.


RANDOM LINKS:

+ Comic-Con: Mad Magazine [livejournal, comics, watchmen] Part of the Swag Bag this year was a special issue of MAD Magazine with a parody of Watchmen ("Botchmen") and Sergio Aragones's parody of the con itself...an all too true parody.

+ And while it's in my head, I called a Jon Osterman the other day. Unfortunately, while this was a Jon Osterman, it wasn't the Jon Osterman (that I was supposed to call). Obviously. I don't know what I was thinking. Ours has left our galaxy for one less complex.

+ Genderfuckery Is the Name of the Game [music]. Music by bands altered so that the gender of the lead singer is switched. Kind of cool, kind of weird. It reminds me of this one website I came across years ago that posted music by cover bands where they did or did not switch the gender of the person in the lyrics.

+ NPH Sweeps The Clouds Away As The Shoe Fairy on 'Sesame Street.' [media, Neil Patrick Harris] As much gold as this is, it's even better after you watch the his interview with Conan O'Brien. Fairy jokes aside, he's just so enthusiastic about it!

+ Interview with Dali, cut up and animated by Alexander Butera [youtube]. Surreal humor that totally cracked me up. Other people were less entertained.

Thoughts on: "Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading?"

Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading? [NYT] - Motoko Rich explores whether or not reading online is equivalent or should be counted as equivalent to reading books. (Or, as the blurb on the NYT site ever so dramatically declares: "Is the Internet the enemy of reading, or has it created a new kind of reading, one that society should not discount?")

As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.

But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.

I've had quite a few interesting conversations with people about this article in the past week, and, while they've been rather in depth, something felt inherently lacking. We didn't seem to be talking about the same thing, and every time someone brought up a new point, I felt like arguing against what they were saying because, despite being in agreement, there was still something disjointed or unconnected. It was only after reading the previous article that I understood why I couldn't make any coherent arguments; it's because this article is not coherent in a sense that it needs to be. By tackling all of "internet reading," the article clumps together sites like Fanfiction.net and Quizilla.com with reading newspapers and scholarly journals online. It is also trying to make a case that internet reading is not linear reading, and that it is a sort of jumbled amalgam of what people hopskip over in their internet travels. Because Rich tries to make a conclusion about internet reading without defining what kind of reading, done by whom, and for what purpose, the article collapses in on itself, a veritable sampling of quotes and anecdotes that contradicts or misrepresents its own point.

I assume that a large part of what Rich wanted to do, judging by the title, is focus on the repercussion of the reading and writing community found solely online. This discards the ho ho irony of reading the New York Times online and the consequences of books available as through Project Gutenberg. As a result, the question that she would and does run into is whether or not the quality of writing available affects literacy. Her argument on this focuses on her teen case study Nadia, who is a regular reading and writer on fanfiction.net and quizilla.com. She presents a very pointed view of her: Nadia posts ("publishes," in another sense of the word) a story with a blatant misspelling in the title; the story features a reincarnation as a half-human, half cat; she doesn't believe that you need to read books to become an English major in college; and so on. As I'm sure Rich intends, she represents the stereotype of this modern reading age.

While Rich doesn't explicitly pass judgment on her, she cherrypicks lines and actions to make her a veritable illiterate caricature, which I had a serious problem with. After explaining the nature of Nadia's fanfiction, she cuts to critics of internet reading without trying the two together. Critics say that internet makes people lose the ability to sustain interest, don't allow them to critically engage in literature in a way that books do. The way the article is laid out, it makes it seem as though Nadia is one of those people, when, in fact, it's precisely the opposite. Ken Pugh, the neuroscientist from Yale that Rich seems to be arbitrarily quoting from, should be a proponent of fanfiction. "[T]aking the time to ruminate and make inferences and engage the imaginational processing" is precisely what fanfiction is. Writing stories, no matter how terrible, requires a level of attention and care that reading a book for the sake of reading a book does not. The act of being in a fanfiction community-- again, no matter how bad-- is being in a community that is engaged with a body of text. In no way can you equate that to being someone who does not read.

I would assert that Rich's treatment of Nadia's writing and reading is the result of the outsider perspective. The internet exposes us in ways previously impossible, and Rich's treatment of Nadia's writing is patently unfair. She seems to think that it is more significant that Nadia is posting stories with misspellings in the title than it is that she is writing and that she is critically involved with the text. This undoubtedly bad writing is a signal that kids can't write, that literacy is doomed because this girl can't write a novel at the age of fourteen. While I can't make excuses for Nadia's title, I do want to say that by giving this example, Rich is doing the equivalent of thrusting one of Annie Dillard's shitty first drafts into the limelight and using that as a way of saying that Dillard is a shitty writer, that she'll never develop that writing into something better. Only you'd have to scale that back a few decades or so, and assume that she'll never change from what she wrote as a fourteen-year-old. Nadia's writing is a snapshot of all fourteen-year-old's writing, only up on the internet rather than read aloud in class. (Also, Rich betrays her internet naivete by giving the readers all the information they need to find her stories online, basically outing this pseudonym to the world. I trust that most readers of the NYT aren't the type of people to troll her stuff, but, as I found, there is already at least one person who reviewed her story on fanfiction.net with a virtual tonguelashing.)

As for the type of reading online not found in fanfiction (which I would consider to be linear and not too different from reading a book) but more related to the hopskipping across websites, I don't see why that's related to the decrease in people reading books. My mind could be changed about this, but I don't really know if it's that much different than reading the backs of books, the subheads of articles, or the abstracts of scholarly papers. Don't we browse magazines and newspapers like that anyway? What kind of pre-internet reading is this being compared to? And, on a different line of questioning, what does it mean that web users are "persistently weak at judging whether information is trustworthy"? I am intrigued by this, because I could believe it, but I am skeptical of the example that Rich gave. People are a generally trusting bunch and I don't believe that if the Tree Octopus article was written in a magazine format of a hypothetical cephalopod magazine that people would condemn it immediately as false. Isn't the fact that Leu linked to outside websites testament to the fact that people on the internet expect corroboration between sources?

In either case, the more I think about the article, the more frustrated I am by it. It could have gone several extremely interesting ways, but Rich's description of the internet as a whole denies or devalues the more mature, substantive types of reading available. Instead of looking at those types of communities or even looking at legitimate statistics, she seems to depend on pullquotes from committees and professors and lacks any sort of hard evidence. By flattening "the internet" into some single entity that lacks nuance or depth, she does a great disservice to the people who are reading this article online, who comment, who review, who do anything involving the exchange of ideas through the written word.

After all, we're apparently the reason people don't read anymore. Hooray for correlation.

a few not-links

It's been a long week, and I haven't had time to post some stuff that I think is worth noting. But since it's a slow day at lab, I'm going to be lame and just write out some of the more minor things that I don't have the links for right now.

Hopefully some time this weekend I'll have time to write out the more thinky posts that have been creeping their way into my head. There's been so much stuff going on in the media (see also: last week's NYT articles on literacy and the internet and today's magazine preview on troll subculture. Also, the meta-analyses of the media on media representations of Obama and McCain and the control of the political narrative.) that it's been maddening to not have time to sit down and just write it out.

==


On Gerard Way:

+ He won an Eisner! For his first comic! I can only imagine how overwhelmingly cool that must be. (Incidentally, at the panel at ComiCon where he spoke with Grant Morrison, he looks remarkably pretty. Not a word I usually use, but strangely apt.)

+ He spoke to Zach Snyder, the director of the upcoming Watchmen movie (!), and My Chemical Romance is going to play a cover of Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row" for the soundtrack. Seriously, when I grow up, I want to one day wake up and have the same, "How is this my life? reaction that I'm sure he's had these past few years.


On Dr Horrible:

+ Joss blogs about Dr. Horrible (with a link to it on Hulu). And by "blogs" I really mean "rambles about it before posting a link to it on Hulu." Kind of odd.


Real life:

+ Last night, while doing my telemarketing thang, I had the pleasure of talking to two fantastic people and one rather unpleasant human being. Of the former, I got to talk to a woman who graduated from Northwestern with a degree in Civil Engineering and who is now starting her college education anew by going to Parsons. She was doing well by all measures in her engineering job, but she felt that she was just not taking full advantage of her life, and so made the leap to graphic design. The other wonderful fellow underwent the most amazing transformation throughout the conversation. At the start, he came across as a slightly sad recent retiree; his old cat had recently died, and now the new kitty is a little too energetic for him. But then we got onto a conversation about where he was from originally, and then onto where he's been since, and by the end of the conversation I was just staggered by how richly he has lived his life. He has been around the world, has seen things that I will most likely never see, and done things that I will likely never have the opportunity to do, and now he is enjoying a quiet life at the end of a street with his ten month old cat. Talking to both of them made me so happy that people are out there, living incredible lives. I hope that, just a few years from now, I can relay the same enthusiasm and opportunity in my own life.

The other person isn't really worth talking about -- I assume she just had a crappy day and a reason for accusing me of things not worth discussing-- but I would like to say that apparently real people don't say the word "genuine" and that my accent is really fake. Who knew?

Review: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

When I talked with Melissa about Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (as we are wont to do), she said that she wasn't going to judge the show (musical? what is the proper term?) until she saw the last act. Now, having seen all of it, I have to say that I'm surprisingly meh about it.

Which is not at all to say that it's bad. There are a lot of really great things about it-- the songs are catchy and cute, Neil Patrick Harris is fantastic, and the format of the show is unprecedented-- but the problem is that there is so little substance. To be fair, Joss admits that this is a sort of fun side project and it's not intended to be heavy hitting and thought provoking, but once the last song ended and the screen went to black, I felt little more than, "That's it?" It wasn't even that ache of wanting more more more, but a vague sense of having wasted a lot of time and anticipation if that was it.

(I am also going to be lame and add a quick disclaimer: I'm normally not this thinky, but I watched The Dark Knight less than twelve hours ago, and it's coloring my thoughts to the SERIOUS BUSINESS side of things.)



** SPOILER ALERT **



Before it aired, I thought the musical would hinge on the fact that this is a villain's blog and that, in a glib way, it would play on the whole idea of the internet and self-disclosure with an underlying wink at the concept of a superhero. Sure, it's a forty-five minute web musical, but Joss is good at pinging on contemporary issues and spinning them into an entertaining and funny story. He didn't have to say anything explicitly; I thought the format of the show would implicitly call them into question.

But. Well. Aside from that one quick little cut pre- and post-Freeze Ray misadventure in Act II, the blog itself barely kicked in. Joss starts to get there in the last act where Dr. Horrible is starting to step into his evil role and he sings, "Spread the word, tell a friend, tell them the tale, get a pic, do a blog, heroes are over!" He doesn't want Penny to see, even as he craves his names in the headlines. When she dies (blah blah who cares?), Dr. Horrible steps into his new life, and the nightmare's real. But it's really only the last second or so of these forty-five minutes that brings a semblance of depth to the film. In his blog, Dr. Horrible finally reveals a secret: Billy feels nothing. No hopes, no dreams, no love. It hits you right in the chest because, yes, there's the reason we sat through the first 44:59 minutes or whatever. Without that last second where, finally, Billy tells a secret, this entire thing would have been an entertaining and fluffy waste of forty-five minutes. As it is, that last second is just an agonizing tease of what this could have been.

Honestly, though, I imagine that most people would not have been annoyed by that; life narratives are a huge part of what I'm interested in, and I was really kind of invested with the whole blog idea.

The other main thing that I didn't like was, simply, Penny. While watching, I didn't really consciously ping on it, but after someone pointed it out how genuinely useless and empty a character Penny is, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I felt increasingly that it was a failure on Joss's part to write such an empty character. Okay, we get it, she's The Girl. The villain wants her, the hero has her, she has to die. Surely Joss, with his deft touch with cliches, could do something about that. But -- no. She's the simple laundromat girl who wants to save the world through petitions. She is asked out by the hot, shallow guy but she decides to go through with their relationship (or whatever) being wooed by frozen yogurt and possibly the HammerJack. That's fine. It's even fine if Felicia Day decides to play her exactly as she's written with zero creativity or personality. There are people in real life who rock the clasped hands and furrowed brows of sensitive pain. But in the context of this story? She is seriously nothing outside the two men, and that's way below what I would expect (unless I am totally missing something and the Whedons are satirizing this type of character, which is both possible and preferable to what I'm seeing). She's Billy's love interest. Captain Hammer has happy hammer time with her for the sole purpose of getting back at Dr. Horrible. Her death means nothing to anyone except as a measure of change in the two men. I mean, really? This is the reason that Dr. Horrible truly comes into being? This is Captain Hammer's terrible revenge? Did anyone care about her death for any reason outside what it'd do to Billy?

I'm sure I sound like a terrible woman-hater here, but it's not that she's The Girl so much as her existence is only as The Girl. Even the one thing that was hers -- the homeless shelter-- she passed over to Captain Hammer's inept yet impressively gloved hands. In the press conference scene, you don't even get the impression that she was on stage because she was involved with the project; she was there because Captain Hammer wanted her there. She crept off the stage once Hammer started to talk about their sex life, not even protesting or looking outraged. What? And, now that I'm thinking about it, Dr Horrible just stands there as Captain Hammer talks about using her for sex without a twitch. In the epic battle between Hammer and Horrible, she's a pawn, but not really something worth fighting over. Worst yet? She's not even self-aware enough to realize it. Joss wrote her with so little self-knowledge that in this entire musical she is the only one who doesn't know how pathetic she is. Even the media is aware that she's just "What's-her-name." That last makes me want to think that the Whedons are trying to satirize the The Girl character, but, well. I'm not really feeling it. (And if I were feeling like being one of Those People, I would mention how her name already sets a tone for her mundanity and valuelessness. It's a good thing I'm not.)

In sum, I know that this makes it sound like I hated Dr. Horrible and think Joss Whedon is a sexist pig, but that's definitely not what I mean. I liked Dr. Horrible, and I suspect I'll either end up getting the DVD or renting it repeatedly or something, but it's not as much as I was hoping for. So while it's a great fluffy musical with typical Joss-quick humor and throwaway lines, it lacks a depth that, honestly, I thought would be there.

Of course, that perceived lack of depth is not going to stop my brain from playing that Laundry Day song on loop for days ("Stop. The woooorld!") or from feverishly replaying that amazing zoom in at the beginning of Brand New Day before it is taken down. (Or from wanting to make a Dr. Horrible figurine. Arrrg, lack of tiime.)

So, here, let's end on a happy note: Neil Patrick Harris? AMAZING OR AMAZING?



Related Links:
+ Music for the first two acts of Dr. Horrible. (I'm apparently missing software, so I can't open it, but, well, there you go.)
+ Neil Patrick Harris is more excited about Dr. Horrible than about the Emmy nomination.

Just watched The Dark Knight.

In a word: AMAZING.

today's post inspired by an interview with Joss Whedon. And also, Spore.

+ Prodigeek's Interview: Joss Whedon on Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I'm looking forward to Dr. Horrible (oddly enough, not in the obsessive fan way, so much as the curious onlooker way), and this interview is a nice overview at the background of its creation and so on. But, really, I was intrigued by Joss's response to this question:

Prodigeek - Your work’s always been geared towards fantasy and sci-fi. Is that a coincidence or is that where you wanted to be?

Whedon - It’s never “This will work with this!” I love what I love. They seem to go together. Dr. Horrible seems like a no-brainer for me because superheroes are already one step removed from people. So it’s easier for people to watch a superhero movie, especially if they’re singing, than it is for them to watch people singing and accept that it’s going on.

People love musicals. All people love musicals. Most of them don’t know it or can’t admit it. The trick on Buffy was nobody on Buffy wanted to be in a musical. They were forced to sing. Once you had that, the audience could accept it. The audience had the same feeling, “Why is Buffy singing? Oh wait, that’s pretty.” And they’re bigger than life. It is a bigger than life world, and there are superpowers and heroes and villains.

In addition to the shallow pleasures of seeing NPH and Nathan Fillion sing, I am deeply curious to know how Joss will play with the superhero cliche. After reading Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Alan Moore's Watchmen in a very short period of time (both highly recommend, incidentally), I've been doing something heavy thinking about what superheroes do in media and the idea of the symbol. It should be interesting to see what Joss's take will be.

+ Nathan Fillion's myspace. I don't have anything to say, really, except for the part where I wish I was his friend. He seems like such a cool dude.

+ Tales of the Black Freighter, A Reconstruction. Speaking of Watchmen, I recently came across this reconstruction of "The Black Freighter." "The Black Freighter" is a comic-within-a-comic from Watchmen and one of my favorite parts of the novel (graphic novel? How does one categorize it, exactly?). While I don't know if this will be terribly interesting to anyone who has not yet read Watchmen, it's fascinating to see how fully realized the universe is, with another publication within its panels. Also, "The Black Freighter" is just so damn good. [comics]

+ Pete Wentz: "I'm Becoming My Dad." This is probably the more unlikely links I'm putting up, but a) I have an inexplicable fondness for Pete Wentz, and b) it's kind of relevant. If you squint and turn your head, anyway.

A rep for the musician has also denied reports that Wentz and his wife have registered for blue items at a popular L.A. baby boutique.

When I first read it, I didn't realize why that was remotely interesting. Then something clicked and I went, Ohhh, blue. Like for a boy. It's just so mindboggling to me that something like that says so much. (See? Symbols! It's related!)

+ Sporelebrity: Celebries' Spore creations. Someone referred to Masi Oka's as "oddly useless, but adorable!" and now I can't get that out of my head. Because, really, it's so true! [random]

Things I've learned today

+ When I grow up, I want to be Raymond Kurzweil. Not because I take pride in my ability to predict things or because I want to be wildly successful in all aspects of my life, but because I want my wikipedia article to be half as amazing as his. No, seriously, when I say things like "centuries hence," people give me strange looks, not awards. That should change. [wikipedia, science]


+ Being too fat 'can damage sperm.' (And also, searching for "obese men" on BBC is incredibly depressing.) The article itself is interesting, but what caught my attention was this bit towards the end:

Dr Ian Campbell, chair of the charity Weight Concern, said it was known that overweight people had a tendency to have fewer children.

He said there had been a suspicion that was mainly due to lack of opportunity.

Ouch. [BBC news science]


+ Most importantly, this life tip: If you're trying to find a video rental place that you've never been to before, bring directions or a sturdy umbrella. Both would be optimal, but, in case of emergency, that one or the other will improve prospects and morale considerably.

This lesson was learned on an epic quest to get a movie. Ryan and I walked approximately three and a half miles to get to a video store located half a mile away. Three and a half miles in the rain with only a sad, sagging umbrella between us and true misery.

On the plus side, we eventually triumphed and celebrated with an excellent dinner at the inimitable Hamburger Mary's. I'd say lesson learned, but, knowing us, it'll probably happen again at a different stop. Between the two of us, I'd say we have enough character for a third. [real life]

A snapshot of October 2007

My laptop crashed a few days ago, so I've been using my old desktop. The one that crashed in October and suddenly, inexplicably works. In either case, I fired up good old AIM 5.9 and was amused by the links on my profile. Quoted verbatim.

+ Step Through - Very few of you will appreciate this comic, but I link for those of you who might. A cute little Stargate comic. [media art geekery]

+ Beetle to Beetle: Will Mate for Water. This is the funniest thing I've read in a very long time. "It's doubtful the same incentive exists for people and other mammals..." I can only imagine how beautiful the interview was. [science]

+ Robotic Dalek Jack-o-Lanterns! That is so awesome. I've decided that I, too, am going to make an amazing jack-o-lantern this fall. I'd better start planning. [geekery media]



Alas, I didn't make a jack-o-lantern last year, but my masterpiece's time will come.

More Random!

ARTLY THINGS

+ Gerard Way's talk at the School of Visual Arts - [media] [art] - Gerard Way, writer of the comic Umbrella Academy, speaks at his alma mater. While I haven't had the time to read all of UA, I am a genuine fan of this man. He is earnest and sincere, and he cares so much about everything he does. His discussion on creating because you have to, because you have a story to tell, hit me right in the chest

+ ProcessRecess: James Jean's Art Blog - [art] - Speaking of James Jean, a link to his art blog. So, so, so beautiful. (His actual website is, easily enough, JamesJean.com)


FOOD

+ Not Martha - bacon cups - [food] - There is nothing about this that I do not love. Imagine the possibilities!

I had an occasion calling for bacon themed food and my mind immediately turned towards the famed bacon mat. I needed something a little more single-serving though, so I decided to attempt bacon cups.

SCIENCE OF SOME SORT

+ Discovery Channel: I love the world - [science] [media] - This is one of the most charming commercials I've ever seen. The world is awesome! (As is the xkcd comic based off of it. And, in case anyone cares to know what I consider one of the most heartwrenching: Adopt Scifi.)

+ How Smart is the Octopus? - [Slate] [science] - I might be biased because I find aquatic life truly amazing, but this is such a cool article. I thoroughly recommend watching the clips linked in the first paragraph. Octopuses! How so cool, aquatic life? (I haven't had the chance to read Cephalopod consciousness: Behavioural evidence yet, but I totally will.)

So, is the octopus really all that smart? It depends on how you define intelligence. And if you've got a good definition, there are quite a few scientists who would love to hear it. Octopuses can learn, they can process complex information in their heads, and they can behave in equally complex ways. But it would be a mistake to try to give octopuses an IQ score. They are not intelligent in the way we are—not because they're dumb but because their behavior is the product of hundreds of millions of years of evolution under radically different conditions than the ones under which our own brains evolved.

RANDOM OTHER THINGS

+ Moving Apart - [fiction] - A beautiful tale of the continents. Highly, highly recommended. Clever and puntastic.

All the other continents said Antarctica was a frigid bitch, but Australia remembered the good old days. Once upon a time, there had been three of them: Australia, Antarctica and India. Antarctica had covered herself with forests and they’d huddled together for warmth, with Antarctica nestled in his Great Australian Bight (as he liked to call it).

+ Confessions of a Superhero: a documentary by Matt Ogens - [media] - I've only seen the trailer but it is intriguing.

CONFESSIONS OF A SUPERHERO is a feature length documentary that chronicles the lives of three mortal men and one woman who make their living working as superhero characters on Hollywood Boulevard. This deeply personal look into their daily routines reveals their hardships and triumphs as they pursue and achieve their own kind of fame. The Hulk sold his Super Nintendo for a bus ticket to LA; Wonder Woman was a mid-western homecoming queen; Batman struggles with his anger, while Superman’s psyche is consumed by the Man of Steel. Although the Walk of Fame is right beneath their feet, their own paths to stardom prove to be long, hard climbs.

Notes: I'm trying to figure out a more efficient way to organize my links, but so far with limited success. Hang in there, I'll figure it out!

Bits and pieces

I had hoped to start off by posting book reviews but those will have to be put on hold for a bit. Instead, here is some random.


ARTLY THINGS

+ MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU. An animation drawn solely on public walls. It has this fantastic surreal momentum. After watching it the first time around, I had to go back and rewatch it to see how exactly it was done. Brilliant.

+ THE KNIFE LIKE A PEN CARTOON. This is a cartoon done by Lala set to The Knife's "Like a Pen Cartoon." I've been following Lala's work on The Knife's "Like a Pen Cartoon." I've been following Lala's work on deviantart for a while now and was delighted to find that she had done an animation. Even in her drawings, there is this very specific, peculiar viscosity to her characters and it is even more apparent in this animation. (If the video is not quite your cup of tea, I'd still recommend her gallery. Her website is currently down, but it is definitely worth a gander or twelve.)


MEDIA THINGS:

+ Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog TEASER. I'd forgotten that Joss was doing this, what with Dollhouse dominating certain parts of the internet (and Buffy and Angel dominating others). But Neil Patrick Harris! And Nathan Fillion! Be still, my heart!


RANDOM:

+ one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time… - In the vernacular of our times, I lol-ed.

Introduction the second

I guess I'm reviving this blog (if it was ever alive), but this time with intent to share. I'd like to nod at my most excellent friends Ryan and Melissa for kicking off this sudden and unexpected exhibitionism.

I want to disclaim everything, but that seems silly. We'll take it day by day.

Here goes.

[LINKS]

+ Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought. “This breaks the major rule in the American belief system — that anyone can do anything,” explains M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book “This Year I Will...” and Ms. Markova’s business partner. “That’s a lie that we have perpetuated, and it fosters mediocrity. Knowing what you’re good at and doing even more of it creates excellence.”

+ Bush Urges Myanmar to Let U.S. Help In France, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner also expressed regret over Myanmar's policy on international aid, saying the country insists only on aid that the government would distribute itself and has spurned French as well as U.S. offers of personnel. Kouchner, co-founder of the French aid group Doctors Without Borders, said he had applied for a visa to travel to Myanmar to help coordinate but was highly doubtful it would be granted. / France has so far proposed $309,200 (€200,000) in aid. "It's not a lot, but we don't really trust the way the Burmese ministry would use the money," he said.

+ Aid for Myanmar Mobilizes, Mixed with Criticsm [NYT]... The Bush administration said Tuesday that it was offering $3 million in aid. But the American aid is to be funneled through a team from the Agency for International Development that had not been permitted to enter Myanmar as of late Tuesday.

In addition, Mr. Bush said he was prepared to use Navy warships and aircraft “to help find those who have lost their lives, to help find the missing, to help stabilize the situation.” Still, he added, “In order to do so, the military junta must allow our disaster assessment teams into the country.”

A Burmese political analyst called Mr. Bush’s condition “a cheap shot.” The analyst, Aung Nain Oo, who is based in Thailand, said: “The people are dying. This is no time for a political message to be aired. This is a time for relief. No one is asking for anything like this except the United States.”

[LINKS] Tidbits from the NYT

Just snippets that jumped out at me from the New York Times.

+ In the Land of Many Ifs. "Forecasting the demise of consumer spending, however, is notoriously risky. The willingness of Americans to spend, whatever the size of their debts, seems to transcend the rules of economics." I'm not very knowledgeable (whoa, what a strange word) about economics, but there was something about that line that struck me as particularly grim. Or telling.

+ The Invisible Ingredient. An interesting look at an aspect of cooking that we (or at least I) don't normally consider in depth. The end of the article also betrays a certain culinary romanticism that I thought was cute. The quest for the perfectly cooked meal and the myriad tragedies that can befall a well meaning chef.

+ New H.I.V. Cases Drop but Rise in Young Gay Men. "The older generation sees AIDS as a tragedy, the younger generation sees it as self-destructive behavior.” - Kyle. From a linguistic point of view (or whatever the proper term is), I thought it was interesting how the author selectively didn't use "gay men" but "men who have sex with men." Also, I thought the wording on "stubbornly high rates of substance abuse" was well done. From a more personal point of view, I don't really know what to say. It's terrible. To think that a preventable disease is inevitable. How do you get to the point where it's an acceptable outcome? How do you resign yourself to it?

+ Death Toll in Kenya Violence at 300. The direct quotes in this article are absolutely horrifying. '''All you do here is come to pick up bodies,'' shouted Boniface Shikami.