Faith Chihil: Faith is in the Details

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

2010-06-03T10:09:00.000-07:00

Yes, readers, it's closing time for now. Why?

Because I've been fighting to keep the excitement cool on the burners, but now it's finally time to announce...

That I was finally selected for MAIP!

I'll be working in Atlanta, GA this summer, copywritin' it up and posting updates to a joint blog with another Atlanta MAIPer right here:

http://adlanta.tumblr.com

Yeah. Right thurr.

I'm leaving tomorrow morning and I hope you'll all join me...

MAIP up your mind

2010-04-14T13:45:00.000-07:00

Readers, I have been chosen as a MAIP finalist and now I'm in the intern pool, not sinking, not swimming, but treading carefully as I await that final phone call.

I'm not used to pools; as a child at the YMCA, Splasher the Safety Frog paid no heed to my frantic kicks the day I strayed a little too close to the deep end. But, obviously, I survived, with little-to-no brain damage, fighting my way to the edge. And though I'm now wary of amphibious mascots and water deeper than seven feet, I feel a thrill of hope in this watery uncertainty.

So thrilled in fact, that I'm drawn to spitting a rhyme:

I’m dying here,

Like d-i-e,

Not like d-y-e “Raven Black”

or “Honey Golden Wheat”

It’s d-i-e, but it’s not a game

Bones and dots aren’t to blame

For these lyrics I spin, insane.

These agencies,

Do they know me?

Can they tell

See, or smell

My mad ambition

My ad mission?

My want to start the party

and that is rocked by killer copy

It’s this height’ning anticipation,

Heart’s in psycho syncopation

Like a sonnet explication,

I fear… da feet.

And a year to MAIP love, they wanted you to wait...

2010-02-10T11:48:00.000-08:00

Fans/readers/stumblers-upon of my blog may remember that last year I made a post about applying for a little something called the Multicultural Advertising Internship Program, commonly known as MAIP.

Let's read an excerpt from that fated post:

"I'd started off looking up at the MAIP as if it were some type of Greco-Roman temple where the Quaker Oats guy and the Geico Gecko held the keys to the World of Advertising. If I got in, Leo Burnett and David Ogilvy would each hand me a scotch on the rocks and my wardrobe would instantaneously become a combination of dirty hipster shirts and uptown cocktail dresses. And if I didn't get in (God forbid) I'd be ruined and forced to live in a ditch somewhere, gurgling in the oil-slicked water and shooting up expired hot sauce packets with a bunch of failed English and sociology majors."

Ah. Memories.

Well, it turns out that year I didn't make it. Did I cry? No. Did I eat my feelings? With gusto... and ranch. But other things happened as well.

1. I was humbled.

MAIP is not for losers or wannabes. No, really. MAIP is for people who want to succeed in advertising and will work hard to get that success. If you think you're going to slink in just because people in your layout class think you're cool or because you did the best campaign (in your opinion) in your B2B class, get over it. To mangle a quote by Tyler Durden of Fight Club, to potential employers you are not some special, unique little snowflake-- you are one of thousands of crappy ad students that might never get into the business. It's okay! Embrace it, then change it.

2. I was galvanized.

Effort needs to be shown, paraded, trumpeted as your hallmark, otherwise you're just another student who wants a lucky break. What did I do in the meantime? I helped build satellites, I got a ham radio license, I stepped up and became PR Chair for my ad club. While I geared up to enter this year, I joined the staff of my school's literary magazine and become Promo/Distro manager. When new accounts rolled into my school's advertising and PR agency, I got on them. Anything to do with mass communications and advertising, I wanted it. And according to my resume, it shows.

3. I reached out.

So, I didn't get picked. But my art partner, Brian Cheung, did. Freakin' sweet! While I prepared for my next big performance, I got to benefit from every little morsel of advice and experience he could share with me. Likewise, I dubbed the insanely great Jonathan Carmona, a MAIP alumni from my university who is now someone with a cool title over at Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners, as my sensei. They both helped provide encouragement and let me know what I was in for. And I shared the love-- I invited them both to speak at an ad club meeting and talk about their time in MAIP and how to get the edge in internships. When other students were applying, I gave support, answered questions about the process from my point of view. Hey, I'm writing this blog, ain't I?

In the end, failing paid off. This year I'm a semi-finalist. OH MAH GAWD. I've been waiting to post this entry until I did my interview. How did it go? I think it went well, despite the weather and traffic desperately trying to sabotage my credibility. I had a great conversation with my interviewer (with a cameo from my sensei!) and I could tell that she was interested in what students have to offer. I did my best to showcase the three things I listed above and I hope it gave a lasting impression.

And that's what counts right, doing your best? If I don't get in this year, it's just the same process all over again. It might be my last chance for MAIP, but there are still tons of internships out there, ripe for the picking. And I'll be there, ready to pick.

HoneyBaked Sham

2009-09-09T22:30:00.000-07:00

Continuing my coutntdown of Dad's favorite recipes, I present to you...

The HoneyBaked Ham®

Enclosed is a secret Chihil recipe, handed down from one generation to another.

For this recipe, you will need:

- 1 car
- $70.00
- yourself

1. Get in the car.
2. Buy a honey-baked ham with your money.
3. Congratulations!
4. Bring the ham home.
5. Eat the ham... for like, I dunno, a couple weeks.
6. Have Dad secretly put the leftover ham in the food processor.
7. Go to school and realize to your horror you are eating a ham spread sandwich with minced olives and pickles!!!!!!!!!!
8. Go home and complain.
9. Dad shrugs and eats the ham spread on Club crackers.
10. Repeat.

Delicioso!

Stealing the Colonel's Cabbage

2009-09-05T09:31:00.000-07:00

It was one year ago today that my father passed on. He was 78 years old, amazing the doctors with his relatively healthy lungs for someone who had smoked for 60 years, and I had thought he was on his way to at least 85. But these things do happen and they did.

I dedicate my first post in four months to him. Let's kick it off with Ol' Dad's top five favorite dishes.

-----

#5: Pineapple Coleslaw

My dad had a weird fascination with KFC's coleslaw. Where some might go for their greasy but delicious fried chicken or excellent mashed potatoes and gravy, it was this cold dish of chopped cabbage and mayo that kept him coming back. When I found a recipe for pineapple slaw on a Family Circle recipe card, I thought it was perfect substitute. Low-fat with just enough sweetness (Dad had a notorious sweet tooth) and crunchy cabbage, what could go wrong? I soon found out.

Though this was requested weekly, and though Dad extolled the virtues of its flavor, it lacked only one thing to him: the perfect size. Try as I might, week after week, no matter how precise with the knife or zealous with the food processor, I could never get my cabbage into the same size as those little KFC squares of goodness to please him. Some days it would be like little pieces of confetti, other times it was pebbles and sand. It was just no go. Defeated, I came to terms with the fact that my pineapple coleslaw would just taste better than it looked.

Or so I thought.

One day, I innocently stopped by KFC for a pint of coleslaw to accompany some pork chops I was making for dinner. I was feeling a little lazy and I didn't want to spend time chopping imperfect cabbage when I need to focus on pork. On the drive home, without any provocation, the late Col. Sander's started mocking me.

"Trah tuh replicate mah cabbage, girl? Nevuh, t'ain't nevuh gonnuh happen, y'heah? You should know bettah than tuh mess with the Colonel!"

It was a shocking, if not inspiring experience. With all respect for the troops, nothing grinds my gears like a military man telling me what I can or cannot do. I knew what needed to be done.

Once I got home, I pried the plastic lid off its styrofoam prison and tossed the slaw into a colander. I washed that cabbage so hard, I could hear it squeak in surrender. With a kind of almost malice, I added my dressing and pineapple. I paired it with those pork chops and yes, I served it.

Readers, it was delicious.

Never in the the history of man had the world seen such a slaw, and perhaps never will they again. The sounds of crunching drowned out the voices of any indignant Southern ghosts, crying that I'd pay for my thievery. We paid no heed.

For now, it was dinner time.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mortonfox/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Can you Digg it?

2009-05-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

CubeSat Team SJSU has made it to Digg! Thanks, Brian! Has everyone here met my friend Brian Cheung? Well, you should if you haven't, and if you have, say "Hi" again. Check out some of his work.

I'd do the fancy "Share link" thing but apparently my browser causes fatal exceptions. Hopefully Glenn Close won't come over to my dorm and boil my hamster.

New layout

2009-05-03T19:40:00.000-07:00

Ah, getting a new layout is like getting a new summer outfit: it's totally cute and you can't wait to wear it, but at the same time you're already planning your next shopping trip.

Wash your hands, my dearies!

That's me.

2009-04-30T14:59:00.001-07:00

Ladies

2009-04-30T13:38:00.000-07:00

Channeling Gwendolyn Brooks

We dress nice. We
paint lips. We

cook rice. We
shake hips. We

can't drive well?

We bring the fall? Hell!

We just survive.

We want it all, yes!

We bear fruit. You

shine a light,

We file suit, We will
say goodnight.

- Faith Chihil, 2009

Oops, we did it again...

2009-04-23T20:43:00.000-07:00

CubeSat Team SJSU hits the SJ Mercury News.

I guess I should sort of explain how I got involved with this whole "rogue band of students" and started building a satellite.

Well, believe it or not, it started off on a boat.

Let's set the scene, shall we?

Fall 2007, San Jose State University. I was a sophomore who had found herself in the interesting position of vice-commodore of the Spartan Sailing Team, after only having stepped onto a sailboat for the first time two semesters before. Needless to say, being from Modesto, CA, where most people's boat have motors, there, ah, was a steep learning curve for me. (They used to call me Captain Capsize, but anyway...)

The former commodore and our alumni advisor, Kevin Booker, had recommended that some of our team take the school's sailing class to get some extra practice in. Who happened to be in the class but the actual former vice-commodore of the team from a few years back: Eric Stackpole.

After some quick introduction, my teammates and I developed a fast friendship with the goofy, mechanical engineering major, who was taking the class for P.E. credit. He imparted some wisdom to us new kids and offered to help out team out in any way he could. Soon enough, we were tossing around footballs, boat to boat, during classtime.

One particularly calm Thursday afternoon, Eric and I were sitting on a Sunfish, lazing around Lake Cunningham, when he mentioned to me that he had put together a satellite-building club with some of his friends. He described to me how he and his friend Kevin Dudley had gotten the papers signed and some people recruited and overall, he was very excited. Somehow, his confidence made it all seem so plausible and I couldn't even feel shocked.

"Oh, that's neat," I said and adjusted the rudder. We chatted about what it would look like and what it might do and that was about it. We headed back to shore and went home.

A few weeks later, I'd been reading the Spartan Daily, SJSU's campus newspaper, in my room when I spotted an article about Eric's "satellite-building club." I told him about it on the car ride home after sailing class.

"You saw it?" he said. "That's awesome. We were so excited to have them come out and talk to us."

"Yeah. Are you guys really going to go on the vomit comet?"

"Uh..." he said.

Apparently, in the excitement of being interviewed, some people had gotten a little confused or carried away.

"You know, you oughta write a press release for the future, or get someone to help you talk with media, if you have trouble " I mentioned, off-hand.

"Hm, yeah." A beat. "Think you could do that for us?"

And that's how I got roped into this crazy space mess.

Unfortunately, my reign in the Sailing Team had to end, but I was manuevering from sailboats to satellites too soon to really mind. Three years later, we're still at it, fabbing electrical boards and proposing paint-shaker vibration tests.

Eric presents our concept and design today at Cal Poly and although we're excited, I can't help but recall that lazy day on Lake Cunningham, when anything seemed so plausible, it bored me.

The one time I'll squeal about Fox News

2009-04-09T09:45:00.001-07:00

FOXNews.com - San Jose State University Students Build 'An Answering Machine in Space' - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News

Posted using ShareThis

What I've been doing when I'm not here

2009-04-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

'An answering machine in space' - News:

"Members of CubeSat Team SJSU reach for the skies as they continue to build 'ReadySat Go,' a small cube-shaped satellite that will one day be launched into orbit."

Change is a-comin'...

2009-03-31T01:37:00.001-07:00

Watch this space. In the meantime, have a pretty outfit:

3 Things

2009-03-15T13:21:00.000-07:00

1) Follow your promises.
2) Learn when you can, laugh when it's funny, love always.
3) Never give a mouse a f*cking cookie.

Brave Thing a Week #3

2009-02-26T10:09:00.000-08:00

This week's Brave Thing:

Admit that you, with full knowledge and consent, left your poor fledgling blog to suffer alone while you began a torrid affair with that adorable microblogger, Twitter.

I'm sorry, angelpixels. *hug*

Nerdy braveness

2009-01-25T13:58:00.000-08:00

Here's a small nugget for missing the last week or so:

Brave Thing a Week 2.5: Tell a joke that not everyone will get.

Tony Blair is visiting an Edinburgh hospital. He enters a ward full of patients with no obvious sign of injury or illness and greets one.

The patient replies:
"Fair fa your honest sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin race,
Aboon them a you take your place,
Painch, tripe or thairm,
As langs my airm."

Blair is confused, so he just grins and moves on to the next patient.
The patient responds:
"Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
So let the Lord be thankit."

Even more confused, and his grin now rictus-like, the PM moves on to the next patient, who immediately begins to chant:
"We sleekit, cowerin, timrous beasty,
Thou needna start awa sae hastie,
Wi bickering brattle."

Now seriously troubled, Blair turns to the accompanying doctor and asks "What kind of facility is this? A mental ward?"
"No", replies the doctor.
"This is the serious Burns unit."

On that note (pun intended!)

2009-01-11T17:24:00.000-08:00

So, about singing. My besty Jackie turned 21 this Saturday, so I collaborated with our friend Bryce to celebrate this momentous occasion.

Brave Kids on the Block

2008-12-28T01:02:00.000-08:00

Brave Thing #2: Sing
And not the lame Celine Dion/Eric Carmen stuff you do in the shower. We're talking about going public. Professional performers need not apply; we're talking about the vocal wallflowers of the world (not to be confused with The Wallflowers, which features the delicious Jakob Dylan.)

It can be as easy as singing along to the radio when carpooling, or for the gutsy, there's always the wide, wide world of karaoke.

And of course, there's caroling. Outside of a karaoke bar and maybe those chain restaurants where they make the staff sing a rendition of "Happy Birthday", the bravest of the brave award will have to go to carolers.

I saw these guys on a trip to San Francisco:

Now, judging by the fine quality of their costumes, I would venture to say that these were not amateur performers. Still, as I watched the red one not-so-surreptitiously toe the tip hat closer to the crowd, I'd still say they were at least just a smidgen out of their comfort zone.

Personally, I've been jamming on Rock Band 2 for the last three days. With my best friend (stage name Toko Oh-No!) on lead guitar and me (Sporky Not-A-Fork) on vocals, we've been a musical sensation hitting nations all over the (virtual) world. We'd still be in Sweden at the Stockholm Synthdrome if we hadn't decided to take a short cookie and juice box break. However, if the crowd requests we perform "Carry On Wayward Son" one more time, I think I might smash some guitars for real. I never thought I'd end up sympathizing with Kansas, but well, Steve Walsh, here's lookin' at you.

So there it is, kids. Singing. And as a church music director once told us at Mass: "If you think God gave you an awful voice, go ahead and punish him with it."

MAIPing up is hard to do

2008-12-20T14:00:00.000-08:00

My dear sensei, Mr. Jonathan Car-miyagi has been helping guide a flock of San Jose State advertising students on their way to the golden ticket that is the Multicultural Advertising Internship Program.

On his blog, Carmonize, he asked us MAIPers to reflect on the application process and tell everyone what we learned. This was my response:

----

It's a matter of perspective.

I'd started off looking up at the MAIP as if it were some type of Greco-Roman temple where the Quaker Oats guy and the Geico Gecko held the keys to the World of Advertising. If I got in, Leo Burnett and David Ogilvy would each hand me a scotch on the rocks and my wardrobe would instantaneously become a combination of dirty hipster shirts and uptown cocktail dresses. And if I didn't get in (God forbid) I'd be ruined and forced to live in a ditch somewhere, gurgling in the oil-slicked water and shooting up expired hot sauce packets with a bunch of failed English and sociology majors.

Then I woke up from that dream and decided not to mix anchovy pizza with mint ice cream before bed.

The truth is that what I've learned most from this process is that it is ever-evolving while still sticking to its basic principals, kind of like Madonna, sans Kabbalah. And like Madonna, I don't need committee of heads telling me if my stuff is cool enough to be part of the club.

There will always be kids from distinguished portfolio schools who can rock Illustrator out of the water while I barely make a ripple. And there will be kids who should probably stay accountants. Or HR reps. And they will all get into the MAIP while I tried and didn't.

For as many people who will be entered into the Pantheon of MAIP, there are more that haven't even heard of it, and still have succeeded.

The important thing is that I can evolve too. I will still be there to one-up them, to bow down, to chew bubble gum and kick ass when I'm all out of bubble gum.

So, after all the hard work, I'm done anticipating. If I get in, awesome. If I don't...

Oh, who am I kidding? HEY COMMITTEE PEOPLE PICK ME NOW PLEASE I'M BEGGIN' YOU! I CAN'T HANDLE SPICY AND I'M ALLERGIC TO GUTTERS!

Brave New Thing

2008-12-20T13:06:00.001-08:00

So, it's been a little while. There has been a brief, but noticed hiatus from "real" blogging after my father's degrading health finally led to his Eternal Rest in early September, but the Powers That Be have determined that I shall. keep. blogging.

In order to celebrate life, rather than the unfortunate alternatives, and the vitality of the human spirit, I'm starting something new. I'm calling it: Brave Thing a Week.

It'll sound catchier once it catches on.

The idea behind Brave Thing a Week (or Btawk as it will soon commonly be known) is to show case one brave thing.

Weekly.

Get it?

Rules:
Brave-ability:
Of course, they can't all be Things like climbing Mt. Everest or amending the Constitution. These will be brave things everyone can do, like finally going to the gym in shorts, or telling Excited Mommy that her baby ain't as cute as the pictures indicated. Brave can be silly, but it's still brave.

Brave ≠ Douche Move
Think of it this way: it's funny when you see a grandma falling over on America's Home Videos. But if someone pushed your MeeMaw? Not funny! Being brave doesn't mean having to be considerate, but it does mean having a decent amount of respect for other people. My Excited Mommy example only works because EM has been deceiving other people with her photoshopped Olan Mills portraits and still won't stop talking about them.

Now as to whether using a douche is brave, I'll go with the American College of Obstitricians and Gynecologists and say it's all around a bad idea.

Everything is Relative
I'll aim for every Saturday, but sometimes there is just so much bravery there will be Things a week. Some Things may seem less brave than others. Whatever, the milk's still good.

And how will this involve you, the reader? Drumroll please...submissions will be accepted! Yes, now, you too, can tell the Blogosphere about how brave you were to ask the couple next to you in the theatre to please scoot over one.

So, here is my entry this week:

Brave Thing #1: Visit Your Local Comic/Tabletop Gaming Store
Yes, the geeks can be greasy and the scent of microwaved basement burrito can permeate the air, but sometimes you'll find jewels. Shake off the trail of Mountain Dew and you'll never have to worry about being followed home.

I always spin off course.

2008-12-03T22:24:00.000-08:00

I agree with AgencySpy, this needs to be in a Nintendo commercial ASAP.

Hilarity, by Juice Box.

2008-11-23T10:52:00.001-08:00

The Pepsi Generation Next For Those Who Think Young

2008-10-26T17:25:00.000-07:00

I'm a Pepsi girl, through and through. I can remember sitting down with my dad on my days off from school, watching All My Children, with a turkey sandwich on a plate with a handful of Fritos and an ice cold glass of Pepsi. Good times.

So you, my dearest reader, can understand my woe when I see that the brand I've come to associate with comfort, soaps, and later the Spice Girls, has turned into this:

It looks like a plumber's crack. Like, regular pepsi is Joe the Plumber, Pepsi Max is his fat, nerdy brother, and diet Pepsi is his sister Joanne the Plumbess.

Yes, there are a few clever changes. It's not longer in caps. The "e" reflects the old Pepsi logo, which is a clever touch. But really, Arnell, maybe when you're marketing a soda, the first thing in the consumer's head shouldn't be, "Damn, that reminds me, I need to buy a new belt."

BONUS
Other things the new logo looks like:
- a plane tail
- a basketball
- an obstract Obama icon
- All-American Pac-Man
- the crest of a wave against a red sky
- a Pokeball
- a Chupa Chup (oh, and btw? The English site is adorable! Never has the assassination of John Lennon looked so cute.)
- a marble (the toothpaste type)
- toothpaste
- a lumberjack's head with a blue beard and a red beanie
- ...oh, a grin

Zales: Love Rocks

2008-10-18T11:32:00.000-07:00

Oh, oh, dear. This.

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

A man uses a a ball of string to propose. And it works.

It may be the sentimental bunnies in my so very secret heart making me so smooshy, but that ad...!

Love Me Dead

2008-08-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

So, we're already over the whole "Ben Folds leaking 'fake' tracks from his CD so the real tracks stay safe thing (including Hiroshima posted below)" Right?

Let's celebrate with Ludo's video for their hit, "Love Me Dead."

My favorite part? Coughin' with the coffin.

Also something to celebrate? Don Draper and Peggy Olson following me on Twitter! Must...be...interesting for time-travelling ad execs!

Coincidence

2008-08-06T19:27:00.000-07:00

Is it weird that Ben Fold's newest single, "Hiroshima," dropped on the same day as the anniversary of the atomic bomb?

I think it might have just been a big coincidence.

But still...creepy.

Here it is, anyway.

The single, that is, not the...well, you know.

Hello, is it me you're looking for?

2008-07-30T12:57:00.000-07:00

Oh, media blog, how badly I've neglected you! I've been wasting my months guzzling celebrity gossip via Oh No They Didn't! and the occasional dose of Television Without Pity.

It wasn't always going to be this way. In fact, I created a sister blog which was supposed to be dedicated solely to the dissection ARGs (alternate reality games) a la LG15 and The Dark Knight. A little hiccup occurred when Blogger tagged it as possibly controlled by spambots and marked it off for personal inspection. Alas, I didn't get a notice or anything when it passed the test, and in the weeks that had followed, I'd forgotten it.

Common sense says that if I plan to use this as a piece of resume flair, I ought to showcase my initiative and creativity even during the fallow months. To that I say...I'll get to it later.

In the meantime, here are some things that I like at the moment:

Tim-Tams

I took a two-week pilgrimage to Sydney, Australia for World Youth Day and in the mix I met koalas, Scots, the Pope and these deliciously creamy and crunchy cookies. I was sad I'd only managed to smuggle one snack-packet of these to the States, but I was brought out of my despair when I found they carried them at Cost Plus. Joy! Decadence! ...ugh, tummy ache.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (on iTunes!)

Neil Patrick Harris. Nathan Fillion. More Neil Patrick Harris. More Nathan Fillion. And that red-haired chick from The Guild and that one Cheetos commercial. Oh, and it's the brainchild of Joss Whedon, his brothers and his brother's fiance. You know something's up when I'm walking down the cereal aisle, singing (quietly), "It's a brand new day, and the sun is high, all the angels sing 'cause you're gonna die!" You bet I'm in for singing commentary and extras when the DVD hits.

More YouTube stuff

The Vlog Brothers, Marvel/DC (check out "Twas the Dark Knight Before Christmas" and of course the After Hours arc), The (previously mentioned) Guild, and last but not least: SockTube. Oh, in regards to the video, I have been on a date to the library. It's not as cool as it sounds.

---

In other news:

I'm not a reader of the Twilight series, although I'm sure I would have been back in middle school and high school, back when I was still drooling over Armand and Lestat in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. I was pretty much vampire obsessed; I'd pick up anything preternatural in the Teen section at the library. Except when I picked up and become fully engrossed in Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series. I was hooked until my cool series with a headstrong, trash-talking heroine with a penchant for stuffed penguins and a werewolf named Richard suddenly turned into porn. Once Anita was banging werewolves, wereleopards, werelions, wereSWANS, vampires, and just about everything else at the same time, I knew it was curtains for me. But sadly, I can't help but keep reading, just hoping it will get better...

Anywho, so, Twilight. Haven't picked it up. But the power of the Internet has told me how it ends in Breaking Down, and Twilighters, I am so sorry. It seems Stephanie Meyer learned how to write epilogues in the J.K. Rowling school of "Letting Everybody Down and Creeping Them Out." Yeah, you heard me, Harry Potter. Naming all of your kids after your dead parents, a dead headmaster who never learned from his old mistakes and some professor who made your life horrible out of love for your mom? All is not well, indeed!

--
And something to put a smile on your face:

The Joker don't stop 'til he got enough.

Well, that's it for now. Tune in later for some clips from Australia and Tim Tam Slam results.

Walking on Air

2008-01-25T20:38:00.000-08:00

The reason why I won't buy a MacBook Air, though I will be sorely tempted to:

Some Apple Genius made the unfortunate (or brilliant?) decision to not include a CD/DVD reader/burner, leaving users to either 1) buy the $99 USB SuperDrive to read your disk, 2) go through the rigamarole of using the wireless network to talk to some other Apple in your house, or 3) forego disks all together and buy all your music and movies from the iTunes store.

My car didn't come with a casette player, perhaps this the same situation, the way of the future and all?

I'm thinking...no.

My car (a now outdated Scion xA) was manufactured two years ago in 2006 and even then I hadn't seen a cassette for sale outside of a Goodwill or Big Lots in ages. CDs and DVDs, on the other hand, are still ruling the portable media world as we know it.

I may eat my words later, via digital satellite-image wordpills, but I shall try my hardest to feign ennui to this slim devil.

For now, I'll take my laptops like I take my casinos: with slots!

Now better tasting!

2008-01-13T05:30:00.000-08:00

The following is an incredibly addictive and entertaining meme concerning randomization, customization, and innovation!

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal because it's more amusing that way.

My albums:

I Was Too Famous by Intelligence Services of the Philippines

Because It Isn't There by Casual Theory of Reference

One Graveyard to Another by We (Kana)

A Playmate with God by Skewb

Behold, my Gimp skills. Kinda wish I had cheated and switched Skewb's cover with We (Kana)'s but it wouldn't be half as interesting otherwise. I like the fact that Intelligence Services of the Philippines features Daniel Keller of Interpol. I can see Intelligence being Interpol wannabes but with more "art" and screaming (see: The Liars). Casual Theory of Reference would be worshippers of all things early-Linkin Park and Evanescence, with a little bit of Powerman 5000 thrown in to the mix. We (Kana) would sound like what would happen if Colin Meloy of The Decemberists had a less dramatic brother who listened to a lot of Ben Folds/Belle & Sebastian and decided to make a band with his high school buddies. And Skewb? Well, they think they're the Raveonettes.

I think these could be real album covers, what do you think?

Discussing Music with a Talking Head

2007-12-19T18:24:00.000-08:00

David Byrne, formerly of The Talking Heads and all around cool guy, discusses music and music distribution models for Wired. Jeez, wish I had had this when I was in MCOM 72.

Toys R Us: Even Toy Giants Need Makeovers

2007-11-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

Via advertising/design goodness:

So, the giraffe-headed toy retail giant finally got their logo a facelift:

Image from advertising/design goodness
The font is mostly the same, though now the "O" is nicely nestled with "T" and the "Y" instead of just hanging out by its awkward, monospaced self. (something that's always kind of bugged me.)

The colors are paler, more subdued without losing a punch-- think Tropical Skittles (new logo) versus Original Fruit (old logo). The colors say "We're still kids, but now we're hipper and smarter. Look, we're using cerise!"

Of course the star of the show (no pun intended) is the "R" which has lost its training wheels (i.e. quotation marks) and has decided to go on with its dyslexic self and take center stage, with the star reduced to becoming a hole-punch in the "R." This gives a kind of circus effect, the "R" even looks kind of like an elephant (how will Geoffrey react?!) I'm not quite sure how to feel about it. It partly resembles Belarus's long-lost cousin country Toysrus. The old star gave some room, now it feels a little too close to that "S."

Speaking to the logo as a whole, I'm feeling generally positive. Whereas the past logo immediately made me think of the Toys R Us back at home (which looked basically like the battle-worn toy section of Wal-Mart, but infinite) the new logo looks cleaner and friendlier, like maybe this is the start of a more personable toy store, cozier and more stylish. I can't wait to see if they're changing their store model as well.

Sh-shakin', sh-shakin' up

2007-10-30T23:54:00.001-07:00

A earthquake registering as 5.6 on the Richter scale hit the Bay Area and parts of the Central Valley tonight, Tuesday, October 30th, at approximately 8:05pm. No serious damages have been reported, but it did rattle a few nerves, mine included.

Hurricanes, fires, and earthquakes, my, oh my. My guess for what's up next? Locusts.

Hey, Ma, I'm on the news...kind of!

Mad About You...you, sexist, anti-semites

2007-07-19T16:19:00.000-07:00

Ain't It Cool News reports:

The Critics Are Mad for AMC's MAD MEN

"It’s an 13-episode AMC hourlong, from writer-producer Matthew Weiner (“The Sopranos”), about sexist, anti-Semite ad men in 1960 Manhattan trying to market, among other things, Lucky Strikes cigarettes. It stars Jon Hamm (“Providence”), Elisabeth Moss (“The West Wing”), Vincent Kartheiser (“Angel”), Christina Hendricks (“Firefly”), January Jones (“We Are Marshall”) and John Slattery (“Ed”)."

And goes on to list a multitude of reviews from newspapers and TV critics around the country.

It's set in a Madison Avenue agency (thus the title "Mad Men") amongst the glamour of hepcats, where "men were men and women were skirts."

It's stuff like this that makes me wonder how much the ad industry has really changed since then. We like to watch old-fashioned movies with men wearing crisp suits and women wearing floppy bows and pencil skirts, and laugh at the Day-Hudson camp fun, but at the end of the day, we have yet to know if everything portrayed as "backwards" then is better today. Why are we so nostalgic for days when doctors recommended two-packs of cigs a day and minorities nodded and tap-danced for us all, while facing racism the second they got off stage?

"But we have laws, and rules, regulations and lawsuits to fight that now! That was forty years ago." Sure, sure, in the public, but what happens inside glass buildings might not always be so surely fought.

In any case, I'm ready to give this show a chance, if only for Jon Hamm.

MAD MEN premieres tonight, Thursday 19th, at 7pm and again at 8pm on AMC, PST.

Wow, I can be literary too!

2007-05-31T14:21:00.000-07:00

I googled "book meme" and this is what I got. I took this from an old entry at sfsignal.com. So much better than those old "bold that one's you've read, italicize the one's you beat your children with, etc." surveys, but doesn't require as much thought as "name the book that convinced you to be a [whatever] and explain why" survey.

Science Fiction, Fantasy or Horror?
If you'd look at my bookshelf, you'd see more of a fantasy trend, however, I do enjoy the other genres. It really depends on the writing.

Hardback or Trade Paperback or Mass Market Paperback?
Hardback books look great on the shelf and make me feel a bit superior when I'm carrying them around. That said, they're also a bitch to lug. Mass market, while easy to store, just feels and looks cheap to me; they're so drugstore generic. Trade paperback is really the best of both worlds.

Heinlein or Asimov?
I really haven't read enough to make an opinion.

Amazon or Brick and Mortar?
Oh, I'll take a real store over the internet any day. Amazon is cheap and easy, sure, but such are other things in life, many of them wearing mini-skirts on 10th Street. Besides, I like to touch before I buy. :]

Barnes & Noble or Borders?
Borders. They offer more coupons. B&N might have them on atmosphere though.

Hitchhiker or Discworld?
I...I can't choose! Don't make me choose!

Bookmark or Dogear?
I have a tendency to lose my bookmarks, but even still, I feel all gross inside whenever I fold a page.

Magazine: Asimov's Science Fiction or Fantasy & Science Fiction?
I'm not a reader or subscriber of either.

Alphabetize by author, alphabetize by title or random?
I go by hardcover/paperback first. Then by size. Then by author's last name. It pleases me.

Keep, Throw Away or Sell?
There are very few books out there I could just throw away. I like to keep them, it makes me feel smart. If I really don't like something, I'll at least try to get a couple bucks out of it. If I can't, then donation.

Year's Best Science Fiction series (edited by Gardner Dozois) or Year's Best SF series (edited by David G. Hartwell)?
No idea.

Keep dustjacket or toss it?
Keep it, of course. Who tosses them out?!

Read with dustjacket or remove it?
If I'm in bed, I leave it on. Travelling, I take it off.

Short story or novel?
Edgar Allan Poe once said something to the effect of Short stories rock, long stories suck. Maybe not quite in those words, but that was the gist of it. Me, I appreciate both, knowing how difficult it is to write either.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket?
Oh, Harry Potter, most definitely.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?
If I get tired and keep reading, I'll end up having to re-read it anyway, so I just put it down when my eyes start drooping.

It was a dark and stormy night or Once upon a time ?
Once upon a time has so many more possibilities. Sorry, Bulwer-Lytton. Oh, and sorry, Snoopy.

Buy or Borrow?
I'm poor and I like to keep the library in business, so I mostly borrow. A book isn't truly a book unless it's been thoroughly thumbed by hoboes, I always so. Books as gifts, however, are excellent.

Buying choice: Book Reviews, Recommendation or Browse?
I don't like reading reviews of books before I've read them, but recommendations are usually very helpful. It's rare that I'll just pick a book off the shelf and buy it.

Lewis or Tolkien?
Tolkien. Narnia was intriguing, but Middle-earth was engulfing.

Hard SF or Space Opera?
I don't know what Hard SF is, but space operas can be neat.

Collection (short stories by the same author) or Anthology (short stories by different authors)?
Both, though I'd say I own more collections than I do anthologies.

Hugo or Nebula?
I don't know, except that Neil Gaiman has won both!

Golden Age SF or New Wave SF?
Unsure.

Tidy ending or Cliffhanger?
Tidy ending, with a few things to muse here and there.

Morning reading, Afternoon reading or Nighttime reading?
I like reading in bed when I get up in the morning, but then again, basking in the warmth of the sun and plowing through a half-dozen chapters is nice. But of course, reading myself to sleep is a ritual...

Standalone or Series?
In series, there is so much potential for doom. Isn't that right, Ms. L.K. Hamilton and Ms. Rice? Standalones are tidy; they make you want for more. Maybe a trilogy, but more than that can push it. There are exceptions, of course.

Urban fantasy or high fantasy?
Urban fantasy. One gets sick of the same vaguely-Medieval times/fantastic creatures/stones and swords crap.

New or used?
Depends on the price and the condition of the book.

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard?
I'm afraid I haven't read too many indie books. Do I lose my biblio-scenester cred?

Top X favorite genre books read last year? (Where X is 5 or less)
1. Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
2. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
3. World War Z by Max Brooks
4. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (a re-read)

Top X favorite genre books of all time? (Where X is 5 or less)
1. Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
2. The Giver by Lois Lowry
3. Stardust by Neil Gaiman
4. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

X favorite genre series? (Where X is 5 or less)
1. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
2. Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling
3. Sandman by Neil Gaiman (it counts, I say!)
4. Xanth by Piers Anthony
5. His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman.

Top X favorite genre short stories? (Where X is 5 or less)
1. "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin (thanks, Prof. J.)
2. "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes
3. ...I suppose I should read more genre short stories

And, I tag everyone who's still reading this old blog.

2, 4, 6, 8, we don't want to have to...what?

2007-02-24T10:32:00.000-08:00

Of the thousands of CSU students across California, how many are aware of the fact that almost 24,000 faculty members from all CSU campuses are contemplating "rolling walkouts" (which may become full-on strikes) later this March? That means classes being cancelled without warning and angry professors, librarians and other faculty shouting and waving signs. That means trying to work over the cries of, "CSU is filled with theives!" and the general booing of other union members who cross the picket lines, oh, and no UPD to disrupt them.

Well, I sure wasn't.

I'm not fully educated (pardon the pun) on the subject of the strike. I do know the San Jose Mercury News has told me that the majority of the dispute between the Califonia Faculty Association and the California State University system is over salary, workload, class size and tenure. On average, a full-time, tenured professor working in a CSU makes around $84,000, while about half of the other faculty work with temporary (i.e. yoinked at any time) contracts and make under $43,000. Overall, it's about 18% less than other faculty members across the US. On the other hand, executives voted for a 24% increase in their own salaries and perks.

Now, I didn't grow up with a lot of money. I do know that right now my dad gets around $30,000 from retirement, and that my mom makes about half that (although I'll never see it, but that's another story.) So, I'm probably a very biased judge of what a good salary is. However, with as long as it's been a running joke in our country that teachers are underpaid for all the junk they have to put up with and the work they have to do, it seems that the teachers of the CSU system are being underpaid even to the underpaid.

I can imagine someone wanting to strike about it. But just hold on a second.

At first glance, cancelled classes signal "free days" to party and laze around. Sounds good until you figure a) when the strike ends, all that work will have to be made up, b) those of us living in the dorms are basically paying to be babysat...without babysitters, and c) for everyone around, it pretty much sucks like a Hoover.

How does it suck? Let me count the ways:

1. Faculty
When workers go on strike, they do not get paid. Why? Because they're not working, duh! Also, they have to protest under the shadow of the previous strike members of the 1960's and 1970's, who walked out in demonstrations of social unrest, rather than union disputes. I'm sorry, but there's no "Professor X" coming out of this struggle.

2. The CSU system
Wow, way to show how well colleges are run in California, huh guys? Besides the amount of bad PR, some schools may see an increase of drop outs and transfers to other colleges who don't have teachers that go on strike. Not to mention the amount of high school seniors who may rule out CSUs in the first place...although a certain percentage of them already do.

3. Students
No classes mean no bang for more buck. Really, it's the students who are going to suffer the most with distraught employees and doubtful class schedules. Yeah, and about transferring and all that. How do you get your papers moved if no one's in the office to do it? SJSU itself is notorious for having transcripts, receipts and other papers lost to the abyss. With a strike going on, there may not be anyone to even lose them for us. During union strikes, members of other unions are expect not to cross picket lines. Our own UPD has agreed not to interfere. So food service workers, plumbers, really any other laborers can't come on campus to do things that have to be done. It's like going to a really, really expensive hotel without room service, desk service or even the police to call when you find a body in the mattress. Yay!

Also, faculty members are actually encouraging students to come out of classes (not all teachers at the CSU are in the CFA) and protest with them, which I personally find in bad taste, to say the least. A fellow classmate of mine was ready and rearin' to go to a strike, seeing as this classmate's parents pulled this classmate out of school in the past to help them rally for a different strike. I'm not one to critique parenting skills, but really, depriving your kid of education because you're underpaid doesn't seem that cool to me. We had this problem during the May Day Mexican-American protest last year. However, at least at my school, the protesting was done before and after, with students very strongly encouraged to stay in school, rather than walk out. And that was for issues dealing way beyond tenure and pay.

4. Californian tax-payers
So, where is all this money going to come from, anyway? The CSU claims it has enough money and doesn't need any government support. But the money has to come from somewhere. Student tuitions and fees are going to go up, wage hike or not, and guess who gets to pay for it?

For the most part, I'm glad that the strike is being considered a last-choice option, until other negotiations are undergone. The scary part is that most negotiations have tried and failed, leading closer and closer to an ultimate conclusion...CFA members of the CSU, unite!

So, what are students to do if and when this happens? Here's what I'm doing: staying in school.

While it may look like our 'support' is helping the cause, those in charge and in the media will only see us as lazy students who don't want to be in class. And frankly, those are exactly the students who are going to picket. For me, if my classes will be made available to me, I'm attending them because that's what my parents are paying for. Yes, I know that it's romantic to think that teachers should teach no matter the premise, and I know that without big action the CFA may not be taken seriously. But I do know that as a student, I have the right to have faculty meet my classes at the scheduled times and make presentations appropriate to the course. I will support my teachers who decide to strike by acknowledging their position and giving voice to their cause, but if I have a teacher willing to be there for me, I will try to be there for them.

Go Spartans.

Not Without Robert Goulet

2007-02-05T21:59:00.000-08:00

So, the Superbowl has ended and now watercoolers across the US have been bubbling peacefully with talk of those infamous commercials.

The Chevy Ad Challenge I've mentioned before (and if you want a refresher, Lilly Buchwitz's Mcom 72 blog is the place to go) has also come and gone. Katie Crabb, 18-year-old freshman at the University of Wisconsin was the proclaimed winner, and if you saw a Chevy spot for the HHR with a bunch of hot studs and one old man washing it, you saw her concept. Not exactly as it was pitched, but it works on a few levels, even if not everyone has those levels. Watch the webisodes at cbs.com/chevy if you want to know more about her original idea. What in the hell is a HHR again? I was blinded after Grandpa.

Her win logically means that San Jose State's team did not win. Their concept, according to Lilly's blog, was as follows:

"Ugly Betty." A man gets out of his Corvette and rings the bell of a house. A homely girl answers — his blind date. He walks her to the car, opens the door and she gets in. As he walks around to his side of the car he quickly makes a call. We hear him say something like, "You're going to owe me for this!" Inside the car, as soon as Betty sits down the seat's lumbar support kicks in, improving her posture and thrusting out her chest. The seatbelt moves around her, pulling down her zipper to show cleavage. The mirror tilts so that the sunlight makes her face glow. And the air conditioning comes on full blast, blowing her hair Farrah-Fawcett style. The music builds to the chorus of Tom Jones's "She's a Lady" just as the man opens the driver side door and sees now-beautiful Betty. He clicks shut his cell phone. Tagline: CHEVY'S GOT YOUR BACK.

Okay, so maybe I'm bitter because I've actually been Betty and gone on blind dates that didn't end so glamorously. Maybe I think it would have been better if Betty had started going on about the positive attributes about the car, spastically spouting off a bunch of technical car terms, endearing her Mr. Shallow and actually informing the audience what's so great about these new cars. And then a light would reflect on the rear-view mirror to make it look like she had a halo around her.

Oh, wait, that's not "marketable." (We know it's marketable because it's been done before.)The point is that SJSU's pitch was exactly was Katie's was going to satirize-- a beautiful girl and a beautiful car. For the best, I suppose. This year the only boobs I witnessed were for GoDaddy.com...and those guys are jerks (for entirely different reasons I'll express later.)

Actually, the Chevy ad I heard about around school was "Everybody Wants a Chevrolet" (I had a similar idea that I canned right before I decided not to enter, no lie.) It was up there with the bunny fron Blockbuster and Kevin Federline's Nationwide plug. Oh, and Snickers-back Mountain. Go to ifilm.com/superbowl to watch them all.

Don't call it a comeback

2007-01-12T00:45:00.000-08:00

Happy Belated-New Year, dear readers. I have yet to make a fully formed, coherent and intelligent post, but I thought I'd share something with you, something of interest.

At least 200 million blogs are no longer being updated, according to techonology analysts.

A good point is raised here. I mean, how many pet rocks, Tamogachi digital pets and Beanie Babies have been abandoned in the past? While blogging has seemed become the norm and not a fluke, you must wonder how many people who jumped on board the train decided to get off at Chattanooga? 200 million, apparently.

But don't count me among them, not yet.

In-depth posts, including reviews of two books considered for the Campus Reading Program, namely The Sleeping Father and Vernon God Little, to come soon.

Books: Keep on Truckin'!

2006-12-20T14:28:00.000-08:00

This may be OFN (old effin' news) but BooksPlus, a bookstore, came up with a clever ad idea utilizing the fight between e-books and good ol' tree-killin' paper books. Very good show, BooksPlus!

In some twist of fate, however, I couldn't actually find a website for BooksPlus. Hah!

Sanrio-a-Go-Go

2006-12-12T23:38:00.001-08:00

As I woke up the day of my meteorology and statistics finals, the steady patter of water on my windows informed me that it was raining.

I finally I had my chance, I was going to take it!

The chance, that is, to bring out the rainboots. Oh, and not just any rainboots.

Say hello to my little friends.

That's right. They're pink. They're featuring Hello Kitty. And they're mine.

So, armed with the rubber shoes and an umbrella, I set off for my finals, happily splashing in the puddles while other students in sneakers, ballet flats or ugh, pointy-toed heels, carefully avoided the muddy water. I made a point of it to walk through the grass, the mud, and sometimes the muddy grass. These boots and me, we were made for adventure.

Finally, I got to my meteorology class and one of my classmates eyed my feet and said, "Huh."

"What?" I replied, shaking the water off my umbrella and setting it against the wall.

"Nothing," he shrugged, "I just, well, I just never pegged you as the Hello Kitty type," and he went back to reading.

Not the "Hello Kitty type?" Not the "Hello Kitty type?!" I was agog, and somewhat aghast. What did he mean by that? I considered asking him but he was a little absorbed by the reading material (that's not a pun.) I'm assuming that he meant that because I'm neither a five-year old girl with pigtails, nor am I a frequent giggler who bakes rainbows and sunshine for breakfast, lunch and dinner. These are common stereotypes of fans of this little white cat and I'm writing this post to say: hey, there's more to Sanrio than that!

For those of you who had been living under a rock on Mars for the past few decades, Hello Kitty, along with her boyfriend Dear Daniel (also a cat), and friends My Melody (a rabbit), Badtz Maru (a bad-boy penguin) and other animals, are the mascots of the Japanese stationary supply, gift and accessory powerhouse known as Sanrio. Hello Kitty is decidedly the most popular and famous of the bunch, and is often depicted doing things such as baking treats, dressing up in costumes, visiting foreign countries, or just having fun with her friends.

She's a gamer, too.

According to the Sanrio website:
"Sanrio was invented in 1960 by Mr. Shintaro Tsugi. Mr. Tsugi created a line of merchandise designed around gift-giving occasions."

Also from the website, there are reportedly more than 4,000 Sanrio stores in America today. In fact, the first Sanrio store in America was the one in the Eastridge Mall of good ol' San Jose, CA! Score one for the cute! Sanrio products are not only in specialty stores, but also sell in mass market outlets such as Wal-Mart, Target, and Payless Shoes as well.

Hello Kitty markets cuteness, yes, but that doesn't mean their target consumers have to necessarily reflect their product perse. Hello Kitty and her friends bring a sense of adorable and lovable sensibility to everyday things such as wallets, keychains, luggage sets, and school supplies. While mostly catering to the audience of young girls, elementary school age and younger, Sanrio creates products for young women as well. For example, Hello Kitty is featured on kitchen supplies such as plastic tubs and silverware, but also on toasters, sandwich makers, and coffee pots. She even has an electric guitar with her picture on it!

Rock on, pussy cat, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa...

What makes Sanrio different than the competition (Disney, or even Barbie) is its diversity of characters. The character list for Sanrio is so high that they even have to retire some characters (of cours, the Kitty stays) in order to refresh the market. Points in case are Keroppi, a green frog, and Pochocco, a beagle similar to Snoopy. (Coincidentally, Sanrio gift stores also sometimes carry items with characters from Peanuts, as well as Sesame Street.) Once again, while Mickey, Goofy and Donald can appeal to both boys and girls, while the Sanrio company is predominantly based on the female market, its pervasiveness in marketing and advertising is nonetheless just as equal. The mere fact that my classmate, a guy, could even recognize that the cat on my boots was Hello Kitty further illustrates this point. So, as far as I see it, saying to someone, "You're not the Hello Kitty type" is like saying, "You're not the Mickey Mouse type," or "You're not the type to buy things with cartoon charcters" type, even.

We miss you, buddy!

So, yeah, I may not wear pink every day. I may not dot the 'i's' in my name with hearts or giggle infectiously when someone says something mildly interesting. I don't even bake pastries that often.

But mess with Hello Kitty... and you'll get the claws.

Thank you for Cingular

2006-12-10T20:37:00.001-08:00

Meanwhile, I could only hope to be as great a debater against the man as Mr. George Vaccaro, the Verizon Math guy, who's shown us all that Canadian Verizon employees don't understand the difference between .002 dollars and .002 cents.

That's really, really sad. I'm not a math person, at all, but I'd as soon as jump at someone's jugular if I were required to pay 100 times the amount originally agreed upon. Many fourth grade students could probably spot the difference in a much smaller amount of time. The confusion between the two amounts may be a common mistake, but after having it explained to you over and over again, you'd have to wonder what these people were on.

Verizon Math Guy got his start on YouTube, where he posted the phone conversation he had with Verizon. The post soon became one of the top viewed videos at YouTube, and he created the blog in order to respond to all the feedback he'd been getting from people who'd had similar experiences or just supported his cause. The comic guy over at xkcd (read his comics, they're grrrreat!) even drew this in retaliation and support. This is just another example of how the Internet can influence consumer public relations, in this case, for the worse.

"What now, bitches?" indeed.

The Media Whore: Part Deux

2006-12-10T20:24:00.000-08:00

So, I suppose, after taking this class, I've still retained my title. Old ways die hard, after all. But perhaps I've grown a certain amount of taste, maybe I'm a bit more discerning now.

I've learned to take media in all its forms and then dig deeper and try to figure out the target audience and hidden levels. To take media and see the big picture (that's not a pun.) Or at least, that I can write whatever the Hell I want and someone out there is bound to read it. In all seriousness, I've been aware of the popularity of blogs and how vast readership can go for a while now, but it was interesting, not to mention pretty innovative, to use it as a course requirement. This is so much better than the grade-school "journal entries" in spiral binders about your "feelings" or your favorite memory crap like that. This is a bit more impersonal, or rather just as personal as you want to make it, without feeling like too much of an oblogation

oblogation, n.
from the English "obligation" + "blog";
The need to post entries in a blog
ex. "I've got an oblogation to write about that cute thing my cat did today!"

I invented that word just now. Definition will soon be on UrbanDictionary.com

That's history in the making, people! [Edit: Okay, so I googled it and found out that I didn't invent it, but I still submitted it to UD. Oh well.]

I will continue writing in this blog, I think. I already have a personal blog that I've kept for about 5 years now, but it's nice to have somewhere to write specific bits and pieces here and there.

Recipe Time

2006-12-05T14:49:00.000-08:00

How To Recreate the
All-American Rejects/The Format/Motion City Soundtrack /Boys Like Girls
Concert Experience

Ingredients:
1 Event Center-sized auditorium, filled with crazed, seething fangirls
A metal crowd-control gate around the stage

Directions:

1. Stand against metal gate.

2. Cross your arms on the gate or ball your fists and put your arms in the defensive position in front of your chest.

3. Take a deep breath. Wait for the bands to get on stage.

4. Take one last breath.

5. Commence seething masses to push and shove you with rib-crushing force, as rock begins to start.

If all of these ingredients are unavailable, you may also stand with your back against a wall and ask a friend to crash a diesel truck, blasting a CD of your choice, in to you.

----

Besides that, the All-American Rejects headlining concert that took place 7pm, Dec. 4, last night was incredibly awesome.

I managed to get in the very front of the line with some friends, and as a result got right next to the stage, or as close as you can get with the gate in the way. Let's say I was close enough to tell you, gentle readers, that the lead singer of Boys Like Girls was wearing grey, Hanes boxer-briefs, while Tyson Ritter of the All-American Rejects may not have been wearing any at all, as his low-slung, tight-tight jeans left very little to the imagination.

Boys Like Girls
Bryan Donahue, John Keefe, Martin Johnson, Paul DiGiovanni

The first act was Boys Like Girls, an 4-guy, emo-rock band from Boston, MA. They were good as an opening act, pumping up the crowd and such. They played about five songs, most of which about girls and longing and being sad.

The Format opened by addressing the pushing/shoving issue by asking the crowd, "College students? Are you guys college students and pushing people?" However, that was the end of it and they played their set, which involved a lot of clapping and stomping.

Motion City Soundtrack seemed to be the crowd favorite so far, with the pushing and shoving and crushing of my ribcage getting even more intense. They actually stopped in the middle of one of their songs to ask if a fallen person in the back was okay and to implore the crowd to look out for everybody. Their songs were very upbeat and people around me were singing along to lyrics such as, "Let's Get Fucked Up and Die." Woo.

Of course, then All-American Rejects came on and the crowd got even wilder. Besides the fact that lead vocalist Tyson Ritter is hot, hot, hot (oh, back to the low-rise pants? For anyone who wants to know: the carpet matches the drapes. That is all.) they play a really great live show. Tyson sang to crying girls in the crowd and invited fans who stood on other people's shoulders up on stage. Their set also featured some narration, as the band would stop and tell a little story about being on the road before blasting into song.

And then...Nancy.

After one of their songs, Tyson asked everyone to greet a beautiful girl he'd been seeing lately. While all the girls boo'ed and hissed, the sneers turned into great big grins as Nancy came on stage.

Nancy is an inflatable, sex doll, by the way.

He danced around with her a little and said that if the crowd could dress the naked Nancy, the band would play for "8 more hours." This prompted a bunch of people throwing their clothes on stage, but Tyson insisted the crowd had to dress her themselves. So, he tossed her into the crowd, where she received a jacket. She would have gotten a scarf but someone took it back. The band played on for about three more songs.

Nick Wheeler, Mike Kennerty, Tyson Ritter, Chris Gaylor

There were a few special effects, such as during one song, both lead guitarist and Tyson went backstage and performed in front of a video camera, which was then projected on the huge TV sets on stage.

They pretended to end the show with a song called "The Last Song" from their first album, and left the stage until fans started shouting, "Hey, what about 'Move Along?!'" (It is their current award-winning single.) They, of course, came back on stage and rocked out on that to the screams of the crowd.

After the show, Tyson came back on stage to throw things to the crowd like guitar picks, drum sticks, the set lists and such. Then he ran off again.

All in all, a well-played show, even if it hurt to move for a few days after.

Coming soon: How I got free tickets to the Cobra Starship/Jack's Mannequin/Panic! at the Disco concert.

My dirty little secret

2006-11-29T18:04:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make.

It's something I've felt I've had to get off my chest for a while.

Ready?

Okay, here goes...

I am a Claymate.

Yeah, you read me. A Claymate. The word, which is an allusion to Hugh Hefner's bunny-girl harem relating to a fandom belonging to one of the American Idols, means this: I am mad, mad crazy for Clay Aiken.

It isn't just that I am a fan of his, but that I count myself among the many die-hard fans that are fans of his. Yes, there is a difference.

For instance, I can tell you that from the moment I saw him on American Idol, at his first audition, geeky glasses, striped shirt and all, I was rooting for him, and when he finally opened his mouth and sang "Always and Forever" by Luther Vandross, I fell out of my chair, and then began cheering for him. That's when I began to be a fan.

Share my moment.

However, I can also recall the exact moment I knew I was apart of the fandom. When I was a freshman in high school and one of my only lunch friends was a senior girl who sat in the music building hallway with me before our choir class. We'd chat about the things that interested us, music, anime, assorted geeky things (huh, maybe that's what I didn't have many friends) and then one day...American Idol. One mention of Clay, and at the end of the year, my choir teacher presented my friend and I the "I'll be the potter, if you'll be my Clay" Wacky Award. And I was proud.

So now "Handgate" has come and gone. I'll refer you all to Jeff's blog for those of you not in the know. And like a loyal trooper, I'm on his side. But not just because I'm a fan. And not just because, despite her cold and flu worries, he held her hand when they walked on to the show together.

It's because it's happened before.

Exhibit A:

That's Simon Cowell's hand, by the way.

Exhibit B:

Now, since the whole debacle and spoofing and all that, he, Kelly and even Rosie O'Donnell have reportedly made amends over what is admittedly a very silly argument that shouldn't have been as big a deal as it was.

But really, what does that say about media today if Kelly "Prom Queen" Ripa has to go and pick a fight with Clay "Choir Boy" Aiken?

Let's go to the mall!

2006-11-24T15:00:00.000-08:00

One of the best things about going home is being able to laze around in my most embarrassing pyjamas and watch TV with my dad. While my roommates favor shows like The OC and Laguna Beach, I'm a sucker for sitcoms.

However, I was unable to catch the awesomeness that was apparently last night's episode of How I Met Your Mother. Luckily, Best Week Ever was there to help me recap what I missed. Best Week Ever is a weekly television show on VH1 which goes over what's happened in pop culture in the last week. The Best Week Ever blog is around to save people from being ignorant of pop culture on a day-to-day basis.

Of course, they covered "Robin Sparkles" from How I Met Your Mother, the secret past identity of one of the characters. How could I ever forget Canadian pop sensation Robin Sparkles? How could anyone not remember her 90's hit, "Let's Go to the Mall" which was all aboot...going to the mall! Which included memorable lyrics such as "Gonna rock your body anyway / gonna rock your body 'til Canada Day" and "There's a boy I like / met him at the Food Court / Has hair like Gretsky / and does jumps on his skateboard."

I'm all out and about this stuff! Er, oot and 'boot, sorry. And check out the cameo appearance by the "Prime Minister" himself!

You can watch a better version on the CBS website, via Barney's Blog and clicking the link to "Robin Sparkles." If you have any respect for teen idols, you'll do it. You can also watch the whole episode there (go for it, just for the slap bet gag!) Also, you'll understand why it looks mid-eighties instead of late-90's, when it was filmed. Genius!

Starstruck

2006-11-17T00:06:00.000-08:00

I'd been counting down the days and finally, it came: The Day When Neil Gaiman Came to Campus.

There was a conversation and Q&A session at noon in the Old Cafeteria building that I was fortunate enough to catch the last five minutes of (get me on prepositional phrases and I'll remind you we don't speak Latin, pedant!) I made my way over to the merchandise table at the same time as he was heading out of the room. As he was squeezing his way through the throngs of people, we ended up within two inches of each other. He looked down at me and said, "Hello."

In that moment, I could have died happy.

Okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but I was ecstatic either way. In case you didn't know, Neil Gaiman is a world-famous author of many novels, short stories, poems, screenplays and of course, The Sandman comic book/graphic novel series that launched him into stardom. His most recent novel, Anansi Boys, is currently being considered for the Campus Reading Program. I have been a fan of Mr. Gaiman since I first picked up the first of the Sandman books, "Preludes and Nocturnes." I was fascinated by the fact that he took mythology, religion, the occult and mixed it flawlessly into everyday life to the point where you believe all of this magic to be true. He also used canon characters from the comic universe, such as John Constantine from the Hellblazer series, characters from Swamp Thing and old-school villians like Scarecrow and the Joker from Batman, and intertwined them all into the Sandman mythos to create his own distinct universe. This distinct blending of fantasy, horror, reality and wit is what has made him famous the world over.

And, as Professor Lilly has also testified, he's also quite handsome.

At 6:30pm, a friend and I made our way to the Student Union, to await the reading at 7:30pm. It seems we arrived at precisely the right time, because we managed to snag two seats right in the front, close enough to see him clearly and angled enough to not have our view impeded by the podium. Our seats were also optimal for getting our books signed relatively quickly, as the signing desk was directly in front of us.

When the reading officially began, Mr. Gaiman surprised and delighted us all when he revealed he'd be using us as guinea pigs. That is to say, he would be reading two unpublished pieces, one of which had never before been read aloud. The first piece, entitled "Orange," was strange and hilarious, and unique in that the whole story was written as a set of answers, with the questions omitted. The story's narrator was a young girl named Jemimah, who recounted the odd tale of a sister and a tanning experiment gone awry. The second piece was a chapter from his currently unfinished children's book, The Graveyard Book. The book depicts the story of a young baby, who's left orphaned by a terrifying killer, and somehow makes his way to a graveyard, where he is then brought up among the dead, as the only live boy in the cemetery.

Said Neil, "When I wrote the first chapter of this book, it was honestly the scariest thing I had ever written....there was a man with large knife...and I thought to myself, 'Well, there I've got my next childrens book!'"

Besides his creative writing talent, Neil also has a gift for reading his work aloud. His pauses, voice changes, and emphases adds illustrates every bit of humor and spookiness in his tales. It doesn't hurt that he also has a very nice British accent.

Because his second story took a very long time to read, there was only time for a few questions afterward, so he could get to the autographing, since he had a 6am flight to catch in the morning. He provided information on the upcoming movie of his novel Stardust which stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert DeNiro and Claire Danes, and his screenplay of Beowulf, which will feature Angelina Jolie as the voice of Grendel's mother, as well as the much-anticipated Good Omens movie. Speaking of good omens, he also said that he and Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, are "almost, kind of considering talking about possibly thinking about writing something about what [the Good Omens characters] are up to now, maybe." Good Omens was co-written during the beginning of the end of Neil's journalism career and the beginning of Terry's professional writing career.

"This was," remarked Neil, "before we knew it would sell millions of copies all over the world, and be published in forty languages and pick up awards, and before we knew that young women would write pornography about the two lead characters."

That last bit is true, by the way. Looking up "Aziraphale/Crowley" in Google will find you many NSFW (not safe for work) websites.

Once it finally came to the book signing (imagine a hundred geeks tenderly petting their copies of whatever novel they liked best), there was a flash flood of people. Not quite pushing and shoving (though I didn't stay the whole time so who knows), but a very hungry mob wanting this man to sign our things. I myself asked him to sign my copy of Good Omens and Stardust, and I also gave him a gift of a star-shaped glass jar filled with tiny paper stars, which I had assembled during my re-reading of Stardust. I believe he said it was beautiful (that could just be my mind) and I hope it might inspire him someday for who knows what.

All in all, it was an experience to behold and I for one am incredibly happy I was a part of it.

Can I take it back?

2006-11-14T08:50:00.000-08:00

So, apparently the Internet isn't for porn, after all.

There has been call to protect children from the terrors of the Web, mainly boobies and men's no-no spots, but a recent study has shown that perhaps only 1% of webpages in the cyberspace contain pornographic material, according to the San Jose Mercury News. Also, only about 6% of content received during websearches contained sexually explicit content.

Last year, Google and other search engines such as MSN and Yahoo, received orders by the United States government to turn over website addresses and the search-engine queries of their users. Google refused, citing rights to privacy of both theirs customers and the company itself. After orders were changed, Google and the other engines turned in up to 1 million websites, and others besides Google also turned in a small sample of search queries as well.

A blogger-journalist from UK newspaper Guardian Unlimited theorizes that perhaps the 55million+ number of blogs out there may be contributing to the crowding out of pornographic material.

As quoted from the Mercury article, Seth Finklestein, who is both a civil engineer and an activist of civil-liberties said, "What we are learning about the Internet is that it reflects life and that the Internet is not -- contrary to what some people might think -- more sexual than people are in general.''

In my opinion, I think that it's a little ridiculous that taxpayers' dollars are being given to a bunch of old men for the sole purpose of looking up porn. More than a little ridiculous. I would hedge on really ridiculous but I'm not much of a gambler. Look, it's out there, people, it's a thriving business! It's been here since the invention of art and will probably live on through nuclear wars, when we're forced to live in bunkers and make vulgar shadow puppets on the walls for entertainment.

It's not up to the Powers That Be to handle who's letting kiddies see a french maid take it up the dumb-waiter, just as it's not up to Ford to make sure alcoholics can't buy cars. I think parents should take the responsibility here. I mean, children are curious about things they don't understand, so they'll want to look it up. Or maybe they're on a website and a pop-up attacks them with poontang. Hey, Mom, Dad? TALK TO YOUR PROGENY! Eventually they're going to find out how they were created, and that'll probably traumatize them more than any "all gay action, all the gay time!" advert ever could. Is it so hard to grab little Skyler and Madison (I'll go off about how much I hate "hip" baby names at a later time) and talk to them about your family's personal beliefs on naked people?

"Well, you see, our religion tells us that all sexual acts should be kept between two, married people, and that this union is sacred and shouldn't be used as just recreation, but also spiritual bonding and procreation. This is why we don't think it's right for you to look at this, until you grow up and can make your own decisions about life, love and religion."

Okay, that conversation would probably only show up on Leave It to Beaver, if Wally had ever befriended Madge, the town prostitute. The point is that you should tell your kids why something is, instead of just telling them no. Oh, and maybe monitoring them from time to time. But don't make it obvious, folks. We absolutely HATE it when you sit yourself and your ashtray down with us and say, "Hey there, whatcha lookin' at?" If you ever want to drive your kids to find even more secretive ways to look up naughty bits, be direct about it.

And that's all I have to say. Now go wash your hands already.

I mean, her name is Alberta and she lives in Vancouver...

2006-11-11T11:42:00.000-08:00

With Tower Records going out of business and selling most of their stock for 30% off, I decided to indulge my theatre bug and pick up a few musical theatre soundtracks. One of the albums I picked up was the soundtrack to Avenue Q. Back in high school, even my choir teacher was raving about how great this show was. 2003 saw the heralding of this musical winning Best Musical and Best Original Score, beating out The Boy from Oz, which featured Hugh Jackman wearing tight gold pants, and Wicked, which featured a lady in greenface singing moving songs about defying gravity (ask any theatre kid and they'll be happy to sing the whole score for you.)

So, what made Avenue Q so special, you ask?

It may have something to do with the fact that it had live, nude puppet sex. Yes, that's right, puppet sex. Q is a live musical consisting mainly of puppets, parodies of the characters of Sesame Street (including a not-so ambiguously gay couple) with the exception of a few human characters, such as Natalie Venetia Belcon who portrays a down-on-his-luck Gary Coleman, who is in turn the landlord of the fictional Avenue Q in downtown New York. The show's repertoire includes songs with such elegant titles such as, "The Internet is For Porn," "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" and my personal favorite, "It Sucks to Be Me."

As such, this show is really, really funny. And not only that, it's smart and musically pleasing as well.

The whole story evolves around the inhabitants of a rundown neighborhood called Avenue Q. Princeton, a recent graduate from college, is awaiting life to begin as he ponders what exactly someone can do with a B.A. in English. He croons, "Four years of college / and plenty of knowledge / have earned me this useless degree." He finds an apartment in neighborhood as the current residents sing about how much their lives suck, except when they're together. Princeton soon strikes up a relationship with Kate Monster, one of his new neighbors. The show has many side stories, including Princeton and Kate's relationship, as well at Rod and Nicky, the musical's version of Bert and Ernie, and Brian and Christmas Eve, a Japanese therapist. Times prove tough as Nicky exposes Rod as gay (he defends himself by making up a Canadian girlfriend, see title of this post), and Christmas Eve tries to comfort Kate after a fight with Princeton, reminding her that "the more you ruv (love) someone, the you want to kir (kill) them."

The show not only explores the spheres of sexuality, whether with others or with yourself, but also the "sensitive subject of race." Kate Monster and Trekkie Monster, both puppet monsters of the Elmo variety, are seen as racially different than Princeton, Rod, Nicky and the other puppets, who are considered more human. Kate even wants to open a special "Monstersorri" school, which, she comments to Princeton, "doesn't want people like you." The character of Christmas Eve, played by Ann Harada, has an "Engrish" accent typical of a stereotypical Japanese English speaker. Gary Coleman has to deal with the fact that he is black...and also Gary Coleman. However, the characters face the problem of the growing Political Correct generation by stating that "everyone is a little bit racist sometimes / doesn't mean we go around committing hate crimes," and that not all racist statements are personal attacks, because everyone makes fun of someone.

The songs themselves are excellent. They aren't all silly songs about sex and money, but also feature a few heart-moving ballads such as "There's a Fine, Fine Line," in which Kate bemoans heartbreaks "between love and a waste of time." Another song recounts the easy days of dry-erase boards on dorm doors and meal-plans, in "I Wish I Could Go Back to College," where things were so much easier with an academic adviser to point out the way (or a T.A. to screw). Even the silly songs are expertly written, with tongue cheek lyrics, such as "Schadenfreude," which is of course about gaining happiness from the misery of others. The melodies soar and the group harmonizes, in a format that is similar to Sesame Street and Zoom! but all the while worthy of being branded "Broadway."

Unlike other satires of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues seen on Saturday Night Live or MadTV, where children and puppets are seen as stupid and unaware of real life, Avenue Q depicts modern, adult life as it really is, only with puppets. A little far-fetched, a lot offensive, but all in all a good show, for the theatre go-er who doesn't take themselves too seriously, or at least anyone who can admit that the Internet is mainly for porn.

As the play closes, the characters remind us that scary things like unemployment, breakups and George Bush, and everything in life, "is only for now."

A Normal Life

2006-11-11T10:15:00.000-08:00

Just what is considered "a normal life?" In the case of Augusten Burroughs, it would be anything but his.

Burroughs' memoir Running with Scissors is a Valium-tinged tale of a boy whose psychotic poetess mother gave him away to her shrink at the tender age of twelve. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Finch, besides having a "Masturbatariom" in the back of his office (guess what its for), is renown for his unusual treatments and habit of taking his patients home to live with him. Finch's house is a menagerie of madness in itself, as people are free to eat sink caulking, handchopping down the kitchen ceiling and live in the kind of medicated, mad craziness than Coleridge was only touching on when he wrote Kubla Khan.

Burroughs recounts curiosity after crisis after trauma in a matter that is both disturbing and yet raucously funny. Dr. Finch's solution to the young Augusten's boredom of the humdrum of junior high school and Augusten's hatred of a "normal" girl who happened to be the daughter of Bill Cosby, was to have him fake his own suicide. Burroughs wakes up in a "loony bin", getting his stomach pumped after ingesting the doctor's pills and alcohol, next to a naked man wearing a party hat sitting next to him on the other hospital bed. The man tells him that all the nurses and doctors there are crazy. Augusten lies back and thinks, "At least it's not homeroom."

Burroughs stories range from the odd (Dr. Finch believing that he can read messages from God in his own feces) to the tragic, as in the sexual relationship he developed with one of Dr. Finch's adopted patients. To note, Burroughs was thirteen and his lover, Neil Bookman, was a thirty-three year old man. Burroughs goes from being raped by Neil to being worshiped as a god among men by him. Neil's increasing obsession both fascinates him while it also frightens and disgusts him. Neil's fate is left open to speculation by the end of the novel.

Tragedy also strikes him in the form of his deranged mother, who claims to be on a constant mission to find herself. Her psychotic episodes get worse each year, as she goes from eating candle wax and then hefting seventeen-foot Christmas trees out the door. Between her and the doctor, she is kept constantly on a cocktail of medications to soothe her bouts of mania, however it has little effect. Burroughs sees his mother getting deeper and deeper into her own madness, with little comfort from the general craziness of the Finch household.

Running with Scissors is a powerful memoir about the drive of family and the power in one's self. Burroughs' life story is illustrated as so crazy, it might just be all true. Here is the story of a boy who ate candy canes for breakfast and lived anything but a normal life and survived to tell it all. He survived enough to end up working for an advertising agency at the age nineteen, with little more than an elementary school education, but a "Ph. D in Survival."

Burroughs writes at the end of the book, "Sure, I would have liked for things to have been different. But, roll of the eyes, what can you do? Shrug."

What can any of us really do but keep on running?

Would you like some bigots with that?

2006-11-03T22:24:00.000-08:00

The 1970's saw television ratings soar when Archie Bunker become everyone's favorite bigot and called his Polish son-in-law a "meathead." The show, All in the Family enjoyed many years on the tube until it was finally canceled and released into syndication. The character of Archie, played by the talented Carroll O'Connor, was so well-loved to the American audience that Archie's favorite chair was given a place of residence in the Smithsonian.

Now as we run for the close of the year 2006, we have a new racist, misogynistic, homophobic and hands down, hilarious character to love, and his name is Borat Sagdiyev.

Borat is one of the alter-egos of Sacha Baron Cohen, a British comedian known also for his similarly satiric character Ali G. Though Cohen himself is an observing Jew, the character of Borat is notoriously anti-Semitic, which is supposedly characteristic of his beloved country of Kazakhstan. As he is a successful television reporter (and the "fourth most famous person in Kazakhstan"), he is often sent out of the country to interview foreign people and bring different cultures back to his homeland. In these interviews, Cohen uses his incredible flair for manipulation, plus a ridiculous accent and mangling of the English language, to produce humorous results, such as getting a public official to admit that all Jews are going to Hell and royally pissing off a group of veteran feminists.

In Archie Bunker's world, the comedy came from the fact that he was the extreme character among a number of relatively "normal" people, and his family's response to his outrageous behavior. Cohen takes it to the streets as Borat questions regular people and professionals, presenting his outlandish views and their genuine opinions. The satire is that while Archie didn't know what he said was illogical, Cohen uses Borat's unquestioning faith in his prejudices to provide a satiric mirror on people and the cultures in which he is exploring.

Arguably, the most humor comes from when his guests actually agree with his statements. In an exotic animal ranch, Borat encounters a man even more entrenched in anti-Semiticism than he himself is. Borat manages, with very little wheedling involved, to get the man to admit that he believes Jews should be able to be hunted like deer in the forest and that Hitler was going the right way during WWII.

Thus, I recommend everyone go see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Country of Kazakhstan. Though I warn you, it's not for the faint of heart or those who suffer from chronic laugh attacks as you are sure to suffer during its viewing.

Another note

2006-10-28T15:54:00.000-07:00

I forgot to add that UbseyMovies, the winners of SJSU's Campus MovieFest, whose movie "Chicken Strip Jeff" also went on to win Turner Classic Movies' Classic Short Film Award at the Bay Area MovieFest Finale, were similarly unacknowledged in The Spartan Daily. Yes, even after the big show during Homecoming Week, which crass comedienne Margaret Cho came to host.

The campus finale was advertised all over school with banners and hand-outs, and yet even now, as I search The Daily's website, I can't find one mention of the outcome, or even a review Cho's act. The Bay Area finale, which had our students competing against other schools such as Berkeley, Stanford, and Sonoma State, was also unmentioned in the paper. Campus MovieFest may not be as big as the SuperBowl, but it is also a national competition for aspiring film makers and deserved at least a little acknowledgment after the bombardment of advertising all over campus at least.

News to me

2006-10-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

So first of all, congratulations to LouLou Quintela, Anna Pogosova and the dreamy (and apparently sleepy!) frat-boy, Kelly Sherman.

I've been closely following the events (and subsequent "non-events) of the Chevy Super Bowl Challenge Ad Campaign, ever since the members of my own team (the one I had actually met, anyway) "cut and ran" before the deadline date (*cough*youknowhoyouare*cough*) I was very pleased and excited to discover that one of SJSU's teams actually got it together and made it to the top five finalists. It was even more inspiring when Tuesday's MCOM 72 class was turned into an actual press conference, with news cameras and reporters, as the finalists were finally named. I was expecting the headline over at The Spartan Daily to be: "Advertising students score media touchdown!" or something dramatic and spirited like that.

No such luck. The story didn't get front page news; it was apparently deemed less important than trick-or-treating children in the dorms and a talent show. Rather, it was given a medium-sized chunk of space on the third page, with a few pictures. This, in my opinion was a major myopic mistake on the editor of the paper's part.

For one thing, how embarrassing for these finalists, who are also more importantly students of this university. To know that all we have to offer to them is a pat on the back and half-hearted "Good job" as they are one stop closer to winning a national competition. One that may bring the fruits of their labor into the homes of the millions of viewers across the globe, on the SuperBowl, a televised event made more famous by its commercials than the actual game on the field! A literal media touchdown, advertising gold for any student or professional of advertising! True, they haven't won the contest quite yet, they still have a ways to go, but it's the principal of the thing.

I can only wonder if there would be the same kind of treatment made for one of our Poli-Sci majors earning an internship with the Secretary of Defense or a kinesiology major training athletes for the same SuperBowl. Who knows?

All I know is that the editors of The Spartan Daily really need to reconsider what makes "news" in the future.

One nation, under blogs?

2006-10-25T21:56:00.000-07:00

I have finally gotten around to voicing my opinion on this, albeit a month late.

I was one of the apparently many who missed Robert Scoble's presentation. No, I don't suppose I had a good excuse. As of the moment, I was (and still am) unemployed and on Tuesdays class ends for me at 1:15pm. Also, my homework load was pretty minimal, besides the obvious light studying and early brainstorming.

So why didn't I go?

I suppose planning my roommate's birthday party and buying supplies had something to do with it. However, I ended up getting to my dorm around 5:50pm. I could have made it, but I'd have been a little late, though most presentations start off a few minutes late anyway.

So what's the real reason I didn't go?

I don't know Robert Scoble. I know vaguely that he used to work for Microsoft and now writes a blog and is considered famous in the blogosphere. He has written a book and sometimes geeks stop him in the street to shake his hand. That's really all I know. I could have gone to the talk and learned more about him, sure, but why do that when I could easily do a web search about him at home later?

The truth is, I'm just not his audience. Technology does interest me, and so do politics, but his posts just don't engage me, though I read Engadget, Slashdot, and occasionally Boing Boing. There are millions of blogs out there and yes, the Scoble has become one of the lucky "famous" ones, but there are other people out there who have made money just by being on the internet who similarly disinterest me as well others who do interest me.

Take Tila Tequila for example. Most high school girls (and guys) will easily tell you who she is. Tila "Tequila" Nguyen owes her fame to MySpace. She is known for being a stripper/adult magazine star turned quasi-pop star. She is known for having a huge fanbase and is friended by hundreds of people on a daily basis. She has a custom clothing line and is signed onto A&M Records. She utilized the internet to attain a cult of personality dedicated to her and launch her career. Yet, I doubt many Scoble fans could tell you who she was. If she arrived on campus tomorrow however, I think the turn out would be a lot more impressive. Minusing myself, of course.

Then there's Wil Wheaton (yes, I listened to the Burgers and Beer with Scoble). Probably a lot more Scoble fans would probably be able to tell you who he is. People know him as the guy who played the annoying kid on Star Trek. He makes a few TV appearances now and then, such as on Celebrity Poker, but is also known for his geeky blog, WWnD. He's been keeping a blog since at least 2001 and is currently ranked 514 on Technorati. Yet, if I walked in front of the Student Union and yelled, "Oh my goodness, it's Wil Wheaton!" I'd get a few head turns, but probably from people who thought I was crazy, rather than fans. (FYI: I am a fan. Hi, Wil!)

Currently, one of my favorite authors is coming to campus very soon. I am talking about, of course, the illustrious and awesome Neil Gaiman. He's written a number of best-selling novels, both for children and adults, a television series for the BBC, as well as a series of graphic novels under the title The Sandman, and of coure, keeps a blog. I am more than ecstatic to hear him read and speak and maybe even sign my copy of Good Omens. There has been minimal advertising about his arrival and his appearance does come at a cost ($7 for students). In this case, the target audiences would be fans of sci-fi/horror/fantasy genres, specifically fans of Mr. Gaiman himself, and those who'd be willing to pay up to $15 to meet him. And so, being one of them, I will attend.

So, in the long and short of it, that's why I didn't see Mr. Scoble. I'm sure he's a really interesting and intelligent guy, but he just didn't appeal to me. Sorry.

Update: Someone on Neil's blog just mentioned Wil Wheaton's blog entry about The Sandman. Deeper, Wil mentions Neil's blog as well in the next entry. If that's that not bloggerly communication, I don't know what is! He also mentioned Wil's review on Absolute Sandman on the SuicideGirls website. (Just to warn you, there's mostly naked women there, though not so much in the review)

Rise and Fall

2006-10-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

Found via Slashdot:

The New York Times came out with an article on that dying social networking site, Friendster.

To access the article, you must register with NYTimes.com, but it's free and relatively easy, so I'd suggest that you do! Otherwise, grab a copy of yesterday's newspaper.

Also, John Dvorak spoke with none other than Neil Gaiman (*heart goes kathump-kathump*) on his video podcast last week.

Vitajex, what you do to me!

2006-10-10T11:22:00.000-07:00

Long before he played Sheriff Andy Taylor in the sleepy, country town of Mayberry, relative unknown Andy Griffith's was Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, paragon of fame, greed and madness, in Elia Kazan's 1957 masterpiece, A Face in the Crowd.

Set in then-contemporary times Kazan's striking social commentary on America's cult of celebrity brings light to the chaos that ensues when one becomes too famous, too quick. The movie begins as radio reporter Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal of The Day the Earth Stood Still fame) discovers Rhodes in an local jail and asks him to perform on her radio show, "A Face in the Crowd," which is dedicated to finding simple, everyday people with special talents. Redubbed "Lonesome" by Marcia, Rhodes becomes an overnight success, winning over crowds with his country boy charm and logic, musical talent, sense of humor, and infectious laugh.

He soon moves to television, where he is famous for breaking the rules of conformity and not being afraid to speak his mind. However, things do not bode well for our hero, as he becomes ever so aware of how effective his words are on the American audience. After becoming spokesman to sham "miracle energy pill" Vitajex, increasing sales exponentially, Senator Worthington Fuller (played by the legendary Marshall Neilan in his last ever film) and his associates persuade Lonesome to start helping with his presidential campaign, ensuring a place in the government for Lonesome as well.

The power wielded by Rhodes proves too much, and he eventually crumbles under the weight of his madness and greed, when he is exposed on national television calling his viewers "sheep" and "idiots." He ends the movie alone, with only a machine with recorded cheering, as he calls out to Marcia, the one who had finally had enough.

The 50th anniversary DVD re-release of this film fifty years after the making is not only timely, but telling, as even today celebrities make national headlines and persuade the crowds to make daily decisions, from hair care to political affiliation. I recommend this as a film that every American see at least once and share with their families.

De-Skyped, unbothered and bewildered

2006-10-08T21:09:00.000-07:00

Prof. Buchwitz asks why more of us didn't protest the banning of Skype at SJSU, even though it was a globally debated issue.

Let's start with my Aunt Mary. As a high school graduation present, my dear Aunt Mary gave me phone cards. $50 dollars in phone cards. Of course, I was thankful and everything, but I will admit that I wish she had just given me the fifty bucks instead.

Why the lack of interest? Why am I so ungrateful? Why don't I care? Why am I not bothered? Personally?

This is the God-honest truth: I have something called a cell phone. Maybe they don't have them in Canada, I don't know.

I currently have Cingular Wireless. Without looking at the details of my bill, I can tell you that I have at least 250 anytime minutes, with around 500+ weekend and evening minutes. Plus, I have unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes, meaning that I can talk to anyone else on the Cingular network for as long as I want, without any extra charges. All this for a phone bill that generally comes around to about $40 a month. My unused minutes do a thing called "rolling-over," meaning they go on to the next month. I can use it whenever I want, wherever I want, with maybe a few charges for roaming, though I haven't come across any yet.

Unlike some of my roommates, I'm not on the phone for twelve of the twenty-four hours in the day (even during a movie or a television show, when it's obvious other people are watching.) At the most, I've talked for eight hours in the course of a week and a half. In the four years that I've had a cell phone with basically the same plan, I have never run out of minutes. I've never even come close to not having minutes to roll-over. I don't have family overseas to talk to, so I don't worry about global minutes either.

I don't need Skype. Besides the cell phone, I have a computer with access to the internet, meaning I can send e-mail and instant messages all I want, free of charge (except the internet bill, of course.) However, most of the relatives I want to talk to that live across the country don't know how to use a computer, let alone chat with me, so I use the cell phone.

I don't think I'd like Skype. I've used Teamspeak and Ventrilo, programs gamers use to talk to each other during gameplay. Think walkie-talkies on the internet. However, I find headsets to be a little annoying, unless you get a really nice and expensive one with a microphone that cuts down on white noise and feedback.

So I don't care about Skype. Yes, there it is. I'm sorry for everyone else who does, and I suppose there is something to be said about the fact that even if I wanted to use it, I'm not allowed to, but frankly...I just don't care. It's not gay rights or starving children, or even Britney Spears' baby. It's cold, it's not very nice, but it's the truth.

And that's that.

Magazine Clips

2006-10-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

Being a regular reader of both Lucky and Shop Etc. magazines, I had first predetermined that I would write a review and comparison of both of those publications. However, it wasn't until one of my roommates had voiced her inclination to buy a new digital camera that I came up with my idea for writing about Consumer Reports.

I've been an off-and-on reader of CR for a while now, ever since I was old enough to read the magazines on my dad's shelf, Consumer Reports being one, MAD Magazine being the other (oh, and once in a while, my mom's copy of The National Enquirer.) The appeal of MAD is obvious: brightly illustrated front cover with plenty of cartoons and plenty of crude jokes and satiric spoofs inside. But why Consumer Reports? I don't really know, except that I've always liked to be in the know about technology and, not having a lot of time on my hands, I like to have input on other people's experiences before I go off buying something. When I was younger, I liked looking at the graphs and pointing out cereals in the supermarket, saying, "Look, Daddy, that one's supposed to be the best." (Little did I know that that one graph was reviewing fiber-content and not taste.)

Just recently, Consumer Reports has come out with a sister magazine titled ShopSmart;), which is basically the same magazine, but geared towards the female demographic. While not exactly Harper's Bazaar, ShopSmart;) gives reviews and tips on finding the best deals on everything from closet organizers to fine wines, fast and simple, for the woman who likes to...dun dun dun, shop smart.

Neither of the two magazines accept paid advertising, nor do they accept free samples of products from companies, which lends to their credibility as unbiased and impartial testers and researchers. (This is something you can think about, once you read a Vogue touting Clinique eyeshadow, and then see how many Clinique ads are in the same mag.)

A quick look overs of the front covers shows a major difference. The original version favors a simple layout that stays in the same fairly consistant format each issue. Everything is laid out and labelled, with the latest car reviews in the top right corner. The dominant colors are red, black and a shades of blue. A thick navy blue line advertises the keywords, "Expert - Independant - Nonprofit."

ShopSmart;) has a decidedly more "feminine" approach. The main colors are pink (or rather, 'cerise') and dark pink ('burgundy'). The main picture depicts a woman standing in front of her perfectly hung/folded, fashionable yet sensible wardrobe, all neatly assembled and color-coordinated. She holds two knitted, sleeveless tops in front of her dog with a grin on her face, as if to ask Spot, "Which one looks better?" Bliss, indeed. And of course, the picture is advertising the perfect closet system. The keywords have changed to, "No hype - No Ads - Just Great Buys!"

Diving underneath the covers, we find that the original Consumer Reports is not so much geared towards men, as it is open to anyone. A quick glance over the Letters to the Editor page shows that indeed, both men and women read this magazine. Of course, the main show are the famous unbiased ratings and reviews. Product reviews range anywhere from nursing homes to ladders to SAT prep websites to the latest Hybrid car. Exclusive to this magazine from its sister is that is also provides a current list of recalls and safety alerts, and steps on how to turn in your broken stuff.

ShopSmart;) follows the same repertoire, but instead of providing ratings, it only provides reviews and instead encourages women with tips on finding the best bargains and what to look out for in a sale. There's the expected coverage of car seats and vacuums, but also provides reviews on laptops and healthy cereals, much like the ones in Consumer Reports (in fact, minus the ratings, these two articles are basically the same.) It also includes "take-out tips," which are more concise versions of the magazine's main articles, reprinted on a card-stock type paper, which is divided into tear-off index cards. This makes it easier to carry around camera comparisons in a purse or wallet, rather that carrying the whole magazine around.

What are my feelings towards ShopSmart;)? Well, besides the fact that I hate the fact that it has a winking emoticon in its title, it seems like a pretty informative magazine. I was expecting a "dumbed down" version of CR with vapid articles on how to make Suzy Homemaker a peruser of high-tech cleaning supplies, but in fact it retained the same type voice and authority as its predecessor, with the exception of a cute analogy between gum in a carpet and paparazzi on Tom Cruise. The version still contains articles on important matters such as safety and identity theft, while including a few others things like so-called organic beauty products and tips on shopping at outlet malls. While the magazine is geared towards women, I could also see many stay-at-home dads reading this for many of the same articles.

However, I think I don't think I'd be a regular reader of ShopSmart;), on the account of I still prefer the original Consumer Reports for its diversity in products, as well as the inclusion of actual rating charts and comparisons. The articles that I myself would be interested in reading in ShopSmart;) are more than adequately covered in the fashion/shopping magazines I already read (Lucky/Shop Etc.), even if they are rift with glossy advertisements and biased reviews.

Also, I find that it would be easier to use my dad's current subscription to CR, rather than convince him to start subscribing to ShopSmart;).

Running with Kites

2006-09-28T14:49:00.001-07:00

Edited: I am without hope. I concede to being unprepared. I'll accept the zero

A boy grows up facing war in his homeland and the loss of a powerful friendship. This summary sounds like an average coming of age novel until one adds the fact that the boy is Amir, his homeland is Afghanistan, the war includes the Russian invasion and the loss of the friendship centers around a terrible secret and the love of two fathers and their sons. Such is the premise for Khaled Hosseini’s fictional novel, The Kite Runner. As Amir grows up in a privileged household with heavy American influence, from his denim jeans, cowboy Westerns, and American cars and bicycles, the average American reader can identify with Amir and ergo gains a sense of compassion for him as he lives through his tribulations. Thus, Hosseini’s sympathetic portrayal of the plight of the Afghanis and their struggles in America marks it as positive propaganda for Middle Eastern immigrants towards American readers.

The book is subtle in its intent, as it focuses mainly on Amir and his life in and out of Afghanistan. Yet, he is frequently illustrated as not fulfilling the classic caricature of Middle Eastern life. He rides a Schwinn and enjoys John Wayne movies. Even Baba, Amir’s larger than life father, remains flexible with Sunni Muslim religious practices by relaxing with a scotch in the evenings. Amir’s

Hear all about it!

2006-09-26T11:52:00.000-07:00

Hey, kids! Do you like joining bandwagons? Do you like the sound of my voice? Do you want to fill up podcast space on your iPod? Then go ahead and subscribe to the future podcasts of this blog right here.

Thanks to FeedBurner.com podcasting and live feeds of this blog is made readily available. I'll have a button on the blog roll soon.

Also, the last blog will have a podcast as well, just as soon as my cell phone revives.

Extra, extra!

2006-09-26T09:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I picked up a copy of the San Jose Mercury News as I usually do on my way to the elevator. Head down, I scanned through the front page while I told someone to hit the button for my floor.

"Hm, another article about Jon Heder...weather looks nice today. 'Surf City USA' batttle?" This I murmured on the way up to my floor, however mid-floor I was startled by a beeping noise that I mistook to be another fire alarm. Yet, it was no such luck, and instead it was one of the guys in my elevator receiving a sports update on his phone.

"Yeah, go team!" he said as he got off on his floor, no doubt ready to call one of his buddies and inform him of the good news.

So what's the big deal with online news? Little gems such as this. As far as I know, the Mercury does not offer sports text updates, but visiting the website will offer you a plethora of gadgets and blogs and podcasts and feed to last you 'til tomorrow's newspaper. And, of course, it's all neatly organized into little sections and all are ready at your disposal.

This versus my paper version: big, a little hard to handle if you're not especially adept at folding, makes your hands feel a little weird after reading for a while. So why do I still keep reading? A matter of tradition, I suppose. A good deal of us have grown up with our parents reading the daily paper at the kitchen table, and in my case, the family rabbit hopping on top of the articles to grab attention. I actually kind of weird feeling on my hands as I trace the newsprint. After I mastering the craft of paper-folding, I like to show off my skills as I flick out the next section, sitting at a cafe, sipping coffee (soy Caramel Macchiato, old school and four pumps hazelnut instead of vanilla.)

Online articles often include a forum for readers to comment with their views on said article, but I prefer the more sophisticated method of slamming a paper on the desk of a friend and proclaiming, "Now read this! What do you think?" Besides, it's a lot more convenient to carry around, whereas cellphones and PDA's are a little harsh on the eyes to be reading all the time.

Me, I'm stuck on paper. I don't think there'll ever be a time without it. As long as glossy print ads for Gucci and Louis Vuitton will grace magazines, newspapers with their "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!" grocery sales and angry letters to the editor columns will survive.

Wrapped Up in Books

2006-09-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

Via the Fabulist , since we were on the topic of eBooks...

"DailyLit.com is my new favorite thing. You can choose from about 200 classic, public domain books and they'll send it to you in parts, via email, daily. So, for the next 75 days, I'll be reading 'The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin'. Considering I just got a Blackberry, I expect to be much more well read (and have terrible eye strain) as long as Daily Lit is around. This is so great."

Ahoy!

2006-09-19T09:38:00.000-07:00

Ye may listen to this post

---

Yarr, mateys! I be wishin' ye all a Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day, arrr. Talk Like a Pirate Day is recognized on all seven seas and continents, especially....Antarrrrctica!

I shall be with ter celebratin' with me favorite actor, Peter Sarrrrrsgaarrrrd.

Now if ye'll excuse this old sea wench, I gots a few bucklers that need swashing, arrr...

Take a ganda', it's propaganda.

2006-09-18T21:19:00.000-07:00

Hey, this is the part of the blog where Faith gets techno-savvy. Listen to today's blog here! Quality is less than Alan Cross, due to the fact it was posted via my cell phone. Enjoy.

---

This is an elephant.

This is a living room.

This is an elephant inside of a living room.

As Samuel L. Jackson might say: What is a motherfucking elephant doing in a motherfucking living room?!

Many people pondered this last Thursday when Banksy, famed British graffiti artist or "art terrorist" as dubbed by some, unveiled his latest exhibit, "Barely Legal," in a warehouse of downtown LA.

Readers of my fellow classmate and blogger Amir may remember Banksy's previous stunt of pairing up with Danger Mouse and defacing about 300+ copies of Paris Hilton's new album. (The "Barely Legal" exhibit similarly features a copy of Paris' album crawling with live cockroaches and bearing the words, "Thou Shalt Not Worship False Icons.")

The main exhibit is a play on the old adage "hard to ignore as an elephant in the living room."

However, many people are overlooking the main message of the piece and are instead focusing on the fact that there was a live elephant in the warehouse. According to an article in the LA Times the elephant's caretaker said the friendly pachyderm, whose name is Tai, has done many movies and is "used to the make-up," however some animal rights activists have found the use of the Tai as "gimmicky" and an "unnecessary" exploitation of animals. Said one visitor to the show,

"'I don't think it was hurt but they never asked him if he wanted to be spray-painted. And I don't think that's right.'"

Pardon my language, but what the fuck? How do you ask an elephant if it wants to be painted?

"Excuse me, Prince Babar, but do you mind if I take a paintbrush to your skin?"

Hahahahaha, no.

Merriam-Webster.com defines propaganda as "the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person." This is exactly what Banksy's exhibit, well, exhibits! Issues such as world hunger, AIDS, poverty, war and general social injustices are being swept under the floor and pushed aside by domestic fluff and media delights. The fact that the elephant is painted like the interior of the room (and the fact that the many A-list celebrities came to gawk) is just an add to the irony.

But no, let's focus on the elephant. The poor elephant. That poor thirty-eight year old elephant that spends most of her life on a ranch in California, when she's not out and about sending world messages through avant-garde art shows. I'm not an advocate for animal cruelty, but at the same time, she's not a circus performer. She's not being underfed. She's quite comfortable other than the fact that she was painted with non-toxic red and gold paint.

Leave the myopia to the eye doctors, people. Think outside the elephant.

Bibliosaurus Rex: RIP

2006-09-14T11:52:00.000-07:00

Here lies the Bibliosaurus Rex. Made of wood and synthetic fibers, these pressed pages wave lifeless in the ruins of old New York. Or not.

Books will never go the way of the dinosaurs, in my opinion. There are simply just too many in circulation to this day. Tools have not gone out of style to make books (printers still exist, as does ink and paper) and unless we all lose the ability to read, people will still be able to garner information from them.

Where would all the old books go? There is talk that a move to entirely digitalized books would save a lot of trees in the long run, but there would also be a cosmic waste of resources if all of the leftover books were thrown away.

While we are fortunate enough in America to have a pretty large percent of the household population own a personal computer, still not everyone has access to a laptop. Would elementary students have to read e-textbooks? How would the common man or woman get access to e-books on a global scale? People in third-world countries, with little to no access to technology would be excluded from worlds of information.

In the long run, while e-books make some things easier, they will not replace texts all together. Even with news blogs and internet webzines becoming more popular day to day, the old printed newspaper has still yet to vanish. Thus is the same with books and will be the same until information can be laserbeamed into our brains automatically.

There's no business like unsubsidized business

2006-09-11T19:34:00.000-07:00

How it works

01 Find Believers

All you need is 5,000 people who believe in you.

02 Record CD

We'll take you to the best producers and studios in town.

03 Make money

We give away your music for free. By doing so, you make money.

Sounds ludicrous, doesn't it? It probably is, but it is also how SellaBand plans to work.

SellaBand is an online music company from the Netherlands that does exactly what its name implies: it sells bands.

Artists promote their bands and in turn sell 5,000 shares at ten dollars each. Once the band attains their goal of $50,000 (it is put into an escrow account until then), the band is taken to a studio and a producer and has their music recorded. The music is then freely distributed on the internet. Buyers of shares receive special, limited edition CD recordings. The bands will also get CDs that they can sell on their own (at concerts, online, etc) and receive 50% of the profits.

Where's all the money come from? Advertising. All the ad revenue received for that band will be split equally between the band, SellaBand, and the buyers of shares.

A&R, operations, marketing/promotion and administration all rolled into one!

And that's how it works. Or how it's supposed to anyway.

Johann Vosmeijer, once an executive at Sony and now Sellaband's managing director, has addressed doubts and concerns about how this free service on one blog. He hopes that Sellaband will remain "as transparent as possible" about its practices and also remain a free service for its bands. However, I failed to find any more information on what exactly "advertising revenue" was, except for the fact it had to do with how much of your music was downloaded. Also, people downloading the music have to be unique members, aka non-shareholders, in order for profit to be generated. However, the company says that after 12 months, the band will receive all recording rights to their music and Sellaband will have no shares of the money made in future recordings in which they are not affiliated.

I don't if this is the definate answer to piracy on the internet. After all, this service is mostly for new, unestablished musicians. Those musicians who are well-known and more likely to have their music illegally downloaded will still be stuck in a muddle. Also, if these new artists become popular and move on to another record company, their music will probably not be as freely distributed. This may cause a backlash resulting in more piracy and less sales.

However, Sellaband may be on the right track. Maybe in the future, all bands will be communally owned and managed and promoted. It's highly doubtful, but not impossible. For now, the company seems to be harnessing the power of the consumer, instead of running away in fear.

And who knows, it just might work.

The Greatest Blog in the World

2006-09-06T08:22:00.000-07:00

Lore Sjoberg of Wired.com has written a satiric review on blogs. Here's a quote:

"Blog" itself is short for "weblog," which is short for "we blog because we weren't very popular in high school and we're trying to gain respect and admiration without actually having to be around people."

He also adds in some humorous examples of "perfect" entries for some of the more well-known blogs, such as Boing Boing and Slashdot.

I first started blogging in late seventh grade on DeadJournal.com, the tragically goth, estranged cousin of LiveJournal.com, as a way to convey my feelings (i.e. write horrible poetry) and keep in touch with friends (i.e. bitch about them.) I moved into LiveJournal in froshman year and became so enamored with it that I ended up buying a paid account in order to utilize more user pics, create phone posts, get a new e-mail address, etc. Now that I've graduated from high school, I still blog regularly, whether as a homework assignment or just a way to show pictures of my new life in San Jose. I'd be lying if I said I didn't like the attention; I get warm fuzzies everytime I get a comment, but at the same time I don't write so much for other people as I write for myself.

So, what are your opinions? Are blogs a valuable journalistic tool or are we just tools with journals?

The Download Lowdown

2006-09-03T14:38:00.000-07:00

I wrote this after a successful return to my hometown of Modesto. The two hours of driving through freeway and minivans could not have been done without music constantly filtering my ear through the speakers of my Scion (the xA, not the one that looks like a toaster.) However, there are certain record companies out there who, due to the idea my music was on a compiled mp3 CD, might not have welcomed me as happily as my parents did when I arrived home.

The idea of music swapping is not inherently evil, as some would have you believe. Getting all your friends together and swapping CDs is innocent enough, until someone says the word "burn."

"Listen to this, my brother's friend burned me a copy."

"Oh, Jake burned me a mix CD, I think he likes me!"

"I've only got a few of their songs burned on to here, but I really like their stuff."

Suddenly a big, fat "ILLEGAL" stamp is rained down into the situation. Pirating is bad, don't you know? If it's easy, entertaining, and free, it's got to be illegal. Everyone knows that.

And yet, while some companies, like the infamous Napster, have thrown in the towel due to legal pressure, other companies thrive on the idea of downloading entertainment...as long as it's paid for. Companies acknowledge that downloading is just easier than going to the store and buying the whole CD and are using it to their advantage.

In 2005, Pepsi took advantage of peoples' new greed for free music by launching a new marketing scheme. Buy a Pepsi, get "free" music. In other words, a consumer buys a bottle of Pepsi, looks under the cap and gets a secret code used for garnering any song in iTunes. People lapped it up! Students in high school were trading bottle caps for snacks, homework and rides to the mall. Of course, there were some flaws to the plan, such as "bottle tilting" (seen here in a Gizmodo article) but the ploy worked. People downloaded legit music and Pepsi continued to make millions.

In the gaming world, Microsoft's XBox Live allows users that pay for its service to download updates, new characters and quests for its games, as well as download a few retro games. The upcoming Sony's Playstation 3 is planning to take on this concept and have gamers download the regular games straight off the network. Instead of buying disks, people will pay for individual downloads or subscriptions. Once again, entertainment is being made easier...and profitable.

However, these strategies have still yet to completely deter illegal downloading. As long as programs such as LimeWire and BitTorrent make pirating easy, people will continue to share as many music, movies and other files as possible. And why not? Isn't supposed to be "all about the music?" What happened to the simply ideology of entertaining people just for the sake of it? Not everyone who burns a mix CD for their sweetheart is planning to rob artists of their millions.

But alas, the record companies just don't get it. Instead, they are trying (and failing) to pull a Barney Fife, in other words, "nip it in the bud." However, as long as the words "free," "easy", and "accessible" are attached to mp3's, the flower of rebellion will bloom.

Me? Well, I've got another trip planned this week, and it would be a crime for the drive to be so silent...

Got me hot and bothered

2006-08-30T17:12:00.000-07:00

For all us filthy bibliophiles, via The Fabulist.

Here is some hot, hot library smut. Yeah, that's right, libraries from all over the world, some of the most beautiful and oldest and all jam-packed full of sexy, sexy books. Here's the link. Don't worry, I won't tell Mom and Dad.

Consumer Whore

2006-08-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

That's basically what kind of consumer I am. I take in media of all forms, how ever I can get it, whenever I can get it. No discrimination. Music, movies, television, theatre, books, video games -- whatever I can get my hands on! I like to stay connected in this desert of humanity we have to face day to day.

For example, after about a week of deprivation, some of my suitemates and I found a television in our living room. Imagine this:

I've just woken up from a lovely nap, and was disappointed to see that in that past hour, I'd only downloaded 86% of episode 1 on "Who Wants to Be a Superhero?" Sighing and cursing university internet, I cancelled the download and decided to download all six episodes at home. My roommate was talking with her boyfriend on the cellphone (as usual) and surfing the 'Net. Music was playing outside from a concert and all was pretty quiet in the suite.

Cue one of the other girls knocking on our door asking, "Hey, did you see the TV in the living room?" And then cue the three of us rushing to the next room and gaze at it, in it's 14" wide glory. We plugged it in, regardless of the lack of cable box, and through the static, I heard the sound of angels. All this time, we'd been deprived of television, even the plasma screen in our floor's lounge didn't work, and now we were already planning our television schedules.

Tuesday is "The Real World" for one girl. Wednesday is "Laguna Beach" for her and my roommate. "Project Runway" for me, during the commercials. Thursday is the VMA's, if they haven't already passed. We're getting excited that we can actually by a TV Guide now.

One girl said she'd bring in her Xbox, my roomy wants to bring her N64, and I'm all geared up for my PS2. "We Love Katamari," "Goldeneye," and "Halo," here I come!'

Sunday, artsy Sunday

2006-08-28T23:12:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday was a day of adventure downtown. I went to Mass at St. Joseph's Cathedral Basilica out on Market Street.

The cathedral is beautiful, gorgeous. Colors and Grecian statues of saints and glorious echoes and stained glass and basically everything the TV taught me cathedrals to be. Well, besides dark, damp, spooky Gothic domes of bats and mumbling monks, anyhow.

Afterwards, I took a small trek across the street to the San Jose Museum of Art and it was...different. Many of the exhibits focused on the intersection of art and science, the theme was entitled: Edge Conditions. To me? Media confusion. There was one art piece that consisted of little LED marquees scrolling phrases beginning with "I am," which were collected off of the Internet, from chat rooms, instant messaging, and yes! even blogs. This "Listening Post" (so entitled) is said to collect the "global unconscious" of the 21st century. It was different, I liked it. I think it was art. One piece showed how daylight differs from two sides of the world. One recorded the effect of pollution on the environment, using two cameras to capture scenic highways with smoggy skies, and a third to film various gas stations. Many of the art pieces weren't so much about what they looked like, but how others interacted with each piece, such as a kind of video game called "Endless Forest" in which you communicated with other users with emotes instead of words. Did I mention that you and everyone else play an elk?

Another current exhibition is Jessica Steinkamp's "Immerse Yourself" series of projected backgrounds and "three-dimensional sensory experience(s)." Maybe it was art, but I felt like I was walking through a bunch of Windows Screen Savers. Has growing up watching Toy Story desensitized me to computer generated artwork or was I simply not smart enough to get it?

A different part of the museum showcased an artist named Gustavo Ramos Rivera, who showed paintings on regular canvas with paints. Abstract, modern. I don't understand abstract art at all, once again I am not "artsy" enough. I don't look at splashes of paint and see revolution, well, not normally. Sure, it was colorful, but the shapes didn't have meaning to me. It wasn't like the cathedral where everything had shape and was made brighter, but these were just bright shapes. Someone who had studied art could look at it and make sense of it maybe, but does it make it less art to me because I don't understand it? If so, does that mean that all these paintings, sculptures and monuments with swirling D's and raised monoliths are in a way being intellectually horded from everyone else by those who had been taught to appreciate...whatever these represent?

I could look at the church and see beauty and call it art, was it because the idea of church is beautiful to me? Looking at the technological switchboards and globs of paint on canvas, I saw different, interesting, boring, or grotesque. It's been labelled art, but I don't find it very beautiful. Is this because I fail to see the true beauty in these pieces? Or maybe, not all art has to be considered beautiful. Maybe it just has to be there.

Someone once said something like, "If you have to have it explained to you, you'll never understand." I guess this is what they were talking about.

According to Their Desert

2006-08-26T21:49:00.000-07:00

Heading towards my dorm on my way back from a little downtown adventure, I spotted a new friend of mine (we'll call him Jack) through the window of the laundry room. He waved me over and I went inside to chat with him and his roommate (we'll call him Robert) while they waited for their loads to finish. Robert had his laptop out on the counter and was in the middle of showing Jack the "Star Wars Kid" video. If you haven't seen or heard of it because you've been hiding under a rock in the Himalayas for the past few years, Star Wars Kid started as a video a boy had made of himself using a golf club imitating a light saber fight. Following in that vein, we watched "Nintendo 64 Kid" (a little boy and his sister receive an N64 for Christmas and he gets very, very excited, jumping around screaming, "N SIXTY-FOOOOOUUR!") and "The Numa Numa Dance" (an overweight man from New Jersey lipsynching and dancing to a Russian techno song.) We ended the session (after watching one German and one mock commercial involving fellatio. Don't ask.) with a liquor store surveillance video featuring a man buying a bottle of vodka and then smashing the woman behind the counter over the head with it before robbing the cash register.

There are those who claim that those featured in the videos are getting their just deserts; if they didn't want anyone to see it, why film it? The "Numa Numa" dancer uploaded his video onto Newgrounds (a flash animation/game site) and subsequent linkage turned him into (even if now unwilling) Internet star. In the case of "Star Wars Kid" however, a classmate at school had found the videotape in the basement and shared it with a few friends, eventually uploading it to Kazaa (an online peer-to-peer file sharing service) and marking him as a target for laughter and humiliation worldwide.

Time for an anecdote:
I remember a time when I went to the kitchen in the middle of the night for a midnight glass of milk. Clad in somewhat less than presentable sleepwear, I opened my fridge and reached for the jug when I heard an appreciative honk from a car outside. I'd forgotten the one-way screen, which made things hard to discern from the outside during the day, made things only much too clear when the light was on in the kitchen at night. That brief moment of embarrassment from one man in the white Toyota truck (emblazoned in my mind to this day) can't compare to the idea of being caught doing the polka in similar garb, and then having it blasted on the Internet for God knows who to see. Thus, I can pretend to relate to these two poor (but hilarious) souls.

YouTube.com and Google Video are rife with all kinds of footage like this. VH1's "Web Junk 20" showcases the best of these in an hour-long show. What is it about these clips that make them turn into phenomenas? Shows like "America's Most Wanted" frequently re-enact or show footage of violent crimes mostly in order to inform people that there are dangerous people out there. However, how much is just for entertainment value? And how does the fact that it's happening "in real life" entertaining to watch? Is it pure Schadenfreude (taking pleasure out of someone else's pain)? For the first two, probably not. We see two guys having the time of their lives in front of video cameras, performing like they normally wouldn't in front a regular audience. We think it's hilarious because they're dancing funny or "looking stupid." However, would many laugh at the fate of "Star Wars Kid," who became chronically depressed after the constant bullying and teasing the video earned him and still seeks treatments at psychiatric facilities? Is it the shock-factor of seeing someone seriously injured (which makes shows like "Jackass" amusing for some)? Who knows?

But we laugh, we gasp, and in some sick way, we enjoy what we see and continue ask our neighbor to pass the popcorn.

I guess all I have to say is: extra butter, and go easy on the salt, please.

(P.S. Yes, it's "deserts." "Dessert" is a delicious treat usually served after dinner. "Desert" can either be an arid region receiving little rainfall, as well as a deserved reward or punishment. Shakespeare and the Apostle John can back me up on this.)

Techno-logic

2006-08-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

Today, I stopped by the Spartan Bookstore to buy bluebooks and highlighters. I ended up stopping by the computer center as well. Something had been weighing on my mind and I just had to let it out.

I got one of the tech's attention and smiled, fidgeting nervously. "Pardon me," I said, "but I'm about to ask a very silly question."

"That's fine. We're here to answer silly questions," he answered, smiling back.

"Okay." I let out a breath and then looked up at him desperately. "How do I know my iBook is not going to explode into a fiery doom?"

The clerk looked at me and very seriously and said, "Take the battery out of the computer and only use it when you need it without the AC adapter. You might want to check out the Apple Support site to see if your model is a part of those at risk."

"Thank you," I replied and steadily made my way back to my dorm.

Let's hold up a minute. This is not as crazy as it may sound. AppleDefects.com reported (via FoxNews) yesterday that Apple was issuing what might be the "second biggest recall in US history" due to shoddy batteries from Sony (link here.) Apple has not been the only company with exploding laptops, as Sony has also provided batteries for Dell and of course, Sony. See AppleDefects.com to see more articles on these electrical infernos. Do not let your laptop overheat, Apple or not, though MacBooks and MacBook Pro's have been recorded to heat up into the 100F's. Definately not safe for your lap! Please note that some of the fires started when the laptop was still turned off. Heating up can exascerbate the problem, but it is not the only trigger. The only solution (so far) is a new battery.

Lucky for me, when I got home I found out that since my iBook is a 14" it is therefore not one of the models prone to explosion. However, just in case, I'm going to head over to Fry's whenever I can and pick up a non-Sony computer battery.

The Truthful Pelvis

2006-08-24T19:26:00.000-07:00

On Monday, I attended a Shakira concert with my best friend. Let me begin by informing you that we only attended because we had won the tickets on a local radio station. Somehow, the discussion we had had earlier concerning the fact that both the Colombian songstress and I shared a lack of height was serendipitous to a contest in which one had to be the first caller with the answer to this question: "How tall is Shakira?"

The concert itself was amazing. Wyclef Jean opened up the concert, rapping in different languages (including Korean!) and his sister sang a soulful tune as well. Wyclef also started a a mini-protest which ended with a lot of chanting, "Stop the war!" Shakira herself sang a lot of songs in Spanish that I didn't quite understand, but the enthusiasm and passion she put into her performance was outstanding. Most impressive was a number where she she sang in a flowy, red gown and then twirled around until the sleeves and skirts lengthened and flowed around with her so she looked like a rose with petals fluttering around her. Of course, the laser lights and band was great too.

There was a good crowd -- lots of yelling and screaming and clapping, though not in a rude way. I suppose the only way to show support for a performer is to mobilize your vocal chords in a high-pitched wail of appreciation. I can't complain because I was participating as well, but it does make me wonder why putting a camera or a microphone in front of almost anyone will ultimately produce a loud "WOOOO!"

I think I've figured out what I want to do for my group presentation, and I will ~~gut those who take it from me~~ be sad if someone else takes it first.