Royale With Cheese

Zeitgeist: Addendum

2008-12-15T10:06:00.000-08:00

This video is basically like my 11th and 12th grade Sociology and World Geography classes combined, minus the "crazy" old black man teaching it.

Also...

Check out the The Venus Project

Ramblings of a derranged mind

2008-12-15T09:57:00.000-08:00

There are certain drugs that won't cloud your perception. There are certain drugs that open your mind and remove filters built into our brains that were put there so that we would have survival instincts. Some things make us uncomfortable when we're hungry, so that we want to eat rather than stare at the ceiling for the next few hours. There are certain wavelengths that our eyes aren't able to recognize; in fact, the "visible spectrum" is barely anything. When you really think about it, there's so much shit going on that we're completely oblivious to. For example, there could be an ultraviolet elephant sitting on your lap right now. Maybe not, but who knows for sure? When one starts to think about the sheer amount of things that exist that we're unaware of, it starts to become clear that although humans dominate this planet, we're far from elite or even special. Just because we've got bigger brains than the animals around us we think that we're the shit, but its like if we put a high school drop out in a room of 1st graders; of course he's relatively educated compared to them, in the greater scheme of things, he's next to nothing.

Mr. Antonios

2008-12-15T09:49:00.000-08:00

The man.

The myth.

The legendary substitute teacher.

Imagine Barney Rubble. Now compress his vertical height by about 25% without compromising any horizontal girth. Stick him in a clean gray suit and you have Mr. Antonios.

Everyone's favorite sub, Mr. Antonios spoke with a thick Greek (?) accent and claimed to know over 10 languages, and was rumored to have penned dozens of books in said languages.

His handwriting on the board looked like Greek lettering, and was always verbatim what the regular teacher had told him to assign.

He regularly pleaded with the class to behave so that he could "give A plus."

If you were really good though...

If you did something to make him like you, like write someone else's name on the attendance sheet for them, or have a riveting polite conversation with him...

He would hand you a stick of Juicyfruit.

One time, he gave me a whole pack.

I almost cried.

I Love the 90's: ON DEMAND!

2008-12-14T23:39:00.000-08:00

We run, we jump, we swim and play
We row and go on trips
But the thing that lasts forever
Are our dear friendships...

Camp Anawanna
We hold you in our hearts
And when we think about you
It makes me wanna fart!
[It's "I hope we never part," now get it right or pay the price]

Now we will share a lifetime of the fondest memories
By the Lake of Anawanna
Set in the old pine trees
Camp Anawanna We hold you in our hearts
But when we think about you
This thing came apart!

Think Ana-wanna-wanna!
Speak Ana-wanna-wanna!
Live Ana-wanna-wanna! UGH!!

A Lesson in Crowd Control

2008-12-14T23:12:00.000-08:00

If you've ever been to a comedy show, it's likely you've encountered a heckler. Everyone's seen the Michael Richards clip where he spits racial slurs at an audience member. This is the WRONG way to handle a heckler. Well, today, we're gonna learn how to take care of one the RIGHT way, and get a couple of laughs out of it in the process. First up is a classic, Mitch Hedberg.

Next, Joe Rogan. He's a pro at being angry it seems..

An unconventional "comedian," Neil Hamburger.

Shredding

2008-12-14T22:44:00.000-08:00

Snowboarding rules. If you ski, get out of my sight. Going down a hill sideways is 50 times more bad ass than being able to see the people to the side of you. Go take your pizza and french fries and have a bad time.

Anyone else got the Triple Major? It's a kickass pass. Just got mine the other day, and I'm balls excited.

Senbazuru (Sembazuru?)

2008-12-14T16:07:00.000-08:00

I' not entirely sure on what is the correct spelling or meaning. I think one means one thousand and one means over one thousand. Apparently having 1,001 cranes is more lucky. Sure. What the hell is one more if you have already done 1,000.

Yeah I have not had the time to actually string these wizards together yet. I should this coming week. I have done one strand for reference. On this strand there are 50 cranes. So I need to make 19 more of these.Use you imagination to how it will look in the end.

There you are then. It has been a real great time guys. Enjoy your lives and good luck in the future.

Reasons I Hate My Mother

2008-12-14T15:18:00.000-08:00

I don't actually hate her. I love her to death. But she gets unearthly joys from making things like this. She has unleashed a terrible, terrible, terrible monstrosity out onto the internet.

Be advised it is a horrible sight

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/bDQzd2f13yBb2CCVpw6e

I think it speaks for itself.

It doesn't help it is a really bad/scary/creepy picture of me. I just think it is terrible that they are trying to sell the download of each video for 5 bucks. I remember when the guys from Jib Jab used their time (slightly) more productively.

Gotta love China

2008-12-13T19:49:00.000-08:00

For those of you that are unaware of Youku, it's basically the Chinese version of Youtube. And the best part is, a whole bunch of copyrights that exist in the U.S. don't hold any water there, so you can watch movies for free (complete with Chinese subtitles for the Chinese literature student!).

I did half the work for you and found the only movie on there that will make you pee laughing; Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny.

When its over later, change your pants and thank me.

Last Post.

2008-12-13T14:17:00.000-08:00

Or is it? Who knows. What I do know is that this is the last required post for this blog. I liked doing it. I must say, we are pretty good authors when we want to be. I wonder if this will live on. If not, I will leave on these parting notes:

Goodnight, and good luck world.

It's nerf or nothin'

2008-12-13T11:15:00.000-08:00

On our floor a bunch of us recently bought nerf guns.

This was possibly the best decision I have made since attending UVM.

You have no idea how fun it is to run around your dorm hall, shooting anything and everything that moves, having the suction darts stick to any flat surface, and getting yelled at because other people are studying. This was the most threaputic way to not study ever I thought. Now our guns were the normal kind you played with as kids. the standard, spring loaded, one at a time kind of shooting gun. But upon further research I have found that nerf guns suddenly got 10x more hardcore than when we were kids. There is a sniper and a gatling esque gun now that requires a tripod. A tripod. The thing is huge. Here is it:

And the sniper:

I wish I was a kid now. I would wreak havoc with this kind of technology. The world was lucky these kind of things didn't exist when I was a child. Anyway, nerf guns are a good investment. Don't even pretend like you don't want some right now.

Olé!

2008-12-12T19:13:00.000-08:00

Procrastination addicts know: Fifa > Work.

World's greatest game based on the world's greatest game, really.

If you've never played Fifa, you probably either hate soccer or have a life. Just kidding, nobody really has a life (or hates soccer for that matter).

Anyway, I'm pretty much a Fifa god. challenge me. I dare you. Bring your a game, because you're not about to defeat The Blues with me behind them.

Keep the blue flag flyin' high...

This gets me every time.

2008-12-12T16:07:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite shows without a doubt is Saturday Night Live. It is consistently hilarious and has been forever now, and should be considered the golden standard in comedy television. So many great comedians have come out of SNL, its pretty much like a breeding ground. One of my most recent favorite things SNL has been doing for the past few years are the SNL Digital Shorts. They are just little sketches that have been shot earlier as opposed to the ones acted out in the studio. They are pretty much all funny and I highly suggest you wikipedia "SNL Digital Shorts" and see them all. The following video was the most recent short and I have watched it about 7 or 8 times now and it still gets me every time. Plus, its a catchy tune. Also, its highly inappropriate, thought I should throw that out there.

Setting a silly goal.

2008-12-12T12:54:00.000-08:00

So it seems to me I should set a non academic goal. Austin had that goal with the paper cranes. It's just something to strive towards and to look forward to I suppose. But it can't be serious because then it's no fun and not really a relaxing activity. That being said, my new goal is to beat "Through the Fire and the Flames" on expert on Guitar Hero 3.

For those of you living under a rock, guitar hero is this cool little guitar music simulation game in which you hit buttons and strum a little strummy thing on an approx. 1/3 plastic replica of a guitar to experience the sensation of actually playing guitar without the boring and tedious necessity of actually learning real guitar. It's pretty fun and I just happen to be good at it. This song by the group "DragonForce" is called "Through the Fire and the Flames" and is considered the hardest song in Guitar Hero 3. It's an extra song, so you don't have to beat it to beat the game. Which is good, because most people can't get past 1% of this song. It's borderline rediculous. Which is why hardly anyone beats it, because it requires actaully sitting down and practicing it.

After I learned the game, I just whipped through the actual songs you need to beat the game in GH 3 and didn't give much of a thought to beating TTFATF because it was an extra and was way too hard to warrent my time. I could beat the rest of the game fairly easily, even if some other songs gave me problems. But now I have decided to try and beat it.

Since it's final's time, I obviously have this vast amount of time to avoid studying. During this time I will keep trying to beat this song. I don't know what I'll do if and when I beat it. It will solidify my place as one of the best Guitar Hero players at uvm. But thats pretty much it. I wish I had a goal with more practical implications.

If your curious about this song, here is some kid getting 100% on it. I will never be that good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5GpRJItqjw

4 in a Row.

2008-12-12T12:14:00.000-08:00

I need to do 4 of these in a row to catch up on my blogging tally.

Seeing as I am kind of hungry, I'll talk about one of my most favorite candies that are really hard to come by here in the US. Kinder Eggs. Kinder Eggs are amazing because, not only do they combine two of the best kinds of chocolates ever (white and milk, but that's not to say I don't like dark chocolate. I think if it was white, milk, and dark chocolate it would just be pure ecstasy and people just couldn't deal with it) but they also have a little toy inside. So by having chocolate and a toy, they are pretty much combining 2 of my greatest loves in one package. I can only get them out them out of the US because apparently there is some dumb law about not having "non-nutritive" items in food. Also, apparently they were banned from the US in 1997, or recalled or some junk. The fact remains that I can't get my Kinder Eggs as often as I'd like. So I was browsing youtube looking for anyone else who loves Kinder Eggs as much as I do, and I find this:

This almost, almost killed my love for Kinder Eggs. If this is how they are marketed, I shudder to think what kind of toys out of these things I played with in the past.

This video aside, I encourage you all to have a Kinder Egg. They are awesome.

I hate to break the 72 post count of our blog but..

2008-12-11T12:42:00.000-08:00

I feel compelled to post my final project.

My Game/ Story/ Project

2008-12-11T12:02:00.000-08:00

I have already posted everything you need to get to it.

Someone is going to have to leave and go search for the clues to finish the story.

That is all

Do They Know It's Christmas

2008-12-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

I love Christmas. You love Christmas. Everyone loves Christmas. Even you aren't Christian you can still celebrate. You have to call it X-mas. But it is pretty much the same thing.

Luckily for us a simple religious holiday was commercialized to the point where we all get neat stuff from people we love. It is a magical time of year full of giving and good will towards all men. Mostly to make up for the other 11 months where we all hate each other.

But the real topic of conversation is favorite Christmas stuff.

Favorite Holiday Food: Glazed Ham
Favorite Christmas Movie: Jingle All The Way, The Peanuts Christmas Special
Favorite Holiday Activity: Decorating the Tree.
Least Favorite Holiday Activity: Christmas Shopping
Best Feeling in the World: Waking up early to peek in your stockings and under the tree
I Still Believe In: Santa Claus, Harvey Dent, Barack Obama

Oh and I usually hate Christmas songs. But this one is awesome. Also not very cheerful. But neither are the Irish. So it is fitting if you know The Pogues

Your turn (just kidding everyone is done commenting for the semester)

NaNoWriMo 2009

2008-12-10T08:46:00.000-08:00

NanNoWriMo is an abbreviation for an annual writing project deemed National Novel Writing Month. It is hosted by a non-profit organization that encourages the practice of writing on the whole. You can find the website here

Now the fun part is that every November they challenge participants to write 50,000 words in 30 days. A daunting challenge indeed.

So I learned about this a bit too late into this year's project but I decided that I will participate in next year's NaNoWriMo. Why? Well simply because it would be a fun test of ability. Plus it would sound really neat at fancy parties if you could entertain people by discussing the novel you have written. I have always wanted to make off-hand comments like "Oh yes that reminds me of a particular struggle of one of the characters in my novel." "Oh you wrote a novel?" "Hmm? Oh yes that little thing. Nothing special. Just 50,000 words."

I've always had a sort of love affair with creative writing. I like coming up with stories and the like. But I hate the practice of actually writing. It is always so tedious and I become bored after a while. It is also important to note that a novel written in a month is complete dreck. Especially written by an amateur. I haven't seen a good novel come out of the program after 10 years. And the writers are usually the first to admit that their novels are a piece of garbage. But they always say it was an important lesson in writing. Some accomplished writers have come from NaNoWriMo. (supposedly)

I thought I would make a blog post about it so I can't back down a year from now. So if you see me next fall ask me how my novel is coming along.

1,000/1,000 (Yeah I finished the other day and I'm assembling them into strands. I'll post pictures if i get a chance.)

Let's Have Some Fun

2008-12-03T18:57:00.000-08:00

This only works if you play along.

Follow these steps blindly.

Step 1 - Open up paint or a similar program. Sorry mac users looks like your god has dealt you another cruel hand in the game of life.

Step 2 - Select your favorite paint tool and color. I'd suggest not using the spray can.

Step 3 - Close your eyes.

Step 4 - Try and draw a cat.

The results are sure to be hilarious. Here is my cat for reference

I think it has a sort of charm to it. You can notice the tail, body, head, and paws. But when it came to giving it facial features I fell apart.

820/1000

Blogs

2008-12-02T12:37:00.000-08:00

Excuse me whilst I meta-post for a moment. I realize how absurd it is to blog on a blog about blogging. So get all the chuckles out now because I'm going to get serious in a moment.

I don't particularly care for blogs. I think for the most part they are all terrible and worthless. That isn't to say some blogs aren't interesting. I think in theory blogs are fine. I can appreciate someone keeping an online journal. But if you do, please for the love of God keep it to yourself. I don't care what you did today. I don't care that Jimmy stood you up for your movie date last weekend and you cried all the way home when your mom picked you up in her mini-van. You are 13, don't make your diary public. A critic would simply tell me not to read them. This is a fair point, but when browsing the internet you are no doubt going to run into a few. What makes it particularly hard is that when you are trying to find a decent blog you have to wade through the junk to get there. Luckily you can identify the bad ones in less then one post. To highlight my point I went on LiveJournal hit random and came back with this dribble. That is at least 95% of LiveJournal.

Now on the opposite side I will say what is good about blogs. If it isn't teenage girls blogging it is likely the authors are political pundits or middle-aged men who love their cats far too much. These aren't terrible in the normal sense, just exceptionally dry and boring. But there are the rare interesting blogs out there. Sometimes authors, designers, artists, etc keep blogs on their projects that are fun to keep up on. Ben Peek, and few others like him, write some very interesting material. Slice was a great story told through a blog for instance. Blogs can be fun if handled right. Here you can see the only blog that I actually follow. Strangely enough the blog got popular enough that they printed a book with all the entries in it.

Now let me talk about our blogs for a moment. They have been fun to say the least. I was wondering what is going to happen when the class ends. Will people still check them? Will people still write? Will people like blogging enough to make their own? My answer to the above questions are maybe, probably not, and no (respectively) While the blogs have been neat they in no way changed my opinions on blogging. I tend to think the blogs will just sit around collecting dust in the ever ebbing tides of the internet. One thing I would like to note is that the reason the blogs were so much fun in here is as follows. It is a harsh digital world out there. In order to get noticed and read on the internet you need a certain level of talent and/or commitment. In class we had a guaranteed audience. By forcing us to read each others blogs we all got to experience the thrills of online blogging. And in a way we were sheltered. Our own little corral on the internet where we were free to frolic about with each other. If we were to be let out into the rest of the internet and have to attract readers on our own I bet we all would have failed spectacularly. It would have taken some serious self-promotion on the blogger forums to convince anyone to look our way.

But that is just my opinion. What did you think about the blogs? Are you going to keep them active? Do you have a favorite blog? At any rate I think I distracted you long enough to realize what I'm trying to do here.

776/1000

I peaked too soon.

2008-12-01T16:47:00.000-08:00

So I spend all my energy on that last post. That's the one I like and I want people to read. However, I still have to do another post. You know what it's going to be about? Whatever the "Random Article" button on the Wikipedia Page says its going to be.

1. Coongulla, Victoria. Town in Austrialia in the Shire of Wellington Local Government Area. Population: 165. The rest of the article goes into surprising detail about the town for only having 165 people.

2. Cow Belt. A cow belt is a term used to refer to the group of Hindi speaking Indian states located along the Indo-Gangetic Plain.

3. Valhalla High School. Located in El Cajon, California. Comprehensive public high school that houses about 2,000 9-12 graders. They have a lot of golf championships.

There you go. 3 random facts. The more you know. Little NBC joke right there.

Oh? Not satisified? Well I Googled "Random Facts" and got these gems.

1. The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

2. On average, there are 178 sesame seeds on each McDonalds Big Mac bun.

3. The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.

There you go. Now go read my better posts.

Let's face it, Austin is a lot better at this than we are.

2008-12-01T15:47:00.001-08:00

And that, my friends, is why he is an English Major. But looking back, his posts have generally been:

1. On time, which is good considering it makes people thing we are all active on the blog when really just he is.

2. Funny. I was thoroughly amused for about 99% of his posts. Its just really hard to make some obligatory post about Alice funny.

3. Not lacking in some silly kind of media, be it a youtube video, some funny picture, or something like that.

4. Better than mine.

Now, I can deal with all these facts because, as previously mentioned, he is an English major so this is kind of his job. However, I still have a little problem with number 4. Now, I am a pretty competitive person, but also realistic. I am simply not going to be challenging Lance to a bike race or Kobayashi to an eating contest, or Kaleb to a "how much of an ass I can be in class" contest.

Ok, before I go any further with this I just have to say yes, I did Google Kaboyashi's name and spend about 20 minutes looking at the results, and found this. Kobayashi versus a BEAR.

Wasn't that awesome?! Anyway. I am, quite frankly, getting jealous of his posts. It was all fine and dandy when he was winning us blog votes, but since our initial 2 wins in a row, we have yet to repeat. I am unsatisfied with him as our leader. Now I thought to myself, there are 2 ways to handle this. I do have access to all his blog posts, I could simply go back to them and replace every adjective with "moist" and every third noun with "fart", but I figured that would be mean and immature and too much work. The second option was to simply outwrite the writer. Write better blog posts than him. This is what I tried to do with this post. And you can see how well it worked out. So I guess it is just not destined to be. Austin will forever beat us in the blogging world. But that doesn't mean I am going down without a fight. Take THIS English major! I hope it makes you and all your little English buddies cry. (This is how they are trying to teach kids English these days, by the way).

Inappropriate for minors too, btw.

Craziest...thing ever.

2008-12-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

So, unlike many things in this world, I was absolutely not mislead at all with the title of this video. "A Clockwork Orange" did not involve oranges, nor clocks. "This is Spinal Tap" did not involve a painful medical procedure. "The Breakfast Club" did not have one scene of them eating breakfast. "Craziest" DID involve the craziest woman on the face of the planet.

If she was real, which I suspected for a while until Dr. Parent told us otherwise, I would legitimately believe she is in the top 10 craziest people in the world list. What really gets me is that she was a senior at Cornell, so it's not like she was a dumb girl, just legitimately insane. Just proves being in a good school doesn't make you a smart person. At least, that's what I am going with to justify myself not being in an ivy league school.

The narrator's voice confirmed my believe she was crazy. I know it's hard to judge things like that based on the sound of one's voice, but she sounded like all those insane girls you hear in the movies. Plus the fact she was getting worked up over something as mundane as Scrabble is another sure sign she is crazy.

One other thing that annoyed me. She was explaining how a "novice" would assume there is a Q in the highest scoring word in Scrabble. But any idiot can see that the point value is clearly in the bottom right corner of every chip. There is a Z in "Craziest" worth 10, just the same as a Q, so I don't know why this is such a huge revelation. Instead of one 10 point letter, there is another, big deal. But now I am getting too emotionally invested in this and if I talk about it much more, I will be the crazy person worrying too much about Scrabble.

That Makes You Crazy

2008-11-20T13:56:00.000-08:00

So this is a mandatory post on Craziest. So stop reading now.

My favorite thing about Craziest is how clever the title is. It references not only the "triple triple" but how the narrator/main character is actually crazy. At first I didn't realize that this was fiction because I know there are people who actually get that obsessed over things less serious then Scrabble. I though she was hyperbolic when she said she found the Oracle through Scrabble but I caught on when she said she dropped out of college to play the game.

So overall it was an alright piece. Not the best. Certainly interesting. I have never been one to find much comedy when you take something mundane and give it a false sense of over-seriousness. I can see the humor of the strange juxtaposition but I think it is a cheap way to go for easy comedy. It is only a slight step-up from what people do to come up with wacky sitcom ideas. But all that aside Craziest actually had some really funny stuff in it.

I think we watched it in order to see a type of medium for online storytelling. I don't think it was for anything else besides entertainment. But hey I'm not complaining.

401/1000

How a Small Animation Company Dominated My Heart

2008-11-19T20:53:00.000-08:00

Pixar Studios has been making the best animated movies for the past 13 years. This isn't actually an opinion. At this point it is more or less a fact. I loved, loved, loved Wall-E and thought it was the second best movie of the summer. It just came out on DVD the other day and I think I'm going to pick it up soon. Also, Toy Story is over 10 years old. Isn't that freaky?

Here is a sneak-peak for the next Pixar movie. It is called Up and looks just as creative as their past 10 projects.

All of Pixar's movies are perfection* but it is often left up to debate which one is the most perfect. As a warning I am not saying the other movies** are not good just that this is personally my preference. I made some really tough choices here. My ranked list is as follows.

1. Monster's Inc. (It is just so charming)
2. Wall-E
3. The Incredibles
4. Toy Story 2 (Yeah I liked it better then the original)
5. Toy Story
6. Bug's Life (I think it is the underdog of the pack)
8. Ratatouille
9. Finding Nemo
10. Cars (fuck Cars)

*Cars kinda sucks
**except Cars

382/100

Why Wiki.

2008-11-18T18:18:00.000-08:00

So, as it turns out, I am the one who made a Wikipedia page for my 26 Lies/1 Truth project. Now I know on the outside this seems like a fun and cheerful little project to do. Let me be the first to tell you it was not. But I'll start at the beginning. Why did I want to do a Wikipedia page for this project? Basically I wanted to think of a creative way to analyze and fully understand the book. So I thought "I have never written a Wikipedia article, and that seems like something essential you should do in your life time, so I could take out 2 birds with 1 stone here." Plus there's no better way than proving you know a book inside and out than by writing an article about it, because it's not like you can lie. So it's a cool way to get inside the book and explain it to others basically.

So how did I go about writing this article? Like I said, it wasn't all peaches and cream. What I first had to do was learn all about Wikipedia’s procedures for writing an article. For a source so many call "unreliable" they sure are sticklers about what you write. You need at least a few credible sources. This means, unfortunately, no blogs. Which made life REALLY difficult considering the whole book is a blog and its whole reference in the internet is almost exclusively in blogs. So basically I had a hard time proving to Wikipedia that this article was worth having. Yes, they actually exclude articles from being added to Wikipedia, though it may not seem like it with such scholarly articles like: Snoop Dogg's Hustlaz: Diary of a Pimp.

Wikipedia, I discovered, was like its own little world with a talk box for help and a bunch of rules and code I needed to learn. Once you get the hang of it though, it's not too bad. Like ==section== means the title of a new section or something. Next I had to learn Wikipedia’s formatting rules. As you may have noticed, all articles about books are generally set up in the same way, so I had to research this and find out all about this format and what it entails. Generally, descriptions of the book, plot and character overviews, and critical reception are common guidelines one should follow. Under these rules I proceeded to include a plot section, a characters section (albeit this was difficult with the author being the main character and the rest of the characters only having letters to represent them), a "controversy" section (partially to convince Wikipedia this was legit and important), and finally a reception section. In this sense it was set up like a traditional Wikipedia book article. I tired to include everything I could in each of these sections, but I could only present fact and not my opinions on the book which I discovered was difficult after having talked exclusively about the book for some class periods now. Looking back this was probably a short coming of this project, I couldn't deeply analyze without putting my opinion out there. I'm sure it's possible, I just can't do it. But I certainly hope others have the opportunity to edit and make my article better. Even for being a small article about a relatively short book, there is certainly still some more room for improvement. I hope people expand upon the character section, even going so far as to elaborate on the glossary in the back. The article is linked to the Ben Peek article, but I hope more could be done to expand upon his character. Otherwise, I am moderately happy with the article. Some things could be a little better if I had some more sources because, truth be told, there’s not a lot of scholarly things about the book in the internet yet. But that will change. With this Wikipedia article.

I need four more of these by Thursday.

2008-11-18T16:29:00.000-08:00

Taking these 2 or so weeks off from class and not blogging has put me severely behind schedule for this weeks blog tally, so I will be busting out the posts from here on it. That being said:

I have no idea what to write about. It's almost Thanksgiving/my birthday/Christmas/New Years and I have lost all motivation to do work. Sitting here, I have 3 days until I go home, then a few weeks until Christmas. How can I be expected to work under these conditions? Not well I tell you, and thats when you spend hours looking at LOLcats.

But don't worry, I won't post every lolcat I think is funny here. That could go one for pages. The question now is what do I blog about. If you haven't guessed by now this is entirely stream of conciousness writing and I am writing this now in an attempt to have less blogging to do later. Maybe future posts will be more quality. Maybe they won't. Who knows? But this post requires a little more so here is a youtube video:

This is what all girls are like. Period.

Well that's not entirely fair of me. I'm being harsh. Here is something not sexist for the ladies.

I think thats enough to warrant a full post right? I promise to do better the next time. (PTI reference? Anybody?)

For My Grandma!

2008-11-18T13:59:00.000-08:00

This is about 2 weeks late but the reason I am even writing it is because of my grandmother. She likes to write letters to me and demands that I write back and well she is a good six letters up on me at this point. So I figure I need to get one out to her soon. In her latest letter she wanted me to describe to her my position on the latest election. So I thought I might as well and double this up as a blog post and a letter back to my grandmother. She wanted the following from me

a.) describe what I did immediately after Obama won
b.) my thoughts and feelings about it.

So this is pretty easy. I was one of those kids who got caught up in the unruly mob who marched down to Church Street. It was a surreal experience. I heard shouting from my dorm room so my girlfriend and I go out to see what is happening. Then we get engulfed in a group of hundreds. It was an amazing thing to witness/be a part of. It gave me an overwhelming sense of hope. Hope that I have cynically been missing for some time now. Just seeing so many people overjoyed and ready for change. I guess apathy wasn't as wide spread as I thought. Let's hope people don't lose this fervor and do something with it. It certainly was a historic moment that I won't forget. It is exactly what our generation needed. I said to later was that in my entire life I have only seen that many people come together in such a way. And that was after 9/11. This is the first event I can recall that was the result of something good.

So that is basically what is going into my grandmother's letter or part of it anyway.

Something Obama is doing that really excites me is his weekley youtube addresses to the nation

I bet it has been said before but it reminds of me of FDR's fireside chats. But it is cool how Obama is taping into modern technology to inform the masses. It all makes so much sense and is ridiculously simple. It make you wonder why it took until 2008 for it to happen. One time there was a study saying people won't watch a video that is over 3 minutes. So he seems to be keen to this. Also someone working with these videos is a genius because they disabled the comment section.

oh and before I forget 336/1000

A Musing On Things Left Unfinished

2008-11-16T21:57:00.000-08:00

So at some point this summer I told my friends that I was going to learn 10 new skills. They of course laughed at me knowing full well I didn't have the drive to actually do it. Determined to prove them wrong I made a list of what I would do. It included such noble endeavors as learn how to ride a horse and learn how to drive standard. After my list was finished I decided I would start with what appeared to be the easiest, which happened to be learn how to fold a paper crane and make 1,000 of them.

In retrospect I'm an idiot. If only I hadn't tacked on the make 1,000 of the little bastards I could have progressed in my list and I would be riding a horse to class right now. Whoops.

At any rate I rushed into my project headstrong determined to make some headway. Learning how to make the paper crane was a cinch. Here even you can too if you watch this handy video.

But the problem was folding a thousand of them. "Why a thousand?" You might ask, which is a perfectly valid question. Well as legend goes anyone who is in possession of a 1,000 cranes (which is called a Semba Zuru) gets one wish. You get this from the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. As it goes Sadako was a little girl in Japan dieing from radiation set off by the atomic bomb. She didn't want to die. She hears you can get one wish from a Semba Zuru and begins folding away. She makes them all, wishes not to die, and then unfortunately passes away anyway.

I bought a bunch of sticky notes because they are the perfect size square and only mildly annoying to deal with and began folding. After about a week I was bored and gave up after only folding around 300 cranes.

------------------------------------------------

So the reason I'm telling you all this is because I went home this weekend and found my bag of unfinished cranes. I decided I want to start back up so I have some sort of accomplishment to brag about. So here I am in life. Folding cranes. Again

I usually just fold these damn things in the background as it doesn't take away much time. It is just tedious. Once the technique is etched in your subconscious it only takes about a minute per crane.

From now on I will include how many cranes I have made in the bottom of my posts

????/1000 (I don't actually have the time to count them right now)

We needed to be blogging this whole time.

2008-11-16T11:55:00.001-08:00

It's really hard to blog without having the class to constantly remind you. It's also really hard to blog when you are crushed under the wieght of every class realizing they want to squeeze a test or paper in before Thanksgiving break. In an effort to find something funny to blog about, I did what anybody would do and Google searched for some humerous news story. This is what I found:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081018/D93T7H6O0.html

I am losing faith in humanity. At the very least, I am losing faith in people from Michigan. Now I don't pretend to be an expert about Michigan, so before judging I decided to peruse the rest of the internet for Michigan-esque things. Here is what else I found:

Rickrolled, honestly.

Also, (slightly retro):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPN4b4KUkh4

Naked Bike Ride = cool. Naked Mile where you train = uncool. Plus those guys just seemed like losers.

Apparently Michigan thinks they speak the best English as well, and that they have no dialect. They also seem to think NYC and the South speak the worse English. Which is probably true, but still. Here's the article, and you know it's true because PBS did it. And if we can't trust PBS to bring us correct information, I don't know who we can trust quite frankly.

http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/prejudice/attitudes/

Well, that's all I've got. Not even incredibly interesting. I just really hope no one in our class is from Michigan. If someone is, (sorry first of all) and maybe you can explain to me why you guys are so weird. Thanks.

(Second Google Images result for "Michigan resident")

Don't believe me? Try it.

A Hundred Ways You Can Waste Your Time

2008-11-11T16:15:00.000-08:00

Flash Games. I bet everyone here has played a few on the internet. I bet most people are quite familiar with Kitten Cannon or some other stupidly popular game. Few people know kitten cannon was actually based on a Japanese game Nanaca Crash. Well I am just going to list off a few of the best games out there right now. All additively fun. All strangely complex. All good ways to not do work and fail out of college. I am only listing games I think you probably haven't played but should.

Dino Run!

You play as a small pixel raptor who is trying to outrun extinction. On the way you have to eat other dinosaurs, collect eggs, catch rides from pterodactyls and cross tar pits on the backs of trapped brontosauruses.

QWOP Olympics

This game is insanely hard. You have to get a runner to run 100 meters and you control the flexes of both his calve and thigh muscles. I have never made it past 20 meters and that was with a slow hop jump method I discovered.

Fantastic Contraption

You have to make devices that will you get your pink object from starting point A to end point B. Sounds easy at first. Then it gets tricky. Fun for the inventor type

3D Logic

If you like puzzles this is the game for you. Starts simple then gets frustratingly difficult.

Ownage Burst

Dumb name. Fun shooter. The only free flash shooter that I know of that balances ridiculous action and clever cover strategy.

Winterbells

One of my favorites. A little gem of a game that is cute, endearing, well designed, and free to play. The music is fantastic and the animation is surprisingly smooth.

Shuffle!

A simple game where you have to knock your opponents balls off the table before they can knock off yours.

This list contains a large variety of different types of games. All of which are worth a play through. Just remember to get your work done.

EEEEEE! PUPPIES!

2008-11-11T12:54:00.000-08:00

I think we need to keep making posts during our break. I'm not sure. But just in case I will make one about puppies.

Do you think puppies are cute?

If you answered no you are a robot.

If you are human like the rest of us you can now enjoy LIVE PUPPIES 24/7

Yeah some guy in California decided to set up a webcam in his kennel so the world can enjoy his puppies. Most of the time they are sleeping. But every now and then one will wake up and start walking on the other puppies' heads. Then they get pissed and it is a huge puppy fight. Awesome

Our multiracial generation is taking over...

2008-11-04T23:14:00.001-08:00

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/election.president/index.html

Liberals, rejoice.

Anyone else march in that gigantic impromptu parade-type celebration on Main street tonight? There were definitely over 1000 college kids there, accompanied by tv cameras, people climbing up lamp posts, trees, and even police cars.

Words of zen:
NO MORE BUUUUSH!
NO MORE BUUUUSH!
(Repeat)

The Woes of Being an English Major

2008-11-03T20:46:00.000-08:00

Way back in November when I applied to UVM (Early Action) I marked off English as my desired major. Now the reasoning behind this was as follows.

1.) I thought it was best to declare a major rather than go undecided.
2.) My talents in high school were mostly limited to being better at English than anything else.

Well now that I am one I begin to notice a strange social phenomenon. People don't really like/understand English majors.

Let me show you a common conversations English majors have.

Person: So, what is your major?
Me: Well you see it is...English
Person: Errr...English...cool. What do you want to do? Teach?
Me: No
Person: Oh cool...

Then we sip our drinks awkwardly and walk away.

People always just assume English majors want to teach. And that is indeed what we seem to be doomed to do. But far be it from me to try and defend my major by mentioning all the job opportunities available to me in the world of business, politics, law, as well as plenty more. At that point you are asked "Why didn't you just become a business major then."

There are even people who detest English majors with a passion. We seem to be the punching bags of the college world to these people. What I have noticed is that the people who do this are often on the track of getting a degree in some science or math. It seems to them that there is nothing in the world more important or useful than the science that they choose to study. Even if you agree that science/math is important in the world they refuse to accept that studying English has any sort of influence on the world at all.

Why does it have to be a fucking debate? Both English and Math are important. I guess they may be right though. Studying literature probably doesn't help advance the world much at all. I guess it is more a personal thing. I think you can learn more about yourself if you are constantly questioning universal themes and reading. Maybe I'm just selfish.

All you non-English majors probably don't know where I am coming from. In fact you may feel the same way about me as these math/science people. But hey at least English majors are a tad more useful than Philosophy and Political Science majors (haha fucking losers). In fact maybe I'm growing more attached to my major because I always am on the defense. Oh and if you must know I'm looking to go to Law School, probably, maybe.

But I think you all should know that I am very happy as an English major and enjoy all the English classes I take very much. Even if I am doomed to a life of living on the streets burning my degree for warmth.

So in reality I'm the unlucky one for having to watch these.

2008-11-02T19:17:00.001-08:00

OK, so they weren't that bad. But they certainly could be better. Some characters I thought just didn't need to exist. Like Estelle. Sure she is a funny old lady and is insane and all that, but she really didn't contribute to the overall story. Also, I thought Sharon didn't need to be around either. She was kind of in her own little world with her own little conflict anyway and didn't really effect anyone else. In fact, I think this whole thing could be made into a cliff notes version of just the whole Alan love triangle and the respective woman's husbands. The Bill story was kind of a side story, as was the whole Cucumber incident. As far as how you viewed the whole thing, I didn't think there was a problem with the left to right one through five idea. It made sense to me, as long as you can keep track of 3 or more storylines in your head at a time. I tried to watch it in a way after that had me just follow storylines. For example, if I watched the Frank story and saw Bill, I would go watch Bill's video. If I watched Stella's and saw Alan, I went and watched him. After seeing it this way I didn't feel any different than I did just watching it normally. So I don't think the order effected the story too much. Overall, it was enjoyable to watch, but i certainly wasn't enthralled.

Let Me All Show You Something or The Best Soda In The World

2008-11-02T17:59:00.000-08:00

Let me preach to you for a moment about the most delicious concoction ever developed by man. A drink so heavenly and god-like one would call it the earthly Ambrosia.

It is called Mr. Pibb or more accurately, since 2001, Pibb X-tra.

Perhaps some of you have it where you are from but up in Vermont it can only be found in a few places. But they are all hours away and only from soda fountains. You can not find bottles or cans here.

I happened upon it one day in New York City when it was on tap at a subway in the business district. I thought I was getting Dr. Pepper but I was pleasantly surprised by the party my taste buds where having. Let me try and explain the taste. It is kinda like Dr. Pepper but rather then having a sharp kick it is creamy and smooth and fantastic. To try to liken it to anything else is to discredit its flavor.

The history behind Mr. Pibb as best as I can tell originated in the 70's when Coke released Dr. Pepper. Pepsi tried to counter with a soda for the everyman not just those with a PHD. Pepsi made some marketing and distribution mistakes along the way which allowed Dr. Pepper to gain the upper hand in the battle. Mr. Pibb had not lost the war, however, and instead of being discontinued it was luckily limited in distributions. This was due in part to the product selling very well in the Southern areas of the country. To this day Pibb can be found in large quantities down South. Unfortunately for Northern fans it is a bit more difficult to obtain.

I have friends who have sent me pibb up from the south at times. But the cost is crazy. Soda is fairly cheap. But it is heavy. Shipping charges are outrageous. I bought 4 12-packs to send up. It ended up costing me 30 dollars in shipping. I won't do that again for a long while unless I have exhausted all other options. But my stash is running low. I make them last. I don't drink much soda to begin with and I try to drink my Pibbs only on special occasions.

Mostly I made this post to see if anyone has this stuff where they are from and if they do can you get it for me? But feel free to laugh at me and my weird obsessions. Also if you have had Pibb and don't agree with my lauding of it. I will have no Pibb bashing on my blog.

The Lucky Ones

2008-11-02T17:51:00.000-08:00

I liked The Lucky Ones and my mandatory post on it will explore some stuff my group talked about in class. This post is probably boring and you should stop reading here. I usually just glaze over all the mandatory posts other people make so don't feel bad.

So someone in my group said that they didn't understand why it was important that we watched this. Those are the questions I usually like to think about when considering a body of work. Does this have a meaning? Did I gain anything by viewing it? What does it teach us? I believe most things have some sort of meaning attached to it. Things have to try really hard to be completely devoid of meaning. Meet The Lucky Ones can teach us something.

So we analyzed Meet The Lucky Ones on the basis of it exemplifying the relation between Conflict and Resolution. Jesper killed Ashley's frog and as a way to resolve the issue he bought her a new one.

Thinking on it more I think the thing I took from Meet the Lucky Ones was a theme of Finality. Every conflict has a resolution be it good or bad. So of course every story had a sort of conflict and resolution to some degree. Alice was unhappy so she left Frank, Sharon felt guilty for not telling the truth so he gives back the car, Frank was petty, greedy and jealous and he lost everything he had. But finality in the videos runs deeper. The motiff of death presented by Bill and Estelle represents the ultimate finality or resolution.

This theme is nice and all and gives the work a tad more meaning but it doesn't really teach us anything we don't already know. Yes everything comes to an end we know that. But what we can learn is how our actions and choices determine what sort of end we will have. So we can further break apart the video into a musing on Atonement. The characters who atoned and faced their problems had a happy ending. Jesper bought Ashley a new frog and they remained friends, Sharon gave the car back and got rid of her guilt, Mike made more time for his family and saved his marriage. All these characters were miserable but fixed their problems in order to be happy. Those who didn't atone or learn from their conflict were doomed to be miserable. Frank was greedy and jealous but did nothing about it. Alan knew he was trying to run away with two married women but went with it. Initially after viewing Meet the Lucky Ones you might be surprised that it could teach you to be a better person.

Something is truly great when it is both thought provoking and entertaining.

Screw names.

2008-11-02T17:42:00.000-08:00

I can't remember anyone's name unless I've met them multiple times and had a few conversations with them. Chances are, if you're reading this, I don't know your name. Sorry.

I know they're essential in society because it sets us apart as separate bodies of flesh rather than one being, and they are essential because the main method of human communication is through words. However, this doesn't change my rant because I hate names more than I hate sleazy white man running for president.

Pronouns are cool though, they can stay.

Proper nouns, die in a fire.

Jam the jams out.

2008-11-02T17:12:00.000-08:00

I hate pop music.

Seriously.

My senior thesis in high school was about how MTV ruins America.

Thus,

As a public service, I am offering an assortment of music by musicians that I feel you should know and respect.

Enjoy...

First up, the classic funky and relaxed sounds of A Tribe Called Quest.

Next, the incredible compositional skills of Bach, accompanied by a really freakin cool visual representation of each note.

Watching the Bach video reminded me of a video that I saw a while back, starring the music of John Coltrane. It's a graphic interpretation of the structure of Jazz, in terms of a basic melody and then improvisation based off of the melody. To this day it's one of my favorite animations of all time. I really suggest you check this one out despite the fact that you can't just hit play.

John Coltrane - Giant Steps (Animation by Michal Levy)

What better way to start the 70's than with the Band of Gypsies? Fast forward to 2:15 if you wanna skip the countdown.

Ok, enough classics, time for a video made after we were born. Virtuosos all around to be quite honest... Time for Jojo Mayer, possessor of two of the quickest hands in drumming today.

What would this compilation be without the incredibly eclectic styles of Bela Fleck and his band, the Flecktones.

And finally, one of the most famous drum solos of all time, courtesy of Stevie Wonder.

72ner out.

Ben Peek.. You attention whore

2008-11-02T16:50:00.000-08:00

If you're Ben Peek, stop reading right now.

See what I did there? That's a method of grabbing attention. It's called reverse psychology, and it seems to work pretty well (with teenagers, at least). If you were Ben Peek, would you have stopped reading? Probably not, because you would have been intrigued. Right? Right.

A blog isn't anything like a book. Chances are if one part of a book bores you, you're not about to stop reading it. You'll most likely fight through the boredom to get to the meat of the story. A blog is very different, because it's just a collection of fragmented thoughts, none of which are necessarily connected. If you find a blog post that you don't find interesting, you most likely won't read the whole thing.

If it is interesting though, you will read it and you might even tell others about it. You may even frequent the blog for more. Blogs are all about entertainment and holding the attention of a demographic that tends to have the attention span of a small goldfish. Ben Peek knows this better than anyone.

His blog strives to keep the attention of his readers, and to entertain them as well, and his book/blog hybrid concoction is a testament to the most interesting parts of his blog and his recollection of his (or maybe someone else's... or maybe even nobody's) life.

Take the first entry of the book for example. Abortion.

There's no better way to grab your audience's attention than by immediately talking about something so personal and even taboo in the opening phase. In a way, the entire book seems like putting together a puzzle of Peek's life, and the first piece he gives you is so emotionally charged that it sets a very personal mood that helps to veritably break the ice between you and him. The rest of the book almost feels comfortable to read after starting with such a private entry.

Peek succeeded in holding my attention for the entirety of the book, and started up on a really strong note in that way with this entry.

Meeting the Lucky Ones...

2008-11-02T14:16:00.000-08:00

At first I was skeptical to meet the Lucky Ones, because when I get to a website and I'm not exactly sure what its primary motives are for existing, I naturally do a little probing as I was trained by hackthissite.com... Anyway I did a minuscule amount of looking around and quickly found out that it was all an elaborate backhanded marketing move to promote the Mercury Mariner among a younger demographic than is typically associated with Mercury's. And guess what! Apparently, it worked.. According to the company in charge of being paid to make it work.

Anyway... All of this aside, my first impression of the site was already influenced by the fact that it was part of a marketing campaign. Greeted with an atypical and unclassifiable intro song in 6/8, it's damn near impossible to have any kind of assumptions about this piece being anything even comparable to normal. Watching the first few episodes, there was a clear mood of each clip. Most of Sharon's story is somber with moral and commercial undertones, while Jesper and Ashley's whole Cucumber ordeal is slightly humorous but at the same time a little sad, because you can see the helplessness of both of them to control the situation after a large misunderstanding.

As a whole, the entire MTLO piece could be strung together with the clips back to back (after being reorganized chronologically within each episode) to make one complete, standalone episode of a tv show. In class I compared it to a sitcom, because of the form of how there is conflict created in the first clip that you watch, and each of the characters have their various interactions with each other, or in estelle's case (the comic relief of the tension in each episode) interactions with goldfish. In the end, there is a certain amount of closure with each conflict: Bill dies, Frank doesn't change despite his only friend's death, Stella and Alice are freed of Alan's questionable demeanor, Jesper buys Ashley a replacement frog, Mike reunites with his family, and Sharon contemplates returning to graduate school.

Overall, I enjoyed Meet the Lucky Ones. Even though it was all an ad to try to get me to buy a Mercury, although I'm not sure why this would ever convince anyone to buy one.

Haloween: A Sociological Study

2008-11-02T14:02:00.000-08:00

A holiday where you can be someone completely different, in many more ways than one. For a college student, it means a river of alternative personalities and appearances; shy? You don't have to be. Ugly? Nobody thinks you are anymore. Not here. Not tonight. Bad mood? That can be cured in one swoop, a tongue full or a mouthful. On Halloween, anyone who wants to be a doctor can be a doctor. It's the one time of year that you can "prescribe someone 50 cc's of Cap'n, stat".

For some, it's just an excuse to go overboard. Some people need that excuse to push themselves to the limit and then some. There are a select few that wouldn't mind destroying their body every weekend, and this is just a socially acceptable outlet for them to indulge, to overdo, and to obliterate notions of moderation.

With no ciestas, universal health care and such an extreme arrogance for the rest of the world, Americans would die for holidays like this. Americans require times designated for indifference and neglect for their own well being in favor of relaxation, shortsightedness and ultimately, endorphins.

If you think there's a message here.. You're wrong. I'm just rambling.

There's no words there?

2008-10-31T10:09:00.000-07:00

So we haven't had a fun post in a while. This is due largely in part to us having to blog about 26 Lies and now "Meet the Lucky Ones". So I figured some fun was in order. And who is more fun than Bill O'Reilly I ask you?

So in my various youtube adventures I come across this gem. I'm not going to embed it because its more of just the backstory for the real video posted below. But the gist is that Bill O'Reilly is a jerk. He flips out at his crew because he couldn't read "play us out" on the prompter. Guys really got a temporment issue. Warning: Coarse Language. Always wanted to say that. No one uses the word coarse to discribe language anymore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tJjNVVwRCY

But then the real fun comes when you add techno beats and make it a remix! Very catchy.

I laughed anyway.

After I wrote this I realized its Halloween today and I could have done a very cool and scary post and saved this post for later when I really had nothing. Oh well. If I post about Halloween in the middle of November, its because I'm using my free Halloween topic idea then. No way I'm wasteing it.

Understanding "Understanding"

2008-10-30T06:58:00.000-07:00

So this blog post happens to be about the section "Understanding" in 26 Lies. Seems like an easy task right? I mean, all there is in this part is a set of eyes. Albeit sad eyes, but still no words. So how hard could it be? Turns out pretty hard, because its way easier to comment on something when it has words. Besides describing how something physically looks, what else are you going to say about a picture? And don't give me that "a picture is worth a thousand words" stuff. I will believe that when I see a thousand words about a picture. And I haven't yet. But anyway, understanding. I think we are probably led to believe that these are "understanding" eyes because of the title. In this sense I mean they under the same category when people say someone has caring eyes, sympathetic eyes, compassionate eyes, kindly eyes, and considerate eyes. It means you look upon someone with all those adjectives in your face. Apparently something like 80% of our non verbal communication comes from our eyes. I guess then it is appropriate then if you wanted to portray some emotion with some part of the human body, it would be the eyes. As far as what we are understanding, I haven't the slightest idea. It could be one of any number of things. The book is about so much, and the reader doesn't understand a whole lot throughout the book anyway, that this passage about understanding could mean we are trying to understand thousands of possibilities of things. So the point of "Understanding" is that we don't understand it. How ironic.

A much needed update..

2008-10-27T07:37:00.000-07:00

So you may have noticed that I haven't posted anything for a while now.. So here are a few things going on in my life that you don't necessarily have to care about......

WARNING: IF BORED EASILY BY BLOGS IN WHICH PEOPLE JUST COMPLAIN ABOUT HOW "ROUGH" THEY HAVE IT, STOP READING NOW.

- I had gastroenteritis. Yeah. I was one of those kids. I'm always one of those kids.
- I keep getting random packages in the mail from my parents. One was a nice care package from my mom including a whole bunch of healthy-type snack foods like granola, etc. Another, however was a bit more.. Shall we say.. Interesting. It included a pair of black socks, 3 packets of hot cocoa mix, and a Gamecube controller. Here's the kicker. I don't own a Gamecube, nor have I ever. Yeah. Chew on that for a while.
- I'm damn near failing every class because I'm so lazy, and I'm doing everything I can to prevent it but there's something about me that always draws me away from things I should be doing to things I'd rather be doing, ie. talking on the phone with friends from home, ordering ribs and watching football with my roommates, etc. Dr. Parent.. Are you reading this? Consider it a public, blog-style S.O.S.
- I don't give a shit who wins the World Series. The Yankees aren't in it.
- I need to make up lost ground on this whole blog tally thing.. Stand by for copious posting.

BEN PEEK! I'm calling you out!

2008-10-23T10:06:00.000-07:00

I believe that the Understanding sections represent Ben's understanding that Geraldine is actually gone. I don't think it is entirely clear from the first picture. All you can tell is that Ben is looking at something with an emotion, along the lines, of sadness. Once you see the second picture, however, you can see he is looking at an impression in his bed next to him. Presumably that is the spot where G slept and he sees the absence realizing she is no longer there. That is just what I get from it at any rate.

Also my title is trying to get the attention of Ben if he is reading these. I don't know what to do once I have that attention. Nice book though. Could you e-sign my copy by commenting on this post?

Oh I'm star struck

Dr. Benjamin Peek

2008-10-21T17:55:00.000-07:00

I was a huge fan of Twenty-Six Lies/ One Truth. So much so I had already read A-M way back in August when I first picked up my school books. I just started reading and couldn't put it down. I decided to re-read it so I would be able to comment on the book better in class.

The assignment for the first section was to write about our favorite entry, then go back, re-read it, and write some more on it. This is what I wrote

"My favorite entry is the one where Ben listens to a 13 year old girl's problems and is surprised that his friends think it is a bad thing. I am trying to remember what letter/chapter it was in. Regardless I was a fan of how he brings up the idea of people's perceptions and how they can stop someone from acting to do something good rather then being afraid of implied 'dangers'"

the second part went like this

"So turns out that this was in the E section and called Ethics. It is interesting because Ben is commenting on an ethical view people have and this view cold have kept someone from helping this girl. Ben's voice really comes through when he says "It had never occurred to me that I could be in danger, just for listening to a thirteen year old girl."

Viewing the Ethics section with the hindsight of reading the L section and Sixteen we certainly are left with a lot to wonder. Is Ben a pedophile? Is he trying to justify it with his descriptions of teen sex idols? Is it a societal standard? Is he implying we should act on our sexuality and desires no matter what they are? Should we judge him harshly? Why did he even include those facts in his book? Are they really a big enough part of him to be included in an autobiography? Is this an autobiography? Was any of this real?

I don't think I will get an answer to any of those questions and if Ben is really reading this then I suspect he will leave me to wonder as it adds to the artistic merit and interpretation of the work. Or something like that.

I already read the rest of the book and have been trying to keep it special for those who haven't gotten to the end just yet. I really interacted with the book. A few times toward the end I felt like I had been punched in the gut and had to walk away. Once I even threw my copy across my room in protest.

DUDE, Ben Peek reads out blogs.

2008-10-20T13:22:00.000-07:00

Today I discovered Ben Peek reads our blogs (or did, maybe he still will because we have yet to discuss the end of the book). It was a very surreal moment when I found out. Kind of humbling as well. I mean, how often have you wanted to talk to the author about anything and everything in thier book? Reading his blog I found out he actually posted some of our responses on his blog. It looks like some of us in the class weren't expecting that, because some of the posts aren't exactly kind to the novel or to the author. I wonder to what level of offense (if any) he takes to that. I mean, I know not everyone can like a book and everyone is entitled to thier own opinions and all that jazz but if I worked hard on a book and thought it was good and worth publishing, I would be a little bias and think that it is a damn good book right? Then when people say otherwise, I would naturally get offended. But maybe real authors have learned to get over this and just ignore the critics, no matter what.

This makes me feel really stupid about my past obligitory 26 Lies post, because looking back on it now it was just something to do quick and dirty to get the requirement done so I could get on with my yucks and youtube videos. But now knowing he actually took a look at them and probably thought "Wow this kid has nothing intelligable to say or contribute to the discussion of my book" makes me. It's cool how simply the author outside the class knowing about our blogs vindicates these posts. Blog posts I would have otherwise not cared about now become meanful and worth returning too. Interesting how that works.

Anyway, thought it was cool the author was reading our blogs. Hi Ben Peek.

Obligatory Post about 26 Lies/One Truth before we get back to showing you videos because apparently that's all you want from us.

2008-10-19T16:42:00.000-07:00

So in this post, I expand upon the little passage I wrote in class about the novel "26 Lies/One Truth". My in class post went a little something like this:

My favorite passage (or passages in this case) were the ones about different Australian or international writers who had written fiction under the guise of it being non-fiction. These authors were usually praised for their amazing work, like one got the Australian writers award or something to that extent. But then it was discovered that they "lied" and the works are pure fiction and then people get angry at them and their reputation is ruined.

Then the second one went a little something like this:

So it turns out one of these authors is Laura Albert, who wrote about a person J.T. LeRoy who wasn't really her. Another was Helen Demidenko, who wrote about her Ukrainian heritage, even though she wasn't Ukrainian.

Since writing these two in class, I have also discovered authors such as Konrad Kujau, Norma Khouri, and Rahila Khan (apparently people with "K" last names are more likely to behave this way). I'm sure there are more in the novel too, I just haven't specifically found them. I know there are a lot. I liked these and they stuck out in my mind because they seem to be an important and integral part of the story, It's something connected, that is mentioned a lot, and it seems to me like all these stories will wrap up and make some grand and poignant point at the end. They are important, seem interesting, and are throughout the book, so that's why I liked these passages in "26 Lies/One Truth".

YOU WANT SOME DAMN VIDEOS!

2008-10-18T11:03:00.000-07:00

This post is only for the person or persons who wanted to see more funny videos on our blog. I was thinking of cutting back on the videos but it seems our blog's role lately is to find everyone precious gems of the internet. So I will reach into my bag of tricks to pull forth some videos worth a view or two.

Now I am sure you are all familiar with or have at least heard Aha's one hit wonder "Take On Me." I bet some of you are less familiar with the music video for the song. It is a pretty good as far as 80's music videos go. Although it has very little to do with anything. I will post it now for reference. Feel free to skip to the second video if you are familiar with the video already.

Now I only posted that to familiarize you with the following video. Some guys took the classic song and wrote a "Literal Version" based on the events in the video. If you are anything like me you will wish that this is actually what the song was.

Finally I give you this bonus video that is a quickie. But oh so funny.

Many LOLz

2008-10-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you guys, but I love comics. I remember when I was little reading Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side and loved every minute of it. Now I have grown up and I thought it was appropriate for a "Digital Literature" blog (if that's even what we are) to feature a digital comic. Get it? We are going with a theme of moving from paper literature to digital literature? I am connecting this to the class! I'm really reaching...?

At any rate, on of my favorite web comics without a doubt is xkcd. Its usually pretty hilarious, although some days you kind of have to be more of a geek to get some of the references. As the site says they are: "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.". We have a lot of language in our class, and certainly a lot of sarcasm, but I hope no romance, and probably no math, so I guess it relates to everyone in the class so, by this logic, everyone should like it. Here are a few of my personal favorites:

For the romance category. Plus Parent wanted us to be edgy and include porn and stuff. At least, that's what I think he said.

For the language category. This theory has never failed me.

For the sarcasm category. But this shouldn't be sarcastic. Everyone should do this. Seriously. You don't know how many morons frequent youtube. Example:

There ya go. Just go on youtube now if you don't believe me. Anything even slightly debatable has some idiots ranting in the comment section.

For the math section. In looking for good comics for this post, I found out a lot of the math ones aren't that funny unless you really like math and understand it. So this has a graph and numbers, I'm sure that's enough math for most of you. Especially you English Major types.

I'm Posting Pornography Richard. Try And Stop Me!

2008-10-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

We are in a position to do whatever we want on our blogs. What are you going to do? Not vote for us? Well it is time we got edgy. So I'm breaking the one cardinal rule set by our professor and posting pornography.

Ok so it isn't exactly porn. It is PG Porn. For people who love everything about porn, except the sex! This is the first episode starring Nathan Fillion (of Firefly and Dr.Horrible fame) and Aria Giovanni (of actual porn fame.) I must remind you that Nathan Fillion is a credible Hollywood actor.

There are at least 4 other episodes already in the works starring semi-well known male actors and infamous female porn stars. One being a twisted take on Charles Schultz's Peanuts, bawdily titled Peanus

PG Porn is the brainchild of James Gunn who wrote and directed the Scooby Doo movie and Slither. He says this to justify the project.

How many times have you been watching a great porn film – you're really enjoying the story, the acting, the cinematography – when, all of the sudden, they ruin everything with PEOPLE HAVING SEX?

A bunch of times, right?

That's why I, along with my brothers Brian and Sean, have created JAMES GUNN'S PG-PORN. It's pornography everyone can enjoy, not just perverts. You and your grandmother, for instance, could sit down together and enjoy some nice clean smut.

Also to prove how ridiculous the premise of this series is. The guy who is scoring the terribly generic porn music is Tyler Bates who is responsible for the scoring of such big movies as 300, Dawn of the Dead, and the upcoming Watchmen movie.

WARNING: Be advised it gets extremely close to porn and is best viewed in the safety of your dorm/office. It is also quite funny and only meant for comedic effect. The views and opinions in the video are not held by the bloggers of Royal With Cheese

Getting Political

2008-10-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

So a few classes ago Dr. Parent tried to explain why we are doing so well. The truth is, we ourselves don't really know, we kind of just blog for whatever reason we feel like at the time. But that all changes now. In an effort to become more "diverse" and "pander to all you blog voters who need another reason to vote for us again" I have decided to do something crazy and controversial that hasn't been done yet on these blogs.

Talk about politics.

It seems like a great solution right? I mean in class Rich (can I call him that?) said himself how there's this blog with over a millions views a day and if you write something slightly provocative then you can get on the main page. So talking about politics seems like a real draw in this blogging world, and maybe it will prove to you guys we are a nice diverse bunch of bloggers who are committed to change and ready for leadership on day one and....wait a sec.

But seriously folks.

I am not a fan of Sarah Palin and, quite frankly, I don't see how anyone could be. She is probably the worst vice presidential candidate in the history of vice presidential candidates. I am convinced her pick was purely to buy voters because she really has no other draw. She has very little experience (with anything) and likes to hunt wolfs from helicopters. She is hypocritical with her whole deal about that pregnant daughter of hers and wanting abstinence only education. She is not very well spoken and, quite frankly, I don't like listening to her with that terrible accent. She's got really no idea whats going on in the McCain campaign and looked like a fool in that Katie Couric interview. The best thing she's got going is she looks like Tina Fey, and Fey's portrayal of her is dead on. I think it's funny because she doesn't have to try to hard to get people to laugh at her, Sarah Palin is funny by herself and provides most of the material. A lot of what Fey says is very close to what Palin herself actually says. So without further ado, here is a funny SNL skit about the VP debate.

I hope that was political enough for you all, because odds are I won't be doing this again. Its too hard being so serious.

MY favorite Alice.

2008-10-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

So my favorite inanimate Alice story is the Third one, despite the cheesy games you have to play. It is the most serious and morose. I think the general trend is that they get longer and more serious. The fourth one was more serious in the fact that she herself was in danger and could have died. But I feel that the story kind of got ruined in the fourth when she said she "could have" died. If they left it up to suspense and just let it play out, I might have liked the fourth better. The third has the action and seriousness that made it enjoyable to watch and made you want to keep watching. Despite the stupid doll game you had to do. The idea that dolls can get you past armed guards is crazy, but you kind of just play along. The first one was good, and I liked, just not as much as the third. Then in the second one you kind of knew that her parents would come back and the problem would be resolved. But the problem was not resolved in the third one. Maybe that's what I liked about it, the cliffhanger ending. But then it didn't tell you in the fourth exactly what happened, so I was slightly disappointed. All in all they were pretty good. certainly not the worst story things I've seen online.

My Favorite Alice

2008-10-09T12:21:00.000-07:00

I was kind of upset that I just spent an hour plus for what seems to be nothing more then a giant commercial for the creators to force their stori.es product on me. Viral Marketing isn't always interesting I guess.

I pick the first episode of Inanimate Alice as my favorite because I don't think any other episode quite matched the tension. I liked when things were going really fast and it got confusing and frantic and fun. Also it didn't waste 30 minutes of my day which was a plus. Screw you episode 4.

I didn't really like it when they got all "gamey." I mean the games weren't exactly fun, they kind of distracted me, and they felt hokey. It got too involved and too complex.

Also listening to the sounds was like watching a David Lynch movie. I don't know if anyone knows what I'm talking about.

Please don't make 10 of these

Things going on behind the curtain

2008-10-08T21:28:00.001-07:00

I feel like Alice falling through the looking glass when I partake of my new glass behind the the tapestry I fashioned into a curtain.
"This caligraphy marker is dope"
Creativity is embraced behind the curtain.
"Could you imagine being fluent in chinese? that would be creepy"
Chinese is discouraged.
WE LISTEN TO RAP. and the bass bumps and bumps and bumps.
Air pressure changes when we open the window or door, let alone turn the fan on. Let's just get one thing straight, I am not the owner of the red "coming out tee-shirt." Jeff is. He is the one that brought it home he must have won it somehow then tried to frame me because you feel scared. It's ok jeff!

Without much further ado...

2008-10-08T19:59:00.000-07:00

Sorry so late, guys. I'm still having difficulties incorporating my commentary into the video because apparently Vista doesn't have a movie maker. Tech support from anyone would be much appreciated.

Are You Man Enough?.....Or Woman?

2008-10-07T12:35:00.000-07:00

We are all sitting in class right now talking about blogs. So instead of doing that go here Actually it would be more fun to go home and see your own personal computer's history.

This program looks at your browser history and determines mathematically if you are a male or female. It is a neat little thing to see if you line up with standard gender roles.

Don't worry it doesn't go into your computer and put adware on or something like that.

Post your percentages after. It goes a little slow on Internet Explorer so give it time.

In case you were wondering

I am 99% male
1% female.

I was actually surprised

I want ___ and candy. But mostly candy.

2008-10-05T11:22:00.000-07:00

You know the saying you shouldn't go shopping when you are hungry? I think the same goes for blogging. I am trying to think of a great blog post, but all I can do is sit here and look at the fun dip on my desk or the reeses in our common room. So why not write about it, if i can't stop thinking about it anyway. So candy. It is generally made to be very tasty, yet there is a lot of controversy over which candy is good and which is not. I am going to go through my personal favorites, and some I can't stand.

First, any and all Wonka products. That book was not lying, everything is delicious. I don't think they make any bad candy. Nerds, gobstoppers, pixy stix, runts, laffy taffy, sweet tarts, and my favorite, fun dip. They all were excellent, and all had many different colors of sugar.

Milky Way was one of my favorite bars. It was smooth and creamy and melted in your mouth. There was just enough of the caramel to nougat ratio to make it appealing. For example, 3 Musketeers has a 100:0 ratio of nougat to caramel, and they really aren't that good. You needed both the caramel and nougat, and enough of both.

Twix. Whoever thought if this was a very smart person. "I know, I will combine a cookie and a candy bar". The result is a crispy but not too crunchy mix of some sort of cookie like thing with some caramel on top covered in chocolate. It is tasty and is sort of like the other side of Milky Way, if they were crispy instead of smooth.

M&M's, I am convinced, are some of the best candy on the face of the planet. I don't care of that "they melt in your mouth not in your hand" deal is a crock, they still are wonderful. I had a friend once who said each color of M&M tasted different and that he could taste the difference. Then he proceeded to guess each the color of each one he was eating. I have no idea how he did it, but it proves M&M's aren't just tasty, they are a fun party game.

100 grand's are severely underrated, albeit not worth 100 grand. But they are quite chewy and decedent and worth mentioning here.

Candy Corn is a classic, and I remembered it just because it's getting close to Halloween. They have a taste that is very distinct and different from all other candy. Kind of tastes like maple sugar candy without the maple, if that makes any sense.

Sour Patch kids/Warheads were what I ate when I needed my sour fix. SPK's were good because they were a little sour but then you were rewarded with a nice sweet gummy candy. Warhead were just pure soury pain. But you loved them and needed to eat like 3 in a minute to prove that little warning label wrong.

Thats the short list of my favorite candies. I consider myself pretty open minded when it comes to trying new candy, but some are just aweful. Like these.

Take 5. Like with anything, just because 2 or more things are good separate, doesn't mean they will be good together. Like women and hot dog eating contests. Both really cool separately, but I just don't want to watch women stuff themselves with big hot dogs. But that's just me. Anyway Take 5 goes as far as to put a pretzel into a candy bar. What a bad idea.

Necco Wafers shouldn't even be classified as candy. They are more like thin flavored Tums pills. And they aren't even good flavors either, you would think they would spring for some watermelon or something. Finding these in your Halloween candy was the equivalent of getting socks for Christmas.

Almond Joy's also weren't too good. Didn't they have some coconut in there too? And the chocolate wasn't nearly good enough to make up for the poor nut taste you would get. It was just a bad experience.

Finally, those circus peanut things. They don't even warrant discussion.

Final Draft Digital Story!!!

2008-10-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

Final Draft of Digital Story.

So here it is. Have barrels of fun.

It's close to midnight, and something evil is lurking in the dark.

2008-10-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

So, when I am having a writers block, the first thing I usually do is go to youtube or wikipedia. Great practices, I know. Its probably more for procrastination purposes than to actually get ideas, but on occasion it actually works. Take today. I didn't know what to write on this blog, so I perused my "Favorites" section on youtube. And lo and behold what did I find? Prisoners doing "Thriller". When I first saw this a few things crossed my mind. A) How did they get the idea for this? I mean, I know you are bored in prison, but how does recreating a MJ music video become the first thing you want to do? B) How did they organize/get permission for this? I always pictured prison from "The Shawshank Redemption", and those people did not seem like they would be up for any sort of singing and dancing. If your the one guy who thought of this, do you just go around asking people if they want to sing and dance in a music video? That seems grounds for getting beaten. Even if everyone was up for it (and apparently something like 100 of these inmates were) how do you convince the guards to let you do this? It must seem like the most far fetched idea ever. But maybe the guards wanted some entertainment? Although it seemed to be organized and choreographed too well to just be something the guards wanted for entertainment. They must have been involved I think. At any rate, it is done quite well and it worth watching (plus, who doesn't love the song "Thriller"? Everyone does.).

I'm not sure if this gives me much more or significantly less faith in our rehabilitation system.

I also hope someone just mindlessly watches the youtube video and doesn't read the post and thinks this is my digital story.

It Has Been Done-D.S

2008-10-03T16:57:00.000-07:00

This is my finished copy. I hope people are able derive enjoyment from it

Also I wish someone else would post to break up my posts from one another

I'm Taking Back Irony!

2008-10-01T17:13:00.000-07:00

Irony is no doubt English's most fickle bitch. It is a pretty hard concept to grasp correctly and everyone screws it up now and again, myself included. But what I'm talking about here is the gross misuse of the word. People wearing hats ironically? People liking ironic music? What has become of the word that was once held as the holy grail of literature?

I think the root of the problem can be traced back to Alanis Morissette. In her 1995 hit album, Jagged Little Pill, a song was released entitled Ironic. Now the crazy little thing about that song is that none of the events described are actually ironic. Rain on your wedding day? That isn't ironic, just shitty luck. But wait don't discredit it just yet; a song that is entitled Ironic that doesn't actually contain any irony is fundamentally ironic! Canadians are tricky like that. It was probably the greatest literary joke of the 20th century. But this witty statement was lost as millions listened to the song and thought "...yeah. Yeah! Good advice you didn't take is ironic"

So there we were in 1995. Our world's perception had been forever changed. Many people tried to stand up and stop the misconception right then and there but they were silenced by Morissette's platinum selling record and rhythmic melodies. The battle had been lost. Irony would never be the same. Then in the new millennium an enemy of irony arose. His name was Ashton Kutcher. He would deliver the blow that would break irony's back.

Kutcher was different from Morissette in that he intentionally went out of his way to attack irony. Kutcher began to sport trucker hats in what was considered an "ironic manner." What the fuck did that even mean? I didn't know enough about Ashton Kutcher to believe that his hat wearing was ironic, nor did I care. Instead of ignoring it like everyone should have kids picked up on the fad and blew it out of proportion. Ironic apparel made its move from the head to the rest of the clothing family. Some thought it clever to wear Carebears or Darkwing Duck shirts "to make an ironic fashion statement". The flaw in that plan was that no one knew enough about the wearer to realize that by wearing a My Little Pony shirt they were actually making a bold declaration. Instead one would assume they are fans of My Little Pony which would be pretty cool, rather they seemed like pretentious asshats instead. Was that the irony of the situation?

Today we stand poised to lose the very definition of irony. Misuse of the word runs rampant to the point where public misconception could influence understanding in the future. Please do what you can to save this dieing word.

Things I Found On My Camera: A Historical Journey!

2008-09-30T12:01:00.000-07:00

Edit: I'm sorry that this was the image that youtube grabbed to promote the video. It was not a conscious decision on my part.

So funny story. I just assumed that my macbook had imovie. Well I'm new to this whole apple computer thing and it turns out I have to buy it. So efff that esss.

Went to Waterman. They only have imovie HD which has an entire different setup then imovie. My previously saved files wouldn't upload so I had to start another. I couldn't even flip my photos around. So here is what I did in imovie HD and I hope to get imovie soon so I can do it better.

Now about my movie. I have no real direction but I'm focusing on my need to preserve my life. I do this through a camera sometimes. So I went through all the saved files on my camera and pulled out some significant photos. The only problem is I don't know how to end it. I don't really know enough about myself to analyze my life anyway. I think I might keep running with this idea of focusing on my scary obsession with never losing past events or information. I could explore how this obsession sometimes keeps me stuck in the past rather then focusing on the future. But maybe I'll scrap the whole thing and do something else.

First Draft Digital Story

2008-09-29T20:02:00.001-07:00

So we have to post the beginnings of our digital story. Let me first and foremost apologize. I had absolutly no idea the direction I was going with this. Really, none whatsoever. One day for class we just needed 10 pictures, so I got ten arbitrary pictures with little correlation to one another. Then we needed to make a story, so I kind of just threw this together. It is, of course, sans a voice over, but it does have some preliminary sound effects and fun transitions. So let your imaginations run wild over what this story could be. Your guess is as good as mine.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

2008-09-25T14:37:00.000-07:00

This is a quick post to try and turn you guys on to something that is very, very cool.

It is a musical written by Joss Whedon, of Buffy the Vampire and Firefly fame, during the writer's strike as a side project. It stars Neil Patrick Harris, of Harold and Kumar and Doogie Howser fame. Not into musicals? Don't worry this one breaks the mold and isn't anything like Rent or Sound of Music

The best part of the package is that the damn thing is free to watch. I implore you to give it a chance. It is 45 minutes in total but is broken up into three 13-ish minute acts. The first 3 minutes are a little slow but it picks up in a strong way and really rewards a full viewing; if not multiple.

Brology 101

2008-09-24T19:57:00.000-07:00

I would like to assume the role of a professor at this fine university and give you all a crash course on Brology, the study of Bros.

Course Goals:
College campuses are teeming with these bros. Currently I live among them studying their habits. Perhaps some of you do as well. By the end of this course I hope that you are able to identify a bro in everyday life and to do with that information what you wish.

Instructor's Note: This is a semi-lengthy read but with valuable info. Go at your own pace or simply drop out now. Or just enjoy the videos.

Required Viewing:

Bro Rape: A Newsline Investigative Report
(Perhaps Not Very Appropriate: This is Your Warning!)

Brohemian Rhapsody

Required Reading:

A Bro Treaty: Bro, You're A God Among Bros

Suggested and Further Reading:

Dane Cook Parlays New Burger King Menu Item Into Hour-Long HBO Special

Fight On Bros!

Ho Comes Before Bro

Let's start by defining some terms. What is a bro exactly? Well a bro is commonly a white male between the ages of 18-26. Bro Culture is often associated with an affinity to party and a very strong sense of brotherhood. That is why most bros will be found in or around frat houses. An important distinction to make is that not all bros belong to fraternities.

How to Identify a Bro:

Bros are characterized by wearing their hat backwards, popping their collars, driving jacked-up trucks, and often they like to scream about getting shwasted or laid.

Let us now look at visual documentation of the bro to further help you in your identification.

Potential Dangers: Now a bro may sound harmless, and for the most part they are. But there are a few things you might want to look out for. Bros are often times annoying. They are the people who will wake you up at 2 in the morning, on a school night, screaming down the staircase to their bros three floors below. They are simple creatures following a few basic instincts (getting belligerently drunk and rubbing their genitalia against everything.) If you are not one of their bros and you wind up between them and their goals you run the risk of coming into serious harm.

Pros?: Not everything about a bro is terrible. Perhaps using knowledge learned in this course you will choose to seek out a bro and befriend him. They are an excellent contact in finding raging parties and you may want to take advantage of that. But a warning is to be had here. If you act too friendly you run the risk of taking on traits of the bro until one day you finally become one.

Glossary of Terms:

Dude-Bros have taken on a second way of identifying someone they are talking to. Often this term is used to talk to someone who isn't their bro.

Chill-A secondary drive of the bro. Bros constantly want to chill and will seek the path of least resistance to do so. They will often say this word to calm a situation that is rising in tension.

High-Five- This is a gesture bros practice with other bros. They often will slap palms together in celebration of something particularity exciting.

"Pound that shit"- Much like the high-five sometimes a bro will ask another bro to "Pound it." This is seen as two fists making contact on the knuckles. This is used only in special occasions like getting laid or scoring weed.

Wingman- When a bro goes clubbing they often bring a second bro with them for assistance. Often a bro will find a hot girl who has a less attractive friend with her. The wingman's duty is to engage and occupy the ugly friend so his bro can score with the hottie. It is a complicated procedure filled with difficult rules of right of way. Much like fencing.

"Shit was so cash"- A common way a bro will describe something. For example: "Hey Johnny did you see Bill kill that keg?" "Yeah shit was so cash."

Bros in Popular Culture:

In 2007 at the University of Florida Andrew Meyer, a senior at the college, attended a forum featuring current U.S Senator and former presidential hopeful John Kerry. Meyer never really asked a question but instead begin to indite Kerry thus breaking the forum proceedings. He began to be escorted by security but resisted quite strongly. The threat of force was made and Meyer freaked out. He then uttered the infamous "Don't tase me, bro!" This incident brings up questions of liberties and freedoms in America and whether or not Meyer's were breached. However, it is commonly accepted that he deserved whatever was coming to him for saying bro.

Many believe that in 2008 the primary reasoning behind electing Obama over Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Nominee was what the bros call "Bros before Hos."

I hope you have learned enough about bros in order to identify their behavior and appearance. This may prove to be an invaluable skill later in life. Remember that your homework is to read chapter 5 in Spielvogel's Western Tribes. Next class we will be discussing hipsters. Thanks for reading.

Weeeee are the Champions

2008-09-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

Thank You To Everyone Who Voted For Us!

2008-09-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

Your checks are in the mail

I always do the titles last.

2008-09-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

Alright, so it seems to me I have been lacking in quality blog posts. After the first vote I was seeing all these "Royale with Cheese" votes and I was thinking to myself "Man, I haven't done anything substantial for this blog and we are still winning" (I think, I didn't tally up the votes. For the sake of argument lets assume we are). So after thinking for a bit I could potentially be a total freeloader and just reap the rewards of my partners awesome blog posts, I decided I would just have to create an equally fun and amusing post. So here we go.

So far we have covered the spectrum of our old favorite movies, and our old (or, that is, apparently still current) favorite music, so what do we have left? Old TV shows of course! Who doesn't love to reminisce about shows of old. Or the 90's in this case. Here are some of my favorites in no particular order. There are a lot, so I comment more on some than others.

Recess

I always wanted my school to be like that. I wanted to be TJ Detweiler. To pull the kind of stuff he did and walk away trouble free was amazing to me. I wondered why my school wasn't run by a quasi-monarchical 5th grader. Then I remembered, because we didn't have 5 story fortresses and secret underground tire lairs at our disposal. That's why.

Captain Planet

Protecting the environment has never been so cool. With his flat-topped mullet-esque hair thing going on, I would listen to that man when he talked. Even if the criminal masterminds he fought were a little odd, (all they wanted was to ruin the environment, not power or to rule the world...) they were still scary enough looking to warrant me getting pumped up when Captain Planet fought them. Also, it's been said hundreds of times, but it's worth repeating, what the hell does heart do? No one cares about heart, and it is a stupid useless power. "Instill love and passion into people and communicate telepathically with animals" was technically what it did, which is really just a case in point for it being a stupid useless power.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Possibly one of the coolest crime fighting teams ever. With their hip jargon like "Dude" and "whoa brahhhh" and "Pizza!" they really knew how to connect with the kids of the time. They loved to party, eat, hang out with some hot broad, learn from a giant rat, and occasionally destroyed enemies using karate and swords and what not. It really hard to top them in terms of being bad ass. This itself proves it:

You're a turkey man, a total turkey.

Pokemon

No one will admit they watched it. But everyone did. You know it. You even won't admit to yourself you know the original 150 pokemon (when it got into the like 400-500 range you knew that was bs). But seriously, if one of your friends little brothers was playing and asked you what pokemon something was, you would totally play it off like you had no idea. But you knew. You always knew that was an eevee and it evolved with 4 different stones. But now that built up knowledge of every pokemon and every secret in the first couple if game boy games is now totally useless. Oh well.

Doug

A classic. I think it was partially because we all knew we were cooler than Doug. Let's face it, Porkchop was much cooler. Doug was a nice guy and all, but kind of a wimp, and generally unlucky. For example, to my knowledge he never got with Patty Mayonaise and he in fact collapsed her house once throwing stones at it. Poor lovesick guy. He also wore a sweatervest in like the 5th grade. At least he had awesome alter-egos like Quailman. I always wondered if i was supposed to catch some sort of subtle racial undertone with all the characters being drastically different colors, but none of them black. I always wondered if there was some meaning to all that, or if the animators just felt like messing around. I'll probably never know.

Transformers

I watched them before the movie. I even saw the original movie. 1986 cartoon movie. I'm glad liking Transformers became cool again when Megan Fox is involved, because now I can wear my autobots shirt and not get laughed at. Much.

Saved by the Bell

If we were cool and lived in California, our lives would be like the kids from Saved by the Bell. The kids could do no wrong, Zack was wicked cool, AC Slater (along with having a sick name) was wicked jacked, Kelly was pretty, Jessie was like the president of everything, Lisa was a hip fashion designer, and Screech was a genius. Add them all together and you get a dream team for mayhem and mischeif and learning valuble life lessons. One of my favorite life lessons was don't take pills that make you stay awake, or you literally go insane. Check it out:

Best part is I believe those were caffine pills. Aren't those legal?

Cliff Notes Version of the rest because this is getting long:

Whose Line is it Anyway-I think it spanned into the 2000's, but its worth mentioning since it was one of the best sketch comedy shows ever.
Power Rangers-Nothing is funnier than dubbed over Japanese shows with over exaggerated fighting moves.
Sonic-Guy was wicked fast and had a pal Tails who could fly. Fun fact: Voiced by Steve Urkel.
Alvin and the Chipmunks- Set tempo to "fast" and have fun.
Rugrats-Way too smart to be normal babies. Why could Angelica hear both them an adults?
Full House- Mary Kate and Ashley play one person. John Stamos is the man.
Bill Nye-I learned a lot and it had a sweet theme song.
Fresh Prince of Bell-Air-Now this is a story all about how...
Rocket Power-Kids could do every extreme sport imaginable, but couldn't figure out how to deal with real life issues, like school.
Biker Mice from Mars-Bonus points if you even know this one...

Yep, that's it. Don't think I missed any. And as the title suggests, I do titles last and I couldn't think of something clever enough. So that explains that.

An Ode to Barry Manilow

2008-09-17T12:46:00.002-07:00

Laugh if you must but I am a fan of Barry Manilow. Affectionately deemed a "Fanilow."
Many would have you think Barry Manilow is terrible. But I'm throwing off the shackles of tyranny.
I'm afraid no longer. I will shout it from the hills, rooftops, and water tower. I love Manilow.
It may be because I'm actually a middle aged housewife. Or perhaps it is because I like terrible music.
But don't you judge me. You haven't been there. His lyrics speak to me. Straight to my heart.
They picked me up from my lowest point and straightened my life out. I dare say it made me a better person.
Where were you the first time you heard "Copacobana"? Didn't it rock you to your core? No, probably not.
Have you ever been in love with a girl named Mandy just to put the song "Mandy" on loop for three days?
He writes the songs that make the whole world sing, people. Who else could possibly make such a claim and be 100% correct?
So next time you hear the Manilow belting one out. Stop and think. Hey, there is at least one person who likes this.

Or you could listen to something cool like Led Zeppelin or Queen, I guess.

Help, I'm Trapped in my Childhood!

2008-09-17T12:46:00.001-07:00

So let's talk about movies we watched as children. I bring this up because recently I had a weird urge to watch Babe again. So I went about legally *ahemcough* acquiring a copy online for my viewing pleasure. I really just wanted to see the scene where the old farmer sings and dances to make the pig feel better, it brings a tear to my eye every time.

Re-watching Babe opened the metaphoric floodgates for me to go on a crusade to rediscover lost gems of my childhood. So now I present to you a short list of great childhood movies. A criterion if you will.

I don't actually expect people to read beyond this point so for the hell of it you can view most of these movies for free and legally (I think) on youtube.

FernGully:

FernGully was a movie released in 1992 with a not so hidden environmental protection message. Though it is obvious now, the message was either lost on me as a child or was subconsciously woven into my being. Perhaps I was just too busy being terrified by Tim Curry voicing a toxic pile of sludge. Shit was creepy. Honestly this movie didn't hold up too well, however, it starred Robin Williams as a lab tested bat...named Batty and Tim Curry is still scary as hell

All Dogs go to Heaven:

Ahh Don Bluth made some classic movies. He was Disney's main rival at the time and I feel most of his movies are darker, more cynical, and closer to the world then singing mermaids. I'm not saying talking dogs are closer to real life, I'm just saying he introduced the theme of death and the afterlife to kids. I'm not sure if that is some sort of moral high ground or low ground but nonetheless it starred Burt Reynolds and he attempted to sing. It is still really good even though the songs aren't nearly as catchy as what Disney was putting out.

Labyrinth:

This movie remains one of my favorite movies ever. It stars a young Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie's crotch. It has real people interacting with some of the best puppets Jim Henson ever crafted. I would say watch it because it is great. You remind me of the babe.

Rock-a-Doodle:

I would suggest watching all of Don Bluth's movies. He also did The Land Before Time, which may be more familiar, but this one is my favorites. I don't think Rock-a-Doodle is very well known but damn is it good. It starts with with a real boy getting turned into a cat. Weird, right? But there is the Grand Duke who is still terrifying to me now. It is hard to explain, and it may just be me, but the flow of everything mixed with a dark atmosphere just kinda clicked.

The Pagemaster:

Starring the talents of Christopher Lloyd, Whoopi Goldberg, Patrick Stuart, and Macaulay Culkin (when he was still marketable as a child actor.) It starts off in live action and moves to animation. The scene where this happens was pretty cool at the very least. It explores the adventure of reading which makes it topical to this class.

Every Disney Musical from 1989-Hercules: Too many to list here. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is my personal favorite.

This Criterion Collection can only be found on Royale with Cheese. By all means comment and add some great movies of your childhood.

Escuchela, la ciudad respirando

2008-09-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

"Breathin' in deep city breaths, sittin' on shitty steps
We stoop to new lows, hell froze the night the city slept"
-Talib Kweli

So I've been listening to a lot of New York rap and it's been making me pretty homesick. I miss the traffic, the noise, the hustle, but most importantly the bustle. I miss the dirty pavement, the filthy hobos and hookers, and the obvious crack deals that go down on street corners that the rich white man had graced not 3 hours prior. I miss the newsstands, the smoke shops with pipes for S's on the logo, the delis run by Middle Easterners, the delis run by Koreans, and the delis run by Mexicans (you can always tell which is which). I miss my stoop. I miss my block's stoops. Hell, I miss my enemies'stoops, my exes' stoops and any stoop I can get my ass on. I miss the village. I miss midtown. I miss giving tourists blatantly incoherent and even offensive directions (Empire State Building? (points to the Hudson) Walk that way. Don't stop until you get to New Jersey). I miss hating New England and every single suburb of the universe with my friends. I miss the illegal scribbles, and the illegal art. I miss the hot dog stands and the papaya hot dog chains. I miss the sirens, the horns, the pollution, the rudeness of everyone (which inevitably leads to human games of Frogger), and I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the cops.

Bring me home already, Thanksgiving.

P.S. I sprained my ankle Sunday while skateboarding and couldn't walk until I got my crutches late into yesterday. The X-rays came back negative, no broken bones, no fractures, so that's good news. I'll be accepting flowers, candy, and get well soon cards ASAP.

Blowfish's take on Home Movies

2008-09-11T12:55:00.000-07:00

Blowfish was borderline giddy in her retelling of her favorite story, Home Movies:
It was about a guy who's grandfather filmed home videos of their family as they spun around in the front yard, creating a sort of time lapse effect that showed how they'd grown over the years. As he watched his grandfather's videos he saw his mother, who divorced his father when he was a young child, and then eventually himself in his father's arms. He watched the videos with his father, and they compare their respective magnitudes of cuteness. He wonders what his father thinks; he knows that he's not the little boy that he once was, and he wonders if he has become everything that his father wanted him to be, being that he is, at the end of the story, a 30 year old Colorado Astronaut. My least favorite part was the abrupt ending, it seemed like there was more to the story. There wasn't much said about the Colorado Spaceman thing.

Mandatory Interview with a Chatty K@

2008-09-11T12:53:00.000-07:00

The following is a documentation of a real interview, that took place in real life, in real time. We had to write down as accurately as possible what our partner said. I think I got about 15% of what was actually said.

The person I interviewed was Kaleb. He talks a lot and it is rarely about anything good. The following is a transcript of the conversation.

Austin: Who are you?
Kaleb: Kaleb (author's note: Don't be fooled about how short this answer was)
A: What was your favorite video story-thing?
K: Untitled by Nancy Palate or however she said her name. Make sure you write by Nancy Palate because there are two untitled.
A: Yeah ok. Why did you like this?
K: Really it was just the formatting. I like how the video clips were in the chest...the formatting was badass. IN the video she actually had videos in a video.
A: What was your least favorite part?
K: ummm.oh yeah the whole thing in the end with God and her being a light traveler.
A: Summarize the video please.
K: Okay basically there is a woman who moved a lot...I can't remember if she moved from Ecuador ...let me check...yeah she did...maybe. So she moved to the country and moved around the country. Make sure you write malcontent. She said when you move you have to unpack which takes about a month. And you never know what you have until you have to pack it. Packing is a bitch

It was a good talk for the most part. I'm feeling a bit under the weather so I can't comprehend most things at the moment, so I didn't catch everything he said. I am sure that is what this exercise was supposed to show; to illustrate a communication breakdown between what is said and what is written. At least that is what I hope was the case.

Oh by the way, Kaleb isn't very interesting but his blog can be found over here. I'm linking it mostly because you can find his interview with me which should prove to be much more entertaining.

Digital Storytelling Interview

2008-09-11T12:51:00.000-07:00

Here, I interviewed Chelsea about her favorite Digital Storytelling video. Her personal favorite was one entitled "Limbo". She tells me how Limbo is about a girl in her mid 20's who loses her father at an early age to a terrible kidney disease. When she is in her twenties she gets a weird pain and starts to think she has come down with the same terrible kidney disease as her father. Despite her obvious distaste for doctors, she goes for treatment, even though she thinks she will only have about 15 more years to live. She keeps fighting though the disease to this day. Chelsea liked this story because the girl in the story never held anything back when she was talking about her disease. "Although it was sad, it was uplifting at the same time." says Chelsea, "It was very intense." What Chelsea did not like was the fact that the story was very depressing. She thought it was sad how someone would have to go through life with that disease, especially so young.

Chelsea also interviewed me, and if you are so inclined, you can find it here.

Mental Health Day

2008-09-11T12:21:00.000-07:00

So my roommate decided that he's going to take a "mental health day." You may be wondering just what the hell this means. To him, this means that his agenda entails doing laundry, learning James Taylor songs on the guitar, and above all, not going to class. "My friend Risa said that it's a good idea!"

My other roommate and I are looking forward to having a large double room to ourselves, being that he has skipped over half his classes thus far. College for most people is the first time in your life that you are fully in charge of your decisions, but roommate number one has lived independently of his parents for some time now, and it doesn't seem to be showing. This is the complete opposite of what I came to expect during the first few days living with them, but this just goes to show that you can't always judge a book by its cover.

Slice of heaven?

2008-09-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

The blogging format is an interesting one in that it allows one to talk freely about anything they want. The author of Slice goes back and forth from expressing her distress regarding her own situation and the situation of Mary Jane. From the chronological order of publication of posts we get a real sense of her thought process while reading each part of the diaries, and in this sense we make the leap from patron to participant, finding out new things at a similar rate to the author herself. And then the focus shifts abruptly and entirely from the diaries and Mary Jane's to the hare and her own escape from this depressing house.

The blog offers the author a form of escape. Documenting her own suffering no matter the severity offers the author recognition; Realizing that which pains you, be it rat poop or a stinky mattress, in a way liberates the author from her predicament.

Edit: New Background...

Post-Edit: On a side note... I enjoy this Slice Blog much more...

Slice of life

2008-09-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

So I too read Slice like I was supposed to. It seems like it is big news on all the course blogs. So I am going to put in my thoughts as well. My initial reaction was that I enjoyed it quite a bit even though it was very short and inconclusive. I thought it was similar to the "lonelygirl15" videos on youtube. Just the way they used a new medium to tell a narrative starting in a seemingly normal fashion. I didn't really like the girl in Slice (Lisa?), she seemed to be painted as the stereotypical miunderstood teenager who loves Emily the Strange and listens to The Cure. It is just a little generic is all I'm saying.

I don't know if anyone else felt vibes of Alice in Wonderland. The obvious connection would be the hare going down a hole into another world followed by a young, curious, girl. That screams Alice to me. Also the appearances of cats all over the place like the Cheshire Cat (Mary Jane's stuffed cat, Claribella). That one is actually a stretch but I needed something else to make my comparison seem meanigful.

Like most people there are a few things I didn't quite understand. I mean, besides the normal questions like "where the hell did they go?" and "what happened?", there was one thing that just struck me as odd. I was confused on how Mary Jane's family really died (if they died at all). Slice said that they died in a car accident. Her parents said they died in a plane crash. Did they just "go through" as well?

I didn't email the characters because I didn't know if I would actually get a response but I think it would have been really neat to be immersed in an interactive experiance like this. I thought the story was told brilliantly and ended exactly where it should have. Can't wait to discuss it in class.

Any way you Slice it.

2008-09-08T13:46:00.000-07:00

So I just got through reading the Slice blogs. After my initial reaction of "Wow, this is really annoying to read bottom to top with way too much scrolling involved" I ended up thinking that this is really a pretty cool little mystery story. I was certainly intrigued. If it was written normally, like beginning to end straight down, and perhaps a little less casually, I bet you couldn't even tell it came from the internet. I bet you couldn't even distinguish it from some other short stroy mystery ghost stories. But the blog fromat does do it's part. It certainly makes the passing of time much more apparent as you can see exactly what happens when due to everything being timestamped. Having both the parents and childs view was also a interesting feature that might have been more difficult to do in a traditional book sense. In Slice's blog there is a lot more exposition I guess the word would be. But that doesn't make sense as it's a blog. But it starts earlier and tells us more about the move and how and why it happened. Now if you look at the parents blog it only starts on the last 2 days before Slice's disappearance and mostly is just posts worrying about where thier daughter is. As most parents should, but it doesn't make for as interesting a story as Slices blog. Her's is fun to see the progression of finding the diary, reading it, figuring out what it means, and looking through the hole. Although it did kind of leave me hanging. I wanted just a bit more information about this hole and where it lead and the significance of the hare/rabbit. But I suppose that is part of this mystery. We are supposed to find clues in each of the blogs and and piece it together. I haven't cheated yet and gone to one of those threads they posted in the comments that helps you solve it, I think after discussing it more in class and looking through it more I will go back and attempt to figure it out.

Also, I kind of noticed the connection between Alice in Wonderland and this. Hare going thorough a hole into another dimension? But that's all I've got so far.

Awesome

2008-09-04T13:00:00.000-07:00

Here is a Royale. With Cheese.

But since we are on the subject, I like burgers. Probably one of my most favorite foods. On one hand, I would like to call myself a buger connoisseur. I have had an amazing variety of burgers from pizza bugers to buffalo and horse burgers to those burgers that have the cheese stuffed inside. But on the other hand connoisseur inplies that I have a taste for quality fancy burgers when, in actuality, I would love nothing more than a Big Mac or a Whopper. So I guess I will just go as far to say I really like burgers. In fact, my first week here I ate a burger everyday. They just don't get old. My only regret in the burger world is not having a royale with cheese. I had the opportunity, I was actually in Europe once and saw one. I wanted it, but we just walked on right by it to go do more touristy things. A sad day in my life. But I got over it and went on to eat more and more burgers. I try to get them at most restaurants, even the fancy ones. Believe it or not most places sell burgers or sandwiches that resemble burgers somehow. So its really not that hard a mission. Some people dismiss them as cheap pleasure food, but I think burgers are much more than that. They are tasty and can range from cheap to very fancy, just like any food. You can customize them with whatever toppings you want (I never have bacon on mine) and you always know to some degree what you are getting. All in all, they are yummy. Case closed.

Good Times

2008-09-04T12:56:00.000-07:00

We will have tons of them here

Welcome to the inagural post of Royale with Cheese

2008-09-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

I'm 72ner, your scribe, here with my co-bloggers, Austin and Erik. Here you will find the random ramblings of 3 critically insane freshmen. Enjoy.

SAY WHAT AGAIN

2008-09-04T12:45:00.001-07:00

Hello world