- All this Jenny/Jimmy Olsen stuff is hilarious! Go ahead, google “jenny jimmy olsen” and watch the news feed explode. I’ll wait. Comic Book Resources – who I follow on Facebook — recently took a leap into the deep end and asked their “friends” how they feel about it. The cries of outrage were astounding. It’s as if The Supreme Court decided to strip the Constitution of the 4th Amendment. Now, to CBR’s credit they recently posted an article supporting the idea… or at least one of their writers did. I do see some amount of irony (granted, it isn’t exactly the same thing but it’s close; race and gender are just barriers) in that the fanboys unequivocally came to the aid of Idris Elba when white supremacist groups lost their shit because he was playing Heimdall, a Norse God, in Thor. Having Jimmy Olsen be a chick isn’t much different than having the gatekeeper of Asgard be a black dude: she can have the exact same personality, she can do the exact same things as before. I know, I know, “then why change it??” Well I’m not one of the screenwriters or filmmakers so I can’t really answer that. But I’m sure they have some reason. These things aren’t just random.
- Perhaps Blade Runner should have taken place in future Bejing, not L.A:
Here’s a good article about China’s government facing resistance in their efforts to cut emissions. Resistance from, of all things in a “socialist” society, state-owned corporations, private corporations, and “local interests”. Doesn’t sound much like Communism to me.
- Even when the major television networks or film studios aren’t directly adapting comic book properties, they’re often times stealing them. Such is the case with a new show set to debut on ABC. Funny thing is, they passed the option to adapt the comic they’re lifting from. Heavily, to say the least. Just another way for the people with the ideas to get screwed, I guess. And ABC has a history of this too, they borrowed (again, heavily) concepts from Bill Willingham’s “Fables” to create a show called “Once Upon A Time”. Oh yeah, and that was after they declined the “Fables” pitch. This new show I shall not name, but it seems to be ripping off a great new comic series from Image called “Revival”.
- Just woke up to this is my Twitterfeed:
RHYMEFEST:
“If all y’all think the Mega Church is so bad how does it fill it’s seats with do many people if it has no value?”
Yep, cause the value of things is always directly dependent on the amount of people that like said thing. Annnnnd unfollow.
I’ve been going on an unfriending, unfollowing, fuckin’ delousing tear of late. It’s great! Instead of getting in pointless and dumb arguments with people over social networking for the stupid shit they say, or share, or like, I just hit that one button. Problem solved. The people I debate with are people I care about and don’t want to unfriend.
- Quick Warren Ellis brain dump on the current state of social media, and where it might be heading in the immediate future. The recent Instagram ordeal (probably a mostly imagined ordeal) and the applied changes to Facebook seem to be the first steps in a new paradigm for social networking. One that Uncle Warren describes as the entire network “calcifying into Big Media”. Which is kind of a problem and counter-intuitive. It feels good to read that the interest in blogs continues to grow, even if the active number continues to decline. Blogging is the constant, it has always been there and always will. Even after the major news media outlets (print, online, and everything in between) declared it dead more than a couple years ago. Less blogs, more blog interest, good for me. Even if I suck at it.
- I’m hearing really bad things about The Hobbit. Often times I get more of an idea of whether I’ll like or not like a movie based on its BAD reviews. Rotten, if we’re talking RT lingo. The Rotten reviews of The Hobbit could be easily summed up as: “long, overstuffed, and tedious”. Which really makes sense when you think about the fact that it’s a relatively short children’s/young adult novel stretched into a 3 motion picture trilogy, the first of which clocks in at nearly 3 hours. And everyone that enjoyed it keeps saying “it isn’t fair to expect another Lord of the Rings”, while a bunch of critics who think it’s terrible keep saying “it seems Jackson is less interested in telling the story of The Hobbit and more interested in making another Lord of the Rings”.
- Speaking of Smaug the Dragon, I’M ADDICTED TO SKYRIM. Alduin’s way cooler anyways. World eater.
- When it comes to movies, Ethan Anderton of SlashFilm posted his 5 biggest disappointments of the year. I can’t say I agree or disagree because I have not seen literally any of those movies.
- Last night I made the mistake of beginning to watch the Lance Bangs Pavement documentary “Slow Century”. A mistake because I should have known it would’ve been too fascinating to turn off, no matter how late the hours got. If you’ve got the time, here it is:
- Sage Francis has resurrected the Tumblr Hello There, Racists after an apparent shut down. I think it’s outrageous to say it isn’t fair to publicly chastise these people, knowing full well that Twitter and Facebook are publicly viewed domains (they’re basically the 21st Century “public square”). It also serves to remind us of some very important things, two of which: you’re not invisible on the Internet, and if you want to say outrageous shit you’d better damn well be posting anonymously (then again anyone with half a brain can trace an IP address), and yes… racism definitely still exists. Some of this shit is just disgusting.
- Very interesting article, that very well might go over your head a little (went over mine at least), on the nature of dark energy. Is it static or dynamic in its existence. If it’s dynamic… yeesh, the philosophical implications of such a thing are astronomical; a form of matter whose density and composition and structure changes as it shifts though space time??
While hypothesized dark energy can explain observations of the universe expanding at an accelerating rate, the specific properties of dark energy are still an enigma. Scientists think that dark energy could take one of two forms: a static cosmological constant that is homogenous over time and space, or a dynamical entity whose energy density changes in time and space. By examining data from a variety of experiments, scientists in a new study have developed a model that provides tantalizing hints that dark energy may be dynamic.
The results are still far from conclusive, but the scientists hope that future data might narrow down the models with greater accuracy. They hope that observations by the Planck spacecraft (launched in 2009; first data available in April 2013) and the Euclid spacecraft (launch date is 2019) could help pinpoint the dark energy models that most closely describe our expanding universe.
- Great piece of street art (graffiti, if you prefer that term; I really could care less what it’s called) from GOIN, who I believe works out of the UK:
- Holy shitballs, hello! I got back from Europe last week and have been sort-of slowly getting back into my life in MN. But that’s not the whole story. Another part of it is I thought after dedicating myself to a almost hour-long album for around 10 months I would take some time off of making music. This is not the case, as I’ve got a whole slew of new beats in the pipeline already, and a remix project that’s a whole boatload of fun to boot. Long story short: I’M ADDICTED to it. Anyways…
- 8 Epic Heroes Who Committed Mass Murder at IO9, apparently in honor of Judge Dredd and the new film version. Supposedly the movie is a faithful to the original 2000AD strip, and John Wagner (creator) endorsed it. I’m guessing this is true, considering Karl Urban (who was probably initially hired at least partially for his looks) does NOT take the helmet off through the entire run time. But this article is getting it wrong in a sense: Dredd is not a hero. He’s a fascist who’s so dedicated to law and order he puts that ahead of the people he supposedly serves. Like Rorschach (also very much so not a hero).
- I’m on Twitter. I have been since the Spring(?). Twitter’s cool because you don’t get all these damn graphic memes that have become a staple of Facebook. eCards stand as notoriously annoying. If someone posts a picture, you’ve got to click to see it. Also, you don’t get these rambling rants that drift into nowhere fast. My feed consists mostly of comic book artists and writers, and musicians. It works.
- More great news for Warren Ellis while I was away: he’s been signed to write his first non-fiction book! The book will be based on a very interesting talk he gave at something called Cognitive Cities Conference in Berlin last year. It has to do with the “haunting of what hasn’t happened yet” as it relates to futurism and science fiction. Here’s the original talk:
I actually find myself weirdly nostalgic for the authentic monsters of politics. Even the sly, hollow hustling of Tony Blair would be preferable to the callow bafflement of Nick Clegg, the unnaturally shiny forehead and beta-male posturing of David Cameron, and the… well, whatever Ed Miliband is. There’s Vince Cable, whom lots of people seem to like the idea of, but his presence, unfortunately, is that of Gravedigger #2 in one of the less successful Hammer Horror films.
- Finally, a little magical sigil from Deviant Art. Not sure what it means, but I am fascinated by this stuff for some reason.
- Julian Assange hiding out in Ecuador comes close to defining irony; here’s an article from February of just this year titled, “Ecuador’s [President] Under Fire for Media Laws”, which goes on to say, “President Rafael Correa of Ecuador is leading a relentless campaign against free speech” and “the most comprehensive and ruthless assault on free media under way in the Western Hemisphere”. Nevermind, it defines irony.
- One gripe I have with current state critically acclaimed music is that a disproportionate amount of it is infinitely happy. I’m happy sometimes too. It’s good to be alive. But far too many bands are failing to explore the darker sides of music (some of these band’s lyrics get dark, I guess). It’d be very interesting to somehow take all the acclaimed albums of the last two years and compare the amount of minor-key’d songs to that of years past. A lot of it is major keys, with very consonant, resonant melodies and hooks. In previous decades/cultural trends this has been the aim of Top 40/Pop music, not independent and/or acclaimed music. And considering the uncertain atmosphere that seems to be leaking into almost every aspect of our lives on a global scale, one would think it’d be the opposite. What’s probably really going on here is bands/musicians/possibly artists are overcompensating for this, and using their output to cope with all the unrest. But for me, it just doesn’t seem honest a lot of times. And even when it does feel honest, it is not for me.
I tried Googling this, to see if anyone else what noticing or writing about this… I found nothing.
She was also intrigued to discover that Hopper, who is regarded as a realist and who painted the houses in Gloucester with great precision, manipulated one important aspect of what he saw. “He changed the light and shadows in his pictures a lot and combined different times of day so that the shadow might go in two directions – that’s how he created his narrative, his drama.” Albert Halaban responded to this by taking a more painterly approach to her photographs and manipulating the light as Hopper had done in the 1920s. “The houses that he painted remain, but the narratives he created only exist on his canvases. Standing in the same places, I was inspired to take my own liberties and create narratives that are my own.”
- The social-networking feeds, blogosphere, and internet media outlets of the world are fluttering alight right now with memories of 9/11. Everyone seems to be saying something, but the hard truth is no one is really saying anything. All these “We will never forget”s aren’t necessarily accurate, as it seems to me we cannot forget what we never learned. Sadly, 9/11 could have been one of those rare, transcendent moments for a group of people (perhaps, even, all people) that forever alters their very existence. One of those once-in-a-few-hundred-years moments. Where an event is so mind-bendingly huge, so utterly foreign yet so familiar, and so deeply personal that we take a step back to examine where we’ve been and where we’re going; not out of curiosity, out of necessity.
Is the Egyptian government serious? Their counter-measures to massive, country-wide protests (citizens spitting upon the President and the whole control system, sheer chaos in the streets) are simply shutting down the Internet and limiting cellular communication? For real??
Apparently, it is NOT WORKING. And why would it? The Internet — Twitter, Facebook, the “blogosphere” — is not the cause of civil unrest. Neither is any US President, past or present. Or the global media machine. Or fucking Che Guevara t-shirts. The cause of civil unrest is and always will be: despots, corruption, militarism, religion, poverty, etc. The social-networks of today perhaps play a role in dissemination, as we witnessed with the Iranian election protests a couple years ago, but they are irrelevant when it comes to that fire inside you. Burning hot. That shit doesn’t come from Twitter.
I can’t believe they even tried… thinking it would have any sort of law-and-order effect on those protesting. If anything, it’s having the total opposite effect on the country: government shuts down your communication for being pissed off and it instantly pisses you off more. Some hash-tag was floating around out there — “#Jan25″ — which was used for organizational purposes on a local and global level. The Egyptian Government ended up taking out a huge chunk of internet access (some 88%) in the aftermath. But the government can’t afford to black it out forever, they rely on it to run the damn place.
It doesn’t matter anyway. Have Egyptians ever had a better networking tool than the offline one: mosques?
This isn’t ending anytime soon. Especially not with a simple flick of the Internet switch.
The Expedition 23 crew, helmed by Colonel Douglas Wheelock, left for the International Space Station months ago. Wheelock, who apparently has a Twitter account (awesome), assumed command of the ISS on arrival. Since then he’s been posting some pretty mind-blowing shots of our planet from the ISS… like Europe at night:
I don’t rank music. I think it’s silly. I don’t rank paintings or novels, why should I rank music or film? It’s not productive, and it completely goes against the very notion of “art” in any form. Music is not baseball; there are no rankings or statistics. Monetarily? Yes. For example, this terribly annoying singer who sports American flags and money signs on stage during her show (wow, what a winning combination that is) called “Kesha” is ranked very high amongst single track and also album sales for the year. But, who really gives a fuck? Music as a business? Yep, that can be “ranked”, if you wanna call it that. Music as an art? Not so much.
Every time we get to mid-December everyone and their brother — who writes over at Blogger on his site that specializes in perpetuating meaningless societal trends on a laughable scale (You’ve managed to get 1,000 views? Wowwww), who probably abandoned said site with the “invention” of Twitter — comes out with their list of the best [_______] of the year. It’s sad, I think. And although I like to do somewhat of the same thing for my own personal reasons (to look back and see what I bought, didn’t buy, etc, and to look ahead at next year in music), I absolutely will not “rank” the music. No. Because it just doesn’t work that way. I can share my favorite albums of the year, in the hope that some of the more under the radar groups and people get more recognition than they do, but I cannot rank the best albums of the year.
With that said, I’ll likely put together a group of my favorite albums in the coming days. I hope someone, somewhere, is turned on to something they’ve never heard of before.
It was an odd year for music, though. Part of me feels slighted a little, part of me feels thankful for the wonderful new bands I’ve discovered, and part of me just wants to move on. More later…
I have a confession to make. About 2 years ago I created a Twitterprofile, just before the massive boom the site experienced in late 2007. I “tweeted” once (something along the lines of: “I’m reading the newest issue of Thunderbolts right now, and it rocks”), then deleted my account.
Why did I do it? Sign up, I mean (it should be obvious in about 5 minutes why I closed it…)? This guy convinced me to; he’s a favorite writer of mine. At the time he was giving his fans updates via his cell-phone, presumably from the “pub”, through several different outlets: his website, his [Bad Signal] e-mail list, and Twitter among others. “What could be a better way to follow my favorite writers?”, I thought. It’s true too, if you’re a writer, director, musician, or anything of the like, Twitter‘s the best way to give your fans updates of your art quickly, without the bullshit of a corporate website, and honestly. John Faverau’s updates from the set of Iron Man IIare phenomenal examples of this (anyone else see that pic of Mickey Rourke as Whiplash/Crimson Dynamo?? Holy moly…).
The problem with Twitter now is everyone and their brother’s got a profile, if not two of them. And what percentage of “everyone and their brother” is in the midst of recording an upcoming album I’m interested in? Seriously. I don’t give a shit about what you just threw in the oven, or bought at Target. It seems mindless and trivial; not to mention it goes against everything Twitter claims to monopolize: streamlined communication amongst individuals in a digital world. I’m not telling, I’m asking. If I post something along the lines of “Just threw some Tomato-Basil chicken on the grill, looks delicious”, is that communication?? I mean TRUE, real communication. I understand it’s one-way, that’s the point, but is that real or just a specific statement about the goings-on of a life no one cares about?
Of course, now probably isn’t the right time to be talking shit about one of the most popular networking sites on the planet. Apparently, Twitter, Flickr, etc have been invaluble resources in reporting directly from ground zero in the protests of the recent Iran elections. If the site can help point out injustices, give us information from the PEOPLE directly (not some 24-hour news channel blowhard, from Wolf Blizter to Bill O.), and connect people across the globe, hey, I’m all for it. Please don’t misunderstand that.
But the percentage of people saying something of use (like giving the world information directly from a protest) is tiny. Perhaps this isn’t so much a dig at Twitter as it is the world at large, societies so entrenched up their own asses that it’s become “cool” to tell people you’re running to the store for socks and underwear. Maybe Twitter just picked the wrong planet at the wrong time. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let it off the hook. And whatever happened to anonymity? I don’t want the modernized free world to know my every single move, and frankly I don’t understand why everyone else does so much (wait- that whole “head up own ass” smug-ness thing I mentioned). To me- it’s just way WAY to Flow My Tears, the Policeman Saidand even self-made 1984-ish to be an option at all. When I look at the Twitter “revolution” — as some call it — it pains me to say it’s leading to both a very interesting place (Iran protest sense) and a very scary place (every other “tweet” EVER) in regards to the future of humanity.
And I didn’t even mention how “social networking sites” are actually harming, in the long run, our ability to connect to one another, not helping. But that’s another rant for another day.
