Post

There's a torch under the blanket,
A totem in the wild,
Where the dunes do part
And spares open a picket.

There on the post,
Tied with red ribbon,
A love with my name on it,
Singing in the wind.

The desert air beats it,
It's calling my name,
I need to preserve it
And take it away.

Far, far away
From this harsh and dry place.
I begin walking toward it,
The sand in my face

This scarlett wave,
In this ocean of sand,
A respite for the eyes,
The only color in the land.

So simple, I need it.
I reach out my hand.
Almost there, I can feel it,
As I sink in the sand.

The clouds start to lower,
The ground begins to move,
Is this what it's like
To be so in love?

As I touch the ribbon,
So silky and soft,
The sun gleaming on it,
From high and aloft.

I'm blinded, I'm dazed,
I'm gone from that place.
I look up and see,
The ribbon, fluttering away.

The Host

The prophet, dumbfounded,
Struggled to boast
Words proper to quantify
The foreign host

Two circuits like fire
Four faced men
Stiff and yet flying
Skin peppered with eyes

Their twisted appearances
Oft humbled the pen,
at a loss for words
Struggled to understand

Moving volumes
Flesh couldn't see
Looked like fire, or lions
Talking horns and dragons

The Seraph, burning one,
The serpent, winged man
Six winged and hidden
A tangle of limbs

Whom christened many prophets
Appeared in the World
To confuse and terrify
Men of faith and Word

Yet, with features occult
And forms indiscernable
They can't even look at
The Father they sleep before

Archangels and demons
Humans cannot describe
But Whom they dare not look upon
Loves you and I

The elders before Him
Hung heads while they worship
The four beasts before Him
Stand guard with backs turned

The mystery of man,
The angels and host,
Dreads the figure of God
In whose embrace do we boast

The holy ark of God
A touch or a look
Obliterates souls
And sears flesh as venom

This burning presence
Holy place and fire
Angels can't bear to behold
Lives.in my heart

Bump In The Night

Fumbling in darkness,
Moon in the glass,
Peering through candles
With dark flickering wicks

No fire, yet burning,
The heat but no light,
A trip and it's over,
A domino inferno.

No fire, but smoke;
A nighstand of tar,
A bump on the way out,
Means "hold still forever"

but the candles like towers
a forest of blackness
singing my hair
and prickling my skin

then Someone moves,
not alone in this room,
and a candle falls over
The carpet is dark

And it burns without glowing,
No beauty in this fire,
Only ashes and dust,
Geting close, climbing higher

No escape, from this fire,
The burning that's dark,
It blends with the void
And ceases for no-one.

If I could see it, I'd know
The violent thrashing that nears
Yet it has no form, nor shape,
As it shakes and walks

The carpet under my bed
Licked at the frame
And the black fire crept
Under my sheets

The Someone stands there
Not a hand held out
No gesture of care
As my body lay there

But the candles cried out
Asking for my submission.
Reaching our with ten thousand hands
That stung and stifled

Then Someone pushed more down
Cat eyes in the space
And the invisible flame
Took me all at once

Crayons

Crayons
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A painter owned a fridge, and He had two kids,
And He gave them crayons, that they'd draw Him pictures.
"Go be like Daddy, and make something nice,
It makes me happy to see what you write!"

They sat in the corner for a good day or two,
They wrote up a garden, all littered with fruit.
They gave Him their picture, and He so liked their art,
He put it on the fridge and said "What a nice start!

"Now go be like Daddy," He patted our heads,
"and rest for a night and go lay in your beds."
So He put them in bed, and told them great tales
about giants and Israelites, and ships without sails.

The sun rose in the sky, and they woke up once more,
and He handed them crayons as He knocked on their door.
"Now go be like Daddy, which I know you love to do,
and make some more pictures, beautiful and new!"

They returned to their corner, and thought in their heads,
'What else can we do, what should we draw next?'
They drew up a river, with a tree in the center.
He loved it, loved them, and hung it on the refrigerator.

He sent them to bed, and told them more stories,
about sea beasts and kings with much gold and much glory.
"Goodnight, Son and Daughter, and don't you forget,
school starts tomorrow, and you need to do your best.

"I've taught you to draw well, but it is apparent
there are some kids out there with less loving parents.
Now they're kids just like you, it's important to be nice,
but when they show you their pictures, don't you dare look twice."

The next morning came, and He them their lunches,
led them to the bus, said he He loved them bunches.
An exciting new world, to show off our skills!
Other children who color, like us? The thought gave them thrills.

They came back home, a little past noon,
He said "Alright, guys, let's see what you do.
Be just like daddy, and show me how it went,
by drawing the best picture youve made yet!"

He gave them their crayons, and they drew till it was late,
when they returned, they had drawn up some snakes.
"That's odd," thought Daddy, "look at those fangs,
I surely didn't teach them such sinister things.

"Son," said He, "Daughter, I'm sorry,
I simply can't hang up something this scary.
Go right to bed, Ill see you in the morning.
I still love you, let's see how you do tomorrow."

Daddy is acting strange, we did what He wanted,
is He sick of our art, Sister, of what we've been drawing?
But drawing is fun, Brother, it's all we know how to do,
we can still draw, just me and you.

You're right, Sister, said Brother, drawing feels so right,
We will pick up tomorrow. But for now, goodnight!
Then the sun rose again, the bus pulled up to the road,
"Alright, kids," He said, "Let's have another go."

But when the kids came back home, each day it got worse.
In place of sweet poems, they learned to write curses.
Instead of two smiling figures holding Daddy's hands,
they'd taken to depicting a big, angry man.

The gardens got dusty, the rivers were dry,
We don't have to draw daddy, just you and I.
The honey was grease, the horses were dragons,
Lollipops became swords, Eden, the badlands.

Daddy was wrong, making us draw those hard things.
Sister, these pictures are much more entertaining!
Brother you're right, and even better, too,
they're so much easier, and quicker to do.

Instead of one hard thing, we just made twenty!
And to think Daddy doesnt like them. Isn't that funny?
It's not funny at all, Sister, He doesn't like them at all.
Let's just not show Him our drawings. We don't need His approval.

So the kids came home each day, and to Daddy's distress,
not so much as a "hey," or a twirl of the dress.
The Son and the Daughter took the crayons to their room,
And they didn't leave till the bus came, they just drew, and drew.

But like all loving fathers, Daddy did what he needs,
He spanked them when He caught them drawing atrocities.
Their punishment was just, but the kids didn't care.
Daddy is the enemy, none of this is fair.

"What's going on with my beautiful children,
oh how the world has twisted and hurt them!
And they like what they're drawing, it just isn't right.
Their upsides are down, and downsides are right."

Then He had an idea, Daddy got clever,
He sat down and drew outlines of things that were better.
He spent all His energy, hours on end,
To carefully outline every curve and bend.

He drew black and white oceans, savannas and sunsets,
rivers and waterfalls, stars and some planets.
He drew good tasting food, intricate trees,
what's more, he made thousands and thousands of these.

One day after school, before the kids hid away,
"Come here, Son and Daughter, I have something to say.
For years now you've ignored and despised what I gave,
and your skills with the crayon are utterly depraved.

"You've drawn horrible things, and brought down disgrace.
I should have thrown you two out of this place.
You hate what I taught you, and all that I made,
and to you two I have one thing to say-"

No more, Daddy! Be quiet! They cried long and hard.
We don't want to get hurt, we don't want it at all!
We just do what you taught us, and you hate what we make!
It isn't fair to disown us and toss us away!

Just do what you will, if you must, but hear this:
Daddy, we hate you, and don't care if you hit us.
Go on, hit us and send us down the hall,
But we won't feel sorry, we wont care at all!

"Oh children, my kids, you have it all wrong.
I love you too much to hate you at all.
I may give you spankings, but it's for your own good,
but this problem of ours requires something new.

"Look, you spend all this time coloring your own things,
You can't tell right from wrong, you're lost, and you're losing.
I miss the old days, when you put things on my fridge,
when you pleased me with all of your beautiful images,

"Things aren't the same, so I've made you some templates,
I've drawn up plenty of beautiful, good things.
You can color them in, no more drafting required!
All the hard work of making new pictures is over!

"All I ask of you now is to color in the lines,
just give it a shot, just like old times."
The Son and the Daughter, amazed at this gesture,
Could do nothing more than stare at the pictures.

Daddy actually loves us, Sister, look at these things!
They're so beautiful, Brother, and there are so many!
This is far better, Sister, we were doing it all wrong,
a new way to color, and we can color for so long!

So the kids threw out their ugly and hateful typography,
the selfish and crude, all their horrid calligraphy,
they were made to color in lines, all bright and lovely,
"One more thing, kids," said He, "Could you do something for me?

"Take all of these pictures, the ones you'll color in,
And take them to school to show all the children.
You've seen what they draw, they're so lost with bad parents.
So no more refrigerator, give the pictures to them."

So the Son and the Daughter colored this new way forever,
they would no longer wonder if they could do better.
Assured their Daddy loves them, they shared all their pictures,
and changed the lives of millions of children.

E.D.D.

Seams

The sound of tearing below
My feet, the fabric of a veil,
It would not slow, no matter how
Hard I prayed.

Who knew this little notch, the little
Snag upon the rocks
Of my clothing, warmth, comfort, riddled
With love could dissolve so quick?

The fraying turned to river deltas,
The fabric to red clay, and
The void between the binding garbs
A canyon now.

My moon had split, I clenched my God
In one hand, my idols in my other.
I couldn't bear to hear the shifting winds
But it whipped against me.

She says it hurts, she says it
Was pain for her, she cried three tears.
But turmoil, greater than she could
Forsee, was building.

And moons evolved and changed
Their nature, a new start assured.
But I, can hardly fight, this torment
To hate her.

Spite is knocking "open! Free me
unto the earth. Havoc is coming."
It may bring me gray hair, but still
I bleed to forgive.

It was easy for her, I don't discern
How she came to drop the knot?
So easily, it slipped off her heart and
Strengthened her.

I am not, however, as she wished. I'm
Not yet done shaking and trembling.
Witness, man, I long for her, but
She has lost heart for me.

Life before was a mountain, so still
And strong, sturdy and sure. So high,
Bountiful, fruit bearing, brought joy
To all around us.

A promise to return unkept, a hope
Dead. That shriveled contract stained
In my breath remains, I cannot
Forget the emptiness of it.

A fear, now, to continue seeing her face
In crowds, on strangers. To hear her
Laughter in the voice of children,
In the smile of a future wife.

But now in turmoil I lay, I grasp
My idol and my God in fear.
My idol, I look down to, and the fog is
Thick. I blow it away.

My Baal is beautiful, I held it all
Throughout the journey. I did not sense
The burden and weight on my soul
Is her. Help me, God.

I stood on the rock, the lamb
In confidence, but I did not know
She was with me there, under me,
As my foothold.

To loathe my love for idols, the depravity
Of man knows no end. Idol factory,
Veil tearer, poison breather, shame,
Are names for us.

But she was my beauty, fault line,
a canyon between God and I. And
The penalty is mine. There is longing
In my sides for her.

My idol is lovely, she is hard to let go,
Someday it will come to be, but not today.
Guilt eats my bones, regret is my blood. But my God is cleansing.

Embracing Error

Once the video art project "Embrace the error" was announced, I immediately had absolutely no clue what to do. My brain froze up. I went though a total of three ideas that I followed-through with, but none of them were fruitful. I hated all of them as soon as I had finished them.

Finals week approached, I had lots of dinners to go to, plans to sort out, projects to finish, things to study, and my freezer had turned into an ice cube. A lot was taking over my mind.

And nothing was coming to me. What sort of errors could I use? Sound? No, that was too difficult. Video processing? No, I didn't have any software equipment on hand.

As I was frantically trying to force out an idea, I realized something: I couldn't think of anything. My brain refused to function. It was frozen. FROZEN, just like my freezer, which was also an error. Instead of worrying about cleaning out my freezer... Why not make it art, first? Why not illustrate my inactive brain on finals week?

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday to the extraordinarily talented, extremely sassy, late Maria Callas, the original diva!

Performance Art

For my performance art, I took my friends Sammy (camera girl), Gershom and Tim on a little serenading adventure.

Gershom is pretty much a musical genius, although he doesn't like to think so. He's great at making up melodies on the spot, and so I asked for his help.

Tim, however, while being a rather decent guitar player, has been gifted with improvising lyrics on the spot, so he'll be singing.

I don't really play an acoustic instrument, so I'm on the cajon; a wooden box-drum with a snare built into the top corners.

...So we went around to random people. Gershom and I were dressed nearly the same in a rather plain, monotone outfit so that all the attention would go to the bow-tied Tim. We wanted our performance to be more about the words than the music. We sang love-songs to total strangers who were men, songs about what people were doing. Some songs were intentionally made a little bit uncomfortable, and some were accidentally super-uncomfortable, and while some people didn't very much enjoy our performance, some played along and became part of the performance.

None of this was pre-determined, and nearly everyone we played for was a stranger. We decided to just go out and play for whoever, whenever, wherever. We realized how many people at school seemed to drone on with a sad, blank expression. Hundreds of students each day plodding along, treating each day like it was just a "back to the grind" kind of day. Staff doing their jobs whom we've seen dozens of time. People we so often, but never see smile. And so, we went on a quest to change that.

And... most of the time, it worked. Here's my favorite scene. Notice the group of men at the table in the beginning, and look at their expressions before we approach them, and watch how we quickly change them.

And here's a quick compilation of everything.

A little bit of this was solely for making people happy (usually) and a little bit of an experiment, as well. I consider this a success.

Disco Infernal

Once the synthesizer was brought into existence through the Moog devices, experimentation in music exploded, leading to thousands of experiments in music and sound. One such result was disco. Not only a pioneering land-mark of the colorful and creative applications of fashion and hair conditioning, the sound became very distinct. A twangy guitar, dancing bassline, and the occasional violin characterized the movement. Giorgio Moroder was the first to dabble in these new noises, and not long after, nightclubs and bands and even a movie starring the unique, new musical movement began to appear.

But it quickly, all at once, died away with a violent backlash. What could have caused disco, which started as a fun-loving, intense, colorful era of music, to become one of the most despised, hated, oppressed musical movements of all time?

The pressure outside of disco is greater than the atmospheric pressure inside of disco, causing a rapid movement by molecules in the air in the exo-disco area into the disco

As any interesting noise pattern, sound, or creativity, everyone with a microphone and a recording label will soon overdo, overkill, and overuse it. Songs would include a little violin, and people would go "Oh, that's gotta be disco!" The genre became everything, and it was kind of annoying to people.

Not to mention, disco clubs were popular with the crowd of non-traditional sexuality. Occurring soon around the AIDS crisis, which is renown for killing thousands and thousands of homosexuals (not exclusively, but most notably), anti-gay tensions were growing. And so, the anti-disco movement was fueled in part by tension from opposing views of more personal things, as well as the fact that garbage like "Disco Duck" was being fired into the ears of the innocent.

"Kill me" -Disco Duck

But thank goodness for the death of disco, because without it, we wouldn't have house music, where Disk Jockeys would mix the good parts of disco and rock music at clubs, live. And from that, stems nearly every pop song now.

An article explained how annoying disco once became. It pointed out that, like nowadays, a certain noise or beat will be absurdly over-incorporated into songs to the point that the music being produced loses artistic value, and just becomes a noise that was once interesting, put on a 3-minute loop.

And the same thing is going on today, and it really pushes my buttons. Like dubstep and most pop songs, a little "bassy" wubbywub or grinding noise will be inserted into a song. But it isn't there because it enhances the song, it's there because someone said "Oh, when I drop a toaster and play it in slow motion, it makes a funny noise. Everyone is doing it! Let's stick it everywhere!"

-insert noise of king bass falling onto the face of the earth at the press of a button-

If a similar thing isn't happening right now, it's coming. Just you wait, America.

Just you wait.

I Xerox'd myself in the name of art.

Making cutouts of my body parts, fetched from a scanner and hit gluing them to a homemade book cover created this. I wanted to show how people are a part of their writing and reading, and in the middle of creating or indulging in a book or electronic wordspace, it occupies us as we occupy it and we become a symbiotic entity.

The hot glue strings and lines at first were messy and unappealing to me, but the more I looked at them, the more I like them. They look like hollow hairs and pulsing veins, further convincing me of the illusion that our works are "alive" beings, interracting in a very real way with us.

Archetypes

People like to classify people and personalities as "archetypes", or "dominant psychological traits", such as with personality tests, zodiac signs, horoscopes, "dog people" and "cat people", Apple and Microsoft, etc. However, archetypes tend to be more innocent in nature than outright saying "You're white, go away." Instead of labeling people, which is "bad", intended to separate people, archetypes are more focused on identifying people in an effort to better understand them.

Take for example, the Myers Briggs test, an imperfect description of archetypes. The test breaks up most personalities into 16 combinations of introversion and extroversion, knowing and sensing, thinking and feeling, judging and perceiving. It isn't made to cause people to say "Oh, ew, you're a ____", but rather to help people identify how best to relate to people, labeling people based on a symbol that typically embodies an exaggeration or pure form of someone's personality. A lawful, logical person, for example, is a "judge". An avid learner and creator is an "engineer", and a thieving, lying person is a "senator". That was technically a stereotype, my bad.

I, personally, like archetypes. i think there's something important in recognizing differences and trying best to create coordination in people groups, taking into account the differences of how people operate. "It takes all kinds of people", they say, and... 

Tangential rant, I hate when people take the definition and identification of race, gender, skills, and differences in general as something that is always negative because "labels are bad and do nothing but destroy humanity all the time without exceptions". I find that labels are a tool, and when utilized, create a more cognitive environment. I mean, I get when people want to try to treat everyone equality, but... Doctors don't prescribe the same medicine to every patient. Food stores don't throw everything on one shelf, uncategorically. And we don't all dress the same. We wouldn't normally ask a music teacher to build us bridges, and we don't go to Disney World for gasoline to fill our vehicles. Things are different, and if (I say "if" because it'll never happen) we learn that our differences are beneficial to the community, then we will achieve a peace that is not possible to acquire if we just ignored our differences. I'm good at math, and someone else is good at writing, so obviously, someone who wants help in writing wouldn't come to me. That's ineffective and impractical. People are different for a reason, we have different heritages to give us a space that is uniquely and comfortably our own, and people are different for the good of others.

Anywho, archetypes help us better understand how to relate to eachother. I won't ask an introvert to help me give a presentation because they are truly, truly, inconfident and uncomfortable in those situations. It's nice to be able to find other people that are genuinely like me and relate to them, and archetypes help me do that.

I remember a video game I loved to play, Spore. In that game, you evolved from a cell, to an animal, to a tribe, to a civilization, to a space-faring super-race. The decisions on how you interract with other cells, packs of animals, tribes and cities throughout the game will give you an "Archetype", giving you certain bonuses and dialogue options for your race and character. Certain archetypes get along better with other ones, and lots of archetypes are distrusted. For example, a race that blows up planets and turns air into lava isn't really "best friend" material.

I'm not sure how this relates, but... Spore.

Dream Machine

Brion Gysin is responsible for creating a super psychedelic, kind of freaky instrument called the "Dream Machine". It's a tube with holes punched into it and a lightbulb inside, spun around quickly at a certain speed. If you are to sit in front of it (or stand, lie down, do whatever, it doesn't matter) with your eyes closed in front of it, the mathematical patterns and light frequencies would alter your vision and you'll effectively get a high. Only sensory, though, you won't actually feel any different. Maybe. I've never tried it.



It seems pretty scary, though, I wouldn't try it. One of the reasons I don't do drugs is because I'm scared of my brain. Like Salvador Dali said, "I don't do drugs, I am drugs."

The drug in question probably wasn't "Ibuprophen", too.

This was created in the era of when drug usage was less than optional and was more than common in creating less than usual art, most of the time. So, this was pretty much a renewable resource, so long as a power outlet was at hand. It was also legal! And it didn't set off any smoke alarms! Imagine that! It was a hit among rebellious teens, rebellious adults, and rebellious kids (i.e. artists). Its effects were sub-par, making only complex colors and patterns, as opposed to the possibility of entering the realm of Tapirs with chainsaws for eyelashes, accessible via other things considerably more costly. But the ease of usage and legality of it made it inspiring.

Anywho, I also like to think that I'm darn-close to my potential of creativity, already. People say hallucinogens "open your mind", which I'm pretty sure is accurate, with letting your imagination getting rerouted directly to your nervous system, and being able to taste colors and smell emotions, or something. However, I like to think that my mind is pretty free flowing as it is, and I'd like to create a lifestyle that's independent of the need of outside, chemical influences when it comes to my creativity and emotions (Dr Pepper excluded).

Also don't wanna end up like this.


Team Fortress 2 is always applicable. Even when it comes to hallucinogens.

Grid Art Project

We are learning about how the introduction of the screen created incidental disassembling of images and videos, as pixels are not as defined as the real world. Pixels cause the loss of detail. So, to reproduce this idea, I decided to reproduce an image of my hand holding a $20 bill.

Then I used a little Photoshop-magic to pixelate it into a grid of solid squares of color. After the picture was edited and ready for construction, my father delivered to me several keyboards (for the computer, like, typing) and I popped the keys off of several of them with a screwdriver.

Then I cut out cardboard and glued all the keys to it, then painted them one-by-one

Stanford iAddress

Steve Jobs once gave a speech to a graduating class at Stanford College, and in that address, he gave his life story, essentially, and revealed his inspirations for his aspirations. He spoke on being fired from his own company, company failures, and overcoming pancreatic cancer (eerily enough). He talked about how he had many challenges in building his empire, and talked a bit about his reasons for leaving college, and how that gave him room to be successful. That was interesting, considering he was talking to load of graduates.

He encouraged the group to keep experimenting and doing things that others advise against, if their hearts were in the right place. He spoke about how the company Apple was made up of artists, historians, poets and writers at first, and greatly commended studies in aesthetics and humanities. He believe, as do I, that people with a more cultural exposure make the products. I, too, endorse artsiness.

I'm a fan of Microsoft, to be honest. Apple stuff bugs me a bit too much, but still, I think Steve Jobs was exceptional in what he and his company made.

War of the Hypochondriacs

In 1938, October 30th, the night before Halloween, Orson Welles made a radio performance to the nation. He began to read-off an adaptation of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds", mentioning that it was fiction at the start, but it was read as if it were a news broadcast, from the perspective of a reporter in the midst of a Martian invasion. It was a very convincing and involving radio show, here it is, if you have an hour-ish to spare.



In fact, it was so convincing, that people flipped out. They ran amok, most of the radio-owning population was convinced that the staged radio performance was an actual announcement, and fearful that martians were taking over humanity. Suicides spiked and marbles were lost (metaphorically, and maybe literally).

It may seem kind of silly to imagine this, as people are going nuts over a little piece of show. But, like I mentioned in the "Great Train Robbery", this was the first time anyone had seen of heard anything like this, and so, madness ensued.

Flip Book

I've never read "T. Tembarom" by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and now I never will.

A Clockwork Oomny

"A Clockwork Orange" is Nadsat for "A robotically responsive man". Nadsat isn't a real language, either, it's the little dialect that was made-up by Anthony Burgess in his novel, "A Clockwork Orange". This novel was later made into a movie, featuring the rebellious and heinous acts of a futuristic, "ultra-violent" and rebellious youth, Alex, who is later made to pay for his crimes through mentally torturous experiments, and becomes mentally sensitive to violence.

The molodoy nadsat that dratses old lewdies.

This movie is not for the faint-hearted eunuch jelly, and I know this because I am a pretty squeamish guy, and it was near traumatizing. But if you have the guttiwuts to sit through it, it's a very interessovating psychological thriller with terrifying implications.

But anywho, about that Nadsat. Anthony Burgess decided to narrate his book from the first person view of Alex, and as with any time period, his language is laced with slang. But in order to draw the illusion of the strangeness but vague similarity of the future, he made up words and used them as if they were actual words. Throughout the novel, and movie, certain words would be seamlessly replaced by their Nadsat translations, and consistently, too. Burgess took Russian translations for most of the words, and altered much of them to make them slightly more strange. And for others, he abbreviated synonyms, for example, "money" is called cutter, which is reminiscent of "bread and butter". And for the rest, he just made stuff up. But exactly why did he do this?

Being a book published in 1962, some notoriously odd slang was beginning to form. Predicting that this phenomenon of people making up words would continue for the rest of the existence of humanity, as always has been done, he decided to use dialect as a way of adding to the illusion of time travel. Futuristic scenery is always a fascinating subject. Because of elements like clothing, music, architecture and dialect, when we go in to watch a movie, we can sense that the setting is either in the past because things looks familiar, or in the present because things looks familiar. But oddly enough, we can also tell when something is futuristic, even though we have no idea what the future will look like.

Dialect is often recycled, when words become twisted to mean something else and sound slightly different over a period of time. So by displaying a highly distorted, amusingly silly form of language, we automatically infer that this alien slang is the process of many, many "recyclings" of language. The elements of these made-up words make the movie that much more detailed.

Animation Rears its Round, Black Ears

As you may have noticed, fellow Art and technology student or curious onlooker, I have been discussing "motion pictures", pictures that are so barely similar and played so rapidly in sequence that it gives the illusion of motion. Such is every movie, just a serious of dozens, thousands, millions of photos. It wasn't long after film was invented with camera and photographs that people started to realize "Wait, can't we just DRAW movies?"

"Toot-toot!" -Steamboat

Well honestly, the idea began to float around for some time with little animated shorts and shows, like Felix the Cat, and productions of the famous Walt Disney, like Silly Symphonies and Steamboat Willie. But it wasn't until "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Fellowship of the Apple" came out (I added the fellowship part, don't throw a riot) that the possibility of pure animation as a mode of cinematic entertainment was relevant. The first full length film made from scratch and paint was produced. And, here's what surprised everyone, it made money! Animation had really begun to well-up in popularity before its release, becoming a fun little area to venture in for the artist.

Stop motion videos and animations are all over, now, like the infamous "GIF" image format, which despite being infamous for relatively poor photo quality in color range, has animation support, allowing for humorous little quips and snippets composed of several images in sequence to be pasted all over the web.

Obligatory Team Fortress material. Deal with it.

And also, I am reminded of the "game" called "Gary's Mod". This little "game" is... well, it isn't really a game on its own. It's a program that allows you to use props and characters from almost any PC game you may own, put them in any setting of almost any game you own, and mess around. You can strap rockets to chairs, make people with tiny heads, and most notably, pose characters and freeze facial expressions. Before the game developer, VALVe, created the game filming software "Source Film Maker", people used Gary's Mod (commonly called GMod) to make movies. Creators would pose the characters and take a picture, pose the characters a little differently and take a picture, then repeat the process for hours. Then, they would assemble the pictures, play them in sequence, add music, and create little animations, then immediately upload them to YouTube. The poor production quality contributed to the remarkably low frame rate, creating humorously abrupt and choppy animations to experiment with, leading to the evolution and demand of Source Film Maker, which is developed and almost exclusively used for Team Fortress 2 videos. However, many many aspiring animators are getting jobs from the attention grabbed by their high quality videos and animations. Here's a good one that won several awards and was actually played on live television at the international, annual "Video Game Awards", made by an animator for Bethesda. Once again, Team Fortress 2 related.


With all the GMod and SFM videos being made, I strongly believe that the amateur animation movement is being promoted and dabbled in more than ever, and I'm proud to promote it.

Grand Theft Auto: Twentieth Century.

No sir, this isn't leaked footage of the long lost GTA prequel from the 1900's; this is a real-life movie! This was produced as one of the films by the infamous Edison Film Company (which, if you read the little footnote of my last blog, you'd know I have this prejudiced distaste for). I was going to describe the ingenuity of Edison and his undeniably philanthropic efforts to make science and arts a purely entertaining medium with no motives for money-hoarding whatsoever, but now that I think about it, that would probably just devolve into me using all sorts of bitter sarcasm to jab at him for effortlessly ripping-off the lives of creatures and humans and their honest creativities, all in an attempt to become a business powerhouse.

And... that would be mean.

So let's look at this video of a few men robbing a train. For almost 1900 years, the public has been asking "How do I rob a train?" And finally, the Edison company comes to the rescue and puts all of our greatest troubles and wonders at rest with this motion picture! Right in the decade when pictures began to magically move, thanks to science, this movie was released. It was silent, because the technology to record sound had not yet been created (stolen and commercialized) by the Edison company. So in theatres, a live pianist would be playing a live piano in front of the live audience to add flair to the not-so-live action on screen. Which makes sense, I mean, it's kind of uncomfortable just watching a bunch of silent guns go off and hearing the "tickatickatickatick" of the projector. But I must admit, this video becomes much more entertaining if you manage to play this video in a separate tab...



But then again, that song goes with literally every thing.

As I watched this, I was reminded of a little game I played, Runescape. Ever heard of it? Thousands of teenaged boys cry out in agony as they regret the mindless weeks they spent on that game. I, however, enjoyed the game. It's sort of medieval, I suppose, but there are pirates and monkeys, and ninjas, and robots, and robot zombies, and ninja monkeys, and zombie pirates, and ninja pirate zombies (seriously). I'm reminded of a little story called "The Great Brain Robbery", about an undead evil pirate, Rabid Jack, creating an army of bionic zombie pirates to rule the world. He creates his army by implanting the brains of monks from a little island into his undead minions to create an army of zombie-mechs with average-intelligence. It's a very, very serious plot.

Half pirate, half robot, half pirate ship, half zombie, half monk. The ultimate fighting machine.

But about this movie, at the end, do you see the man shooting his gun at the audience/camera? Just imagine, a room full of people who have never seen a movie before and are convinced that everything on the screen is actually happening. Now imagine showing somebody shoot a gun at them. I can imagine that pure hysteria was unloaded into the crowd, as people thought they were being really shot at.

It's like 3D, except, the third D is unnecessary because nobody knows the difference. I just thought that'd be an interesting thing to imagine.

First Men (to look like they sorta were) on the Moon

Try your best to ignore the non canonical creepy music and enjoy this film. This is one of the first films ever, created by Georges Melies, back when movie editing was done by hand and good* ol' Thomas Edison had invented the first movie player. Melies is known for practically pioneering "special effects". It may look cheesy to us, with what we could call nowadays "poor quality effects". But considering the fact that we can have a movie like "Transformers" exist, where a giant robot that turns into a car beats up a robot that turns into a helicopter, and when you consider the fact that nobody is really phased by the reality that we can do that sort of thing, it isn't really fair to call this movie one of lower-quality. This guy, Melies, was a genius. When film first came out, a series of thousands of pictures on a strip, he was one of the first to realize you could edit the film to seemingly alter reality. In the beginning of the movie, some "wizards", I presume, turn little sticks and telescopes into chairs.

And that drove people nuts! It was ingenious!  And then, they decide to go to the moon by building a big gun, and having some people sit inside a "bullet", then shooting at the moon.

We realize nowadays that, just as turning sticks into chairs on film is old-hat, that sitting inside a gun is not how you get to the moon. But at this point, nobody really thought too hard about doing that because, well... The moon is far away, it's science fiction to them.

I know you're in there, Bobby Goddard...

But anywho, while I watched this movie, I was instantly remembered of Dr Robert Goddard, the father of the rocket. Do you know how he imagined space travel would look like? He imagined it, as a young boy in 1899 before this movie was released, to be like it was pictured in this movie, and because of this image of being fired out of a gun into space in, he was inspired to later grow up and invent the rocket, conceptualize going to the moon and possibly planets, almost 50 years after his death reincarnating himself into the robotic dog of Jimmy Neutron under the admittedly conspicuous alias "Goddard", and thus carried on his legacy of space travel ingenuity via an emission of brainwaves of his hidden knowledge of rocketeering and space travel technology into the brain of Jimmy Neutron while he slept.

Okay, I may have made that part up. Maybe. But really, Georges started this whole "special effects" business, the field that I secretly want a job in. And while Georges was admittedly wrong about there being mushrooms  on the moon, he was a genius and years ahead of his time.

And like all proper geniuses, he was a bit nutty. Here's a photo of the Melies family, guess which one is Georges.

Go ahead, guess.

He even played the air guitar before the electric guitar existed. Truly a marvel of a mind.


*Thomas Edison was probably not as nice of a genius as everyone thought, as revealed in the recent proTesla movement. See TheOatmeal. Discretion advised: True facts, innuendos, and vulgar language.