Grrrrr.

I can't believe this little piece of advertising I saw yesterday that my school just put out. It's terrible! I was appalled when I saw it. The lighting is so-so and the camera movement! The camera movement its terrible has the maker of this clip not heard of cutting? Those are just some of the issues I have, an advertisement should not be more than 2 minutes in length. This feels more like unsolved mysteries than an ad for the school. OH AND LETS NOT FORGET THE COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENTS! The song at the end is on a CD that has not even been released yet. I doubt they asked the artist for the use of the song. DENNIS! You like your reading the whole time, DO A VOICE OVER!

I'm not going to go into what I think the Sociology course at this school does to the students enrolled in it but from the ones that I have witnessed I don't believe there will be any 'better helping' coming from them. These systems that they want to be fixed generally can't be fix by us 'western folk' unless we go and invade the country, and well we all know what happens then. Honestly it saddens me to know that the guy who made this thing is one of the senior film buffs in the communications program here. But that's what we get for not specializing I guess.

Famous people geez. (WARNING RANDOM)

Now it has been said by a few that I enjoy Tool every now and then. This would include Maynard Keenan's solo work Puscifer. It just came to my attention a few days ago that one of his back up singers would include the likes of model/actress and now singer Milla Jovovich. Now I don't claim to know much about the Hollywood circle but why do actors/actresses seem to think that, because they are in one form of media they then are compatible with all forms? This is by no means a new trend as actors of the past were almost required to be able to dance and sing and do a plethora of things. But we are in a different time when the political views of the uninformed seem to to be what is most important to us. Should we keep to the same standards of the past when training and brains seem to be rather lacking? I am not in anyway trying to insult Ms. Jovovich's intelligence, I'm just using her as an example for the industry as a whole.

Re: Bigger's Not Better

While participating in the New Media class last semester I discovered along with this blog, pod casting. Not that I would be creating these pod casts mind you but I have started watching/listening to them.

I have discovered the G4 cast, which is nice because it was one of the few channels that I watched on tv back home. This now enables me to keep up with the gaming industry some what. Along with their main pod casts are a plethora of smaller ones. One of which is called Sessler's Soapbox. I'm writing this part assuming most of you haven't watched G4 being that its not on basic cable. Anyways Adam Sessler is one of the hosts on the show X-Play which is on G4. He has this podcast where he rants or praises various aspects or events that are going on in the gaming industry.

In his most recent cast, he discussed the original Banjo Kazooie for the Nintendo 64. He, I, and many other gamers thoroughly enjoyed this game. And though I never played it, Sessler was disappointed by the sequel. Though I have heard both good and bad things about it.

Anyways let me get to the point Sessler's qualm with the game was that the Dev team claimed that it was so much bigger than the original and that's what made it better, when in his opinion it did not. This same marketing tactic was used for the newest addition to the series Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Along with a larger world came the ability and focus on using and building vehicles. To Sessler this was again using a game gimmick to try and improve marketing and move away from the original game.

In my opinion this is a completely different game with a focus completely different from the original. I cannot count the hours I and many friends have spent watching this game and laughing our brains out at the sheer craziness of the thing. Creating and customizing various machines that look like rolling armored pyramids or death stars that are held up with balloons. Just because a game plays differently than the original, it doesn't mean its bad.

Look at the Legend of Zelda series, that in many ways has stayed faithful to the original game. People are getting bored of it. With the meager profits and media coverage of the second installment of Banjo Kazooie I don't see how a step back to the original game would have helped the developers at all.

Anyways I'm going to stop ranting now and write my papers that I need to hand in late.

Let it snow?

So I'm stuck here at YYC Calgary Airport as my second flight was canceled due to snow. I came to appreciate the on board computers and the skills of the pilots using them, because once we took off I didn't see the ground again until 2 seconds before hitting the landing strip. There is so much snow here you can't see more than 200 feet out of the windows of the building. I will eventually make it home but what I really wanted to talk about was.....

People hawking credit cards. I understand that in other cultures having a shop keeper yelling out to potential customers is quite normal. I can accept that and even enjoy it at times in other cultures. But in western society people just don't do a good job of it. As I walked down the hallway to my boarding gate I past three small kiosks each one of them hailed me to see what they were trying to get me to sign up for.

The first one I went to due to sheer boredom and then declined politely. The second kiosk I just waved off as well as the third which was for some RBC credit card of some kind. This kiosk was operated by two men as apposed to one person. Now being that I have been here for a considerable amount of time and I have had to use the washroom several times this kiosk is in between my gate and the washroom. I have also sauntered by in boredom. Each of these times I have been hailed by these two men and eventually I walked up and explained to them as to why I didn't want their piece of plastic.

He acted as if he understood my well formed argument and I walked on. But as I returned to my gate they summoned me as if they had never seen me before. COME ON PEOPLE! That's just bad business, try and remember people. If I were to forget patrons while working at my previous job I would have gotten chewed out not only by the patron but by several different managers.

I cannot tolerate laziness on the job you can slow down but come on use your brain don't just sit in your kiosk and spew words. Acknowledge people properly and respect them.

In other news I tried Glenfiddich scotch tonight. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Woa guys! Just hang on a second!

Do people go out and do studies on whether or not yo-yo's create social groups and cause people to be anti social? Wait let me look.

...........

Phew! After searching the first three pages of a google search on the social effects of yo-yo's I couldn't find anything. Thankfully there's one thing that has been unadulterated by sociologists.

This was a very long winded article. It should not be read right after waking up with a cold as it will give you a headache. It is about online games as third places (ie. comparing them to pubs or swimming pools I guess). Here's the link if you want to read it:
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue4/steinkuehler.html

Ok so to start off we should have some things defined. When I refer to people as gamers, I do not refer to what a lot of people view as the current gaming demographic today. That is the x-box community. This is because Microsoft initially and still markets to a very narrow audience. This audience is the bear drinking frat boy crowd and the 13 year old male demographic. This can be clearly seen/heard by going into any of the console community chat rooms or in game chats. You can just feel the lack of intelligence.

What I view a gamer as is, basically everyone else. Either a relatively young age group or the 21-35 year old demographic that started playing games in the 80s. This latter group, mostly, knows a thing or two about about etiquette when it comes to all things done on the Internet.

Now what I am trying to do mostly is, explain the gamer. I thought this article was interesting but it's not something that roughly 95% of the gaming community would think of. And then the authors go and say something like,

"Like sports, MMOs appeal to people in part because they represent meritocracies otherwise unavailable in a world often filled with unfairness (Huizenga, 1949)."

They have just lumped thousands of people into a small small group. The gamer is a much simpler creature. The MMO player is some one who likes to explore a large in-game world, and work with a small or large group of people to improve their personal gaming experience.

Gamers don't play games to feel acceptance. They play games to kill things and get fat lootz.

The article does an exhaustive job of explaining why each and every social aspect of Asheron's Call and Lineage I & II cause gamers to feel like they are in a place where they can fit in.
But really if a player does not feel they can fit into a game world why would they play the game?

Mr. Carmody, you are an uneducated bafoon that supports the stereotypes of christian media being sucky.

This whole blog is just abound with frustration. I had almost completed writing this very long entry my google account decided to log it self out. Thus when I pressed the publish button I found that my blog no longer existed and had not been saved. I apologize if this is not quite as good as I originally intended it to be.

I am not happy with the 14th chapter. It's called Converting Comic Books into Graphic Novels and Digital Cartoons by Thomas Carmody. If any of you know anything about my high school career; you will probably know that I spent a large portion of my free time viewing comics, manga, graphic novels, and the like. This was because growing up I always wanted to be an artist but one day it hit me that I couldn't draw. So I moved onto art appreciation and comics was the first genre I started with. This lead me to become the student of media that I am today. All this to say that I know a bit about the comic industry.

I might stray some times into a general rant about the book so I apologize if it breaks up the rant a bit. But I guess this disclaimer is doing just that.

Firstly, I'd like to point out the starting sentence of this piece. "Mark became an evangelical through the ministry of a local church and got excited about sharing his faith with classmates." Why can't people just become Christians any more Tom? Why do you have to immediately lump your potentially fictional characters into the cult you are currently part of.

Next, Carmody jumps into the apparent view of some random critic. Comics are, "crude, poorly-drawn, semiliterate, cheap, disposable kiddie fare." Are you stuck in the 50s Tom? The reason older comics were 'poorly drawn' is because like most other media, comic artists had to keep to a tight schedule. You try painting the Mona Lisa in 500 little panels jumping from building to building fighting crime Tom. It's hard work! With the advent of computers and digital technology it has made pumping out 'better art' quicker and easier, thus raising the total quality of the final product that is known as the modern comic. This would also account for the price increase from 5 cents to around 4 or 5 dollars in some places. Lastly you try reading V for Vendetta and tell me that, that hulk is Semi-literate.


Next, I would like to say something about these 'tribes' that keep getting mentioned in this book. ENOUGH ALREADY! Seriously, the definition given for why the term is used in this book is terrible. It isn't even used by anyone else in the world other than this selection of writers. Why can't Christian groups just be denominations or even just Christians? Why do we have to be linked to the Evangelical cult--I mean 'tribe'?

Tom likes to think that comics are low cost and low tech. The reason they are low cost Tom, the writers and artists are being almost exploited by the big companies like DC and Marvel. The only other reason that I can think of is that Tom has lumped evangelical comics into that fun little place where all christian media seems to fall. That place being low-budget, low value crap that many people keep pumping out. The reason it keeps coming out is because as long as it has that little 'christian' label it has to be sold at christian stores. Oh no! We can't hurt Rupert Murdoch and Zondervan's feelings, they might stop selling us bibles.

I also am growing tired of these little side pieces that Schultze keeps throwing in. Its not that some of them are not interesting. It is that they often ask a question like, Why We Love and Hate Cartoonists. The little section never even answers the question. It just goes into a little spiel about how John Lawing gets offended when people don't find his job an interesting conversasion piece. After he goes on for a little bit Lawing finishes his 200 word section with the same question!

I'd like to rant even more about how Carmody promotes piracy of comics but I just realized that this is getting a little long. So I'll leave the piracy talk for another day.

CURSE YOU INTERNETS!

This is yet one more general rant.

The first thing I'm going to mention is that I despise the Internet and people trying to hawk their product to those who are in a hurry. While trying to edit a video file for the social concerns committee at my school I ran into an interesting problem to do with file conversion. I needed a file to convert said file, so I set out on a quest through the jungle that is called the world wide web. I eventually stumbled upon a site that could provide me with a program that would go above and beyond what I needed. Not only that but all over the website this program was advertised as 'FREE FREE FREE!' I got excited as I found this program on even more reputable sites saying that, yes indeed this program is a freeware program. Well it turns out that this company's view of a freeware program happens to be a $39 dollar program with a free version that will do an incomplete file conversion with a massive water mark on the finished product. grr.

It's always gonna be sour grapes with you boy, until you get right with Jesus. Amen!

wow. I really don't know what to say. I am enraged and saddened at the same time. I don't even know where to start so I'll just introduce the article and see where this thing takes us.

Here is the article to begin with. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20278737/jesus_made_me_puke/

This week I have been presented with an alternative viewpoint to our lovely text book. This comes out of the pages of Rolling Stone and the article is called, Jesus Made Me Puke by Matt Taibbi. Initially I figured this would be another article bashing the 'christian right'. Long story short: it was, but this bashing was fully deserved.

Taibbi's mission for this issue was to infiltrate a church and join in with a week end 'encounter' event. Initially as he describes the typical church characters getting on the bus to head off to the unknown my stomach sunk a little as I could see where this was going. Taibbi goes through the events of the week end and at first they seem to be a typical Evangelical event. I was first dumbfounded when it came time for people to split into small groups and share an issue from their past. Taibbi's is second in the circle and so he is forced to quickly think something up.
"'Hello,' I said, taking a deep breath. 'My name is Matt. My father was an alcoholic circus clown who used to beat me with his oversize shoes.'"

The fools fall for his story. I don't understand how people can be so blinded that someone making up such an obvious lie. I am saddened for the image that is portrayed of the poor misguided people who have attended these events.

As the weekend progressed things seem to be the typical strange and shallow TV and political jargon that can be expected from the 'christian right'. Then it happens, an exorcism. That's right, the 'pastor' proceeds to tell the group that all of the sin in their lives is not actually their fault but the fault of demons that are with in them.

"He had cast out the demons of every ailment, crime, domestic problem and intellectual discipline on the face of the Earth. He cast out horoscopes, false gods, witches, intellectual pride, nearsightedness, everything, it seemed to me, except maybe E. coli and John Updike novels."
Some of these notable ones being: the demons of Philosophy and Handwriting Analysis. Since when is my degree minor a demon?

I am angered because this is the view that many people are getting of the church today. What this truly is, is a perversion of the original order, a cult. It is also the most outspoken American group of 'Christians'. How are we as Christians supposed to act when we see this kind of thing? I would find it hard to muster the strength to go up to a preacher and tell the man, 'HEY! YOU! YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!' This almost seems to be a potential media crisis that Christians need to dealing with because I get the impression that its leading most of the western world to believe we are crazies.

oh perceptions of privacy haha soooo funny

So today the article was called Sound scans of the urban body. I'm not going to finish this title because from the blogs that I have read so far all of them start with it. By now it has been read 3 or 4 times. The article is written by John Shiga if you still don't know yet.

The article talks about Dj Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner. The controversy with this guy is that he uses a scanner to pick up people's cellphone conversations and then uses their voices in his techno. The article goes on about how we perceive sound and how we have been socialized to use phones in a specific way. To us it seems like the cellphone user is having an up close and intimate conversation with the person on the other end of the line, thus adding to this modern view of personal space and privacy.

This view of the singular human by his or her self in an impenetrable bubble is starting to bother me, I am glad that Scanner is doing this. This may sound strange coming from me considering I am an Introvert that likes his privacy. But I know this is not a normal functioning state of humanity. Humans have lived in close quarters with out any need to rely on this state that we call privacy for hundreds of years. Now its almost the staple of the post-modern generation. My own ideas, My own truth, My own toys, My own music, My own personal bubble, My own cage. Yet there has never been such a huge cry out for community!

If people are so desperate to have a community of people, the online ones or your cellphone friends list will not make the cut. I hate to use this quote but I thought it worked well, "Introduce some Anarchy," and break some personal bubbles. Show people they aren't as isolated as they think. Changing peoples perspective on how they live and the things they are addicted to is fun. Try it! Do some scanning! Make some music! Burst some bubbles!
Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride.

PS. I liked Scanner's music though I guess if you're not a techno fan I could see it being slightly hard to listen to.

*WARNING* THIS IS A RANDOM POST */WARNING*

As I sit here with my newly acquired 44 cent freezer mug full of Mountain Dew, I will ponder over chapter 12 of this fine novel that I have been reading.

While reading through this chapter about Christian theme parks (which I think are the silliest things ever) I came upon something I found to be wholly disturbing. There was a little excerpt called "Should Churches Host Hell Houses?" by Annalee Ward. Unfortunately Annalee didn't answer this question.

So I will..... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOooOOooOooOOOOoooOOOOOoooooOOOOOOOoOOOOoOo they should not.

I'd like to point out before I continue on, that I think the whole idea of Hell houses and 'trick-or-treating' is rather stupid.

I knew that some churches did little Halloween events to get kids off the streets where they are potentially in 'danger'. I'd also like to mention that most of the deaths on Halloween are not related to people putting arsenic or cyanide in candy or razor blades in apples. They are from motorists not paying attention to children running across the street. I don't think it is a bad idea for churches to create a safe place for children. Not only can this allow parents to monitor the intake of sugar that their children are inducing them selves with; but it gives parents a good place to network with Christians that they might not have run into on the streets.

But where is it ever a good thing for the church to scare kids 'poopless' with disturbing images like fake botched abortions. Abortion is not something that should be used to scare children. Not only does it give people a terrible view of the church but Abortion is not a trivial issue. If Christians want to be taken seriously on the abortion issue this is not the way to do it. Next on the list Ward says that there are fake school shootings. Isn't this insulting to the people who lost relatives in school shootings? It makes their deaths nothing more than a thrill ride for 'candy-tourists'.

The organized church needs to wake up and realize that fear, though occasionally good for creating superficial and problematic believers, does not work for creating good Christians. People that live in fear are not productive to a group that is bent on loving and reaching out to others, that's what we should be doing. Not just trying to frantically push their faces from the shadows into gold pavement.

Don't sit on cathedral spires...

Michael Bull has a lot to say about the current IPod craze. He even goes as far to compare them to the sacred spaces of the Catholic Church. IPods are places where we can worship, find solitude, safety and connect with society? The main function of the church in the days of Cathedrals was to meet up with the people in the town and connect with people. IPods are not allowing this in our "global community". They are doing exactly the opposite, turning man into his own island. Or her own island if you want me to be gender specific.

Another way Bull likes to compare IPods to church buildings is by saying that they are the epitome of architecture in the 21st century. Bull obviously hasn't been in the tower 101. IPods are large brick like objects that take up more pocket space than a good sized hip flask and cause far more frustration. They tend to be dust magnets so when ever you pull them out of your pocket an asthma attack ensues. Though there are smaller sizes these tend to break easily when sat on the wrong way. Churches don't break when sat upon.

As people go about their daily routine, avoiding all human contact and interaction with the outside world, they begin to notice things: "My ears are hurting, oh well." Bull seems to think that allowing people to listen to music wherever they go gives them back power over their lives. I don't understand how this empowers people in anyway. The traffic will still take as long as it always does. Why not look for an alternate route instead of zoning out and ignoring potential traffic hazards. Having your senses completely closed off while walking through the city is in no way empowering, not only that you will miss the music that is the world around you.

You might get mugged to.

MOM! THERE'S A FUNDIMENTALIST STUCK IN OUR FAX MACHINE!

Let us start this entry by looking at some statistics from the wonderful book we have been following. If you would turn with me in your "U.E.M. Bibles" to page 138, chapter 10, Verse 1. "How Americans Use Internet For Religion."

1. The first stat is that 38% of 128 million users send and receive email with spiritual content. "If you don't reply to this email in 10 minutes you will have bad LUCK."
2. 35% send or receive E-cards related to religious holidays. "HAPPY X-MAS, from the Bay! Don't forget to check out our X-MAS SALE! You will find prices up to 10% off."
3. 32% go online for news accounts of religious events and affairs. "Today Islamic fanatics blew up a coffee shop in the Gaza strip."
4. 21% seek info about how to celebrate religious holidays. "Mom! I lost the instructions for our fake tree! Can you look them up on the Internet for me?"

Don't you just love stats?

Schultze sticks to his guns with his whole teaching, persuading, and delighting schema. In the teaching section he writes about how evangelical churches post their sermons on their own personal church website...viewed only by their congregation... or may be some pastor friends. He also mentions book databases full of "Christian" works and password-protected websites. "Wow look at all of these new Christians we are converting with out brand-spanking-new password protected website!"

Next comes delighting, where evangelicals can go online and spew out their "well informed opinions" to who ever happens to be trolling their particular forum. Thus being teamed up with the whole persuasion aspect and we have a great thing going.

Here are some replies to a comment on Catholic acceptance of evolution:
- "Shut up"
- "What's wrong with monkeys?"
- "The problem is that most of the crazy nutball evangelicals that are fighting evolution in our schools don't even see catholics as being real christians."
- "Also christians are mad stupid. That's a problem too."
- "angels and demons was a pretty good book"
- "Oh my. This is disturbing. Come Jesus. Come Lord. Come take your world from the grip of satan."

Comments found on: www.tribalwar.com

Buy my frickin prayer cloth or no healing for you!!

As I was reading through the third article in Schultze's collection I got caught on a sentence about a certain television evangelist. "The late TV preacher Jerry Falwell said that 'there's no need for the church of Jesus Christ to be wasting its time gullibly falling for all of this global warming hocus-pocus.'"

First off I would like to point out that "gullibly" is not a word. Secondly I would like to state that I think that global warming is a natural cycle of the earth due to changes in the planet's orbit and axis. But when did it occur to Christians, that just because we might have some conspiracy theory that the world is going to end soon so we don't have to take care of it. Are we not told to be good stewards of everything we have been given? Even if global warming may be a hoax it does not mean that we shouldn't care about the amount of pollution that is being poured into the atmosphere.

The amount of politics that is in Christian media today frustrates me to no end. Not only does it lead to the conclusion that most Evangelicals are as crazy as other religious extremists, but it just seems to be not very Christ-like. Whether a person votes conservative or for those "crazy hippies" from the NDP, this should not have any say on if a person can stay in their church or get ostracized over it. I was under the impression that we were past the days of killing each other over who should lead the church, let alone our "democratic nation".

In closing I will remind you to go out and vote on the 14th of next month.