Please ignore the euphemism that is my title. I was just wanting to say a hey to this big, gleaming sphere of blogos (it's like calling someone a wino, but with more pretentious wit and less blurring of grammar rules. Actually, strike out that last bit) that I've just recently joined. Soon, you will realise the complete lack of ability I have in the worlds of narrative and the written word but, let's be clear about this, it should be fun. Perhaps. With some luck.
Moving on.
Recently I've been suffering from the worlds most horrendous terminal illness. Well, terminal in a creative sense of the word. I've become a sufferer of writers block. This is not as it sounds, a giant piece of cobblestone tied to my pen (I know you Minecraft addicts were thinking it) but instead the complete lack of inspiration to write. So I find myself here exploring the great beyond of my mind thanks to a sense of melancholic despair and a Justin Bieber track I found that had been slowed down 800% and sounded like someone exploring the electric impulses of my synapses.
Surprisingly, given my writers' block, I found it overgrown. The pot plants of my psyches' front veranda overflowing their bounds, the lawn unkempt and unruly with the crabgrass of my subconscious slowly winning the turf war (...cause it's lawn...get it?) against my boring self and last weeks newspapers piling up in the farthest corner where the annoying paper boy throws them seemingly on purpose to test his aim just to get to me. What was I talking about?
I found many ideas, but realised quickly and abruptly:
None of this is interesting.
You see, being a gamer, I like to talk about games. Unsurprisingly. However, people don't want to read a blog about your latest foray into the world of nerdery if it involves anything past a controller and a terrorists' head being blown into the gritty brown wall behind it somewhere in Afghanistan.
I retreat back into my boarded up house, finding more talk of miniatures, cards, indie puzzle games, final fantasy jokes. On and on, I wade through the flotsam and jetsam of a games junkie. Soon I feel despair that I'll ever find anything interesting or entertaining for the mass blogosphere until I hit something that overlaps in the great venn diagram of games and philosophy.
Ludology.
A really cool concept in dismantling games. It simply looks at gameplay, how a game is structured, made. It judges it's rules, it's complexities, it's way of levelling the playing field for everyone. The tactics.
Interestingly, you would think that a complex, academic way of dismantling and analysing games would eschew you're gamer staples, such as the Call of Duty series or even things such as Super Mario 3. The great thing is, often and knowingly, it encourages these things.
The thing about COD: Modern Warfare and it's successor was that it played well. Really well. These were games that were spit shined and spit shined until they played well, looked beautiful and encouraged people to introduce themselves. This isn't to say there aren't problems, the fact that the "noob-tube" exists is contrary to my previous argument, but no game is perfect. And the 'tube' serves a purpose. An awe-inspiringly exploitable, annoying and obvious purpose. It helps noobs.
However, using the same tools that you used to judge this AAA title, with millions of dollars poured into it's mixing pot of production, you can judge a game made in someones' little scummy meth (read: games) lab in a matter of weeks. VVVVV is an indie darling made by one man and it involves 8 bit graphics, an eerie soundtrack and only 3 action buttons. One to move your character left, one to move your character right and one to change the direction of gravity. This game plays smoothly and has a generous checkpoint section that makes it's difficulty bearable as well as making the game more user friendly. It's puzzles can be worked out in a variety of methods, with the trial and error method probably not being a great one but often used. Check it out, it's pretty cool.
Ludology can deal with any game from any background. However it falters greatly. I recently realised that this made the method unusable for me. And many others. Ludology ignores the story a game tells for it's nuts and bolts build. This means that, despite a game like Final Fantasy X with it's amazing storyline, great character design and set pieces, it becomes broken in the eyes of ludology. Because there is no "jump button" and this lowers user accessibility, because the movement is linear, because the combat isn't overly shaken up during the entire story and because the levelling system is broken in more ways than one. But this is one of the classic games of our generation! Ok...maybe only for gamers, but still. The method is broken.
It's like saying: "I found Inglorious Basterds only OK. The scenes are really long, and the action only happens very occasionally". You ignore the tension in the dialogue, the acting, the entire reason for the film! Ludology is the main form of games deconstruction, yet it ignores such a basic premise of creation. Games don't just have to made for fun. They can say something too.
...It would be good if they were fun too of course...just saying.
On second thoughts, perhaps ludology isn't really a big overlap between my interests and others. Perhaps I have been searching through my minds proverbial loo instead of my fridge and given you the meal of un-related turd instead of spicy Italian thought sausage. But I enjoyed this rant. And Damn right you better enjoy my rants to come!
Because Shady is here folks, and here to stay!
(Hey next week I might post thing good so stick around, eh?)
Monday, December 6, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Awkard silence...
Good evening my blog offspring; my bloffspring (YES! I love it, good woosion [word fusion]). Every time that I blog I seem to apologise for my absense because I have not posted in far too long, and let me apologise yet again for I have once again been too busy or unimaginative to post anything for quite a while.
The other day I found myself serving two customers (I am a check out chick, or laser babe as I prefer to be called, at Safeway) who were the parents of a girl my sister went to primary school with. Now I have a good memory of St. Luke's parental faces, but I have to admit (oh dear God no!) that I can't remember names that match the faces of parents of people that weren't even my friends (you monster!) and I am usually unable to do a quick parent-child matchup on facial recognition of 2 people at Safeway (how do you live with yourself?!); especially at the butt end of a 7 hour shift. This situation happens often because the school is just around the corner and as such many of the families would use our humble little supermarket for their weekly groceries, and usually I get the "I recognise you but I don't know where from so I'm not going to say anything because I probably only know you from shopping here so often and you just must always be in here when I am because you have nothing better to do with your life than work 34 hours (this week... I am going to be rich) and saying anything will result in an awkward situation" look. I love this look; it is the look of safety for me because it means I can go about my business with my fake work-smile and then politely say "have you got an everyday rewards card?" and then shove them to the side and serve the next customer. At other times I know ther customer very well, I enjoy a nice chat while serving them, and then they are off on their merry way. This time, however, I found myself in a less common but still far too common situation; the semi-strangers spoke to me. With one or two items, this is ok, but these people had an entire trolley full of groceries for me to scan. The woman said hello and asked me how year 12 was going (how dare these people with whom I am very close not remember that I have already finished secondary school and have already started uni), at this point I still had no idea who this couple was. The man looked confused until the woman said to him "oh that's Roxy's sister" in a way that made it seem like it should be obvious; it was not obvious to me and clearly not obvious to the man that we had ever met before. So now my perimeter of who it could be was narrowed down to the parents of my sister's friends, but she has quite a few of those; I decided that I shouldn't persue the issue further. We then enetered 5 agonising minutes of awkward post-mini-conversation silence that made me feel stupid when I asked for an everyday rewards card, even though I get in trouble if I don't ask for it. ANYWAY, the point of this ever so long introduction (yes that was just the introduction) is that I decided to think up a list of GREAT things to say during an awkward silence... and here are some of them (great intoclusion... conclusion to the introduction).
"The other day I got a pizza from the place across the road and there was a curly black hair in it... I hope it was a chest hair."
Bringing up gross things that make local businesses look bad is always a great idea. Who doesn't want to hear about something that may make them throw up just when they are planning dinner. Good move kid.
"My mum likes Skyhooks."
Hmm... I bet she does... your mother's musical taste is very important to me.
"It's a shame to be inside when it is so nice out there."
Classic weather small talk is always interesting, especially when every answer is the same. Who needs variety anyway?
"I am so tired!"
I have to admit that I use this one all the time. Any time that there is a short silence in any conversation I draw attention to how tired I am; it is rarely a lie but usually unneccessary to mention. It does, however, bring up conversation about all the stuff you do instead of sleeping. Actually not sarcastic on this one, unlike the other ones :).
"I was writing for my blog the other day..."
Everyone cares about what you have to say. You should let them know that they can access your opinions whenever you are not around by simply clicking onto the internet. Lucky them.
"So did you see that *insert sporting event or news story* the other day? Wild huh?"
People like sports, and if they don't like sports, they like news. Most people will be horribly shocked by the 13 year old boy who got dumped by his girlfriend so he killed all her family, drained their blood into a bathtub and then drowned her in it when she got home; it's a general agreement that such actions are frowned upon so this is definitely something that can ignite passionate conversation.
"So... how about Collingwood hey? They suck and their supporters have no teeth."
About 20% of AFL supporters are behind the mighty Pies, my mother included. As a Saints supporter her recent victory makes me want to throw up. The other 80% of AFL supprters are behind a different team... and also whoever is playing against the Pies. It is the sad truth for Collingwood supporters, but hey, I had to deal with 'rapist' comments about my players for way too long for me to feel sympathy towards them. I'm sure that the majority of Pies supporters have their own cars and their own teeth, and I was once a defender of the bullied club, but then they heartlessly demolished us in the grand final replay, and I realised that they are the richest club out of everyone so they don't need to be liked. Also, my mother is an insufferable winner, and a worse loser; I have wanted to punch her in the face so many times this season. Anywho, with this comment you have a 79% chance of the person agreeing with you and adding their own comments, a 19% chance of being abused to the shit by a one eyed Collingwood supporter (for those who don't know I am not saying that they are too poor to afford eye care, it means they don't see any other logic but their own), and a 2% chance of runnng into someone like Shady Lewis who cares not for sport, doesn't even know who Joffa is, and thinks AFL is the most boring thing to happen to Victoria since one convict settler said to the other convict settler: "oh I am ALSO her because I stole a tea cosy from my next door neighrbour".
That's all from me folks, I hope that all of your silences are awkward so that you too can benefit from my list of incredibly interesting things to say in an awkward silence. Please note that any interesting fact that you read off the back of a Libra pad (ladies know what I'm talking about) is also a good thing to mention when you are just rocking backj and forth on your feet and looking blankly at another person. Thanks for reading.
-Renji
The other day I found myself serving two customers (I am a check out chick, or laser babe as I prefer to be called, at Safeway) who were the parents of a girl my sister went to primary school with. Now I have a good memory of St. Luke's parental faces, but I have to admit (oh dear God no!) that I can't remember names that match the faces of parents of people that weren't even my friends (you monster!) and I am usually unable to do a quick parent-child matchup on facial recognition of 2 people at Safeway (how do you live with yourself?!); especially at the butt end of a 7 hour shift. This situation happens often because the school is just around the corner and as such many of the families would use our humble little supermarket for their weekly groceries, and usually I get the "I recognise you but I don't know where from so I'm not going to say anything because I probably only know you from shopping here so often and you just must always be in here when I am because you have nothing better to do with your life than work 34 hours (this week... I am going to be rich) and saying anything will result in an awkward situation" look. I love this look; it is the look of safety for me because it means I can go about my business with my fake work-smile and then politely say "have you got an everyday rewards card?" and then shove them to the side and serve the next customer. At other times I know ther customer very well, I enjoy a nice chat while serving them, and then they are off on their merry way. This time, however, I found myself in a less common but still far too common situation; the semi-strangers spoke to me. With one or two items, this is ok, but these people had an entire trolley full of groceries for me to scan. The woman said hello and asked me how year 12 was going (how dare these people with whom I am very close not remember that I have already finished secondary school and have already started uni), at this point I still had no idea who this couple was. The man looked confused until the woman said to him "oh that's Roxy's sister" in a way that made it seem like it should be obvious; it was not obvious to me and clearly not obvious to the man that we had ever met before. So now my perimeter of who it could be was narrowed down to the parents of my sister's friends, but she has quite a few of those; I decided that I shouldn't persue the issue further. We then enetered 5 agonising minutes of awkward post-mini-conversation silence that made me feel stupid when I asked for an everyday rewards card, even though I get in trouble if I don't ask for it. ANYWAY, the point of this ever so long introduction (yes that was just the introduction) is that I decided to think up a list of GREAT things to say during an awkward silence... and here are some of them (great intoclusion... conclusion to the introduction).
"The other day I got a pizza from the place across the road and there was a curly black hair in it... I hope it was a chest hair."
Bringing up gross things that make local businesses look bad is always a great idea. Who doesn't want to hear about something that may make them throw up just when they are planning dinner. Good move kid.
"My mum likes Skyhooks."
Hmm... I bet she does... your mother's musical taste is very important to me.
"It's a shame to be inside when it is so nice out there."
Classic weather small talk is always interesting, especially when every answer is the same. Who needs variety anyway?
"I am so tired!"
I have to admit that I use this one all the time. Any time that there is a short silence in any conversation I draw attention to how tired I am; it is rarely a lie but usually unneccessary to mention. It does, however, bring up conversation about all the stuff you do instead of sleeping. Actually not sarcastic on this one, unlike the other ones :).
"I was writing for my blog the other day..."
Everyone cares about what you have to say. You should let them know that they can access your opinions whenever you are not around by simply clicking onto the internet. Lucky them.
"So did you see that *insert sporting event or news story* the other day? Wild huh?"
People like sports, and if they don't like sports, they like news. Most people will be horribly shocked by the 13 year old boy who got dumped by his girlfriend so he killed all her family, drained their blood into a bathtub and then drowned her in it when she got home; it's a general agreement that such actions are frowned upon so this is definitely something that can ignite passionate conversation.
"So... how about Collingwood hey? They suck and their supporters have no teeth."
About 20% of AFL supporters are behind the mighty Pies, my mother included. As a Saints supporter her recent victory makes me want to throw up. The other 80% of AFL supprters are behind a different team... and also whoever is playing against the Pies. It is the sad truth for Collingwood supporters, but hey, I had to deal with 'rapist' comments about my players for way too long for me to feel sympathy towards them. I'm sure that the majority of Pies supporters have their own cars and their own teeth, and I was once a defender of the bullied club, but then they heartlessly demolished us in the grand final replay, and I realised that they are the richest club out of everyone so they don't need to be liked. Also, my mother is an insufferable winner, and a worse loser; I have wanted to punch her in the face so many times this season. Anywho, with this comment you have a 79% chance of the person agreeing with you and adding their own comments, a 19% chance of being abused to the shit by a one eyed Collingwood supporter (for those who don't know I am not saying that they are too poor to afford eye care, it means they don't see any other logic but their own), and a 2% chance of runnng into someone like Shady Lewis who cares not for sport, doesn't even know who Joffa is, and thinks AFL is the most boring thing to happen to Victoria since one convict settler said to the other convict settler: "oh I am ALSO her because I stole a tea cosy from my next door neighrbour".
That's all from me folks, I hope that all of your silences are awkward so that you too can benefit from my list of incredibly interesting things to say in an awkward silence. Please note that any interesting fact that you read off the back of a Libra pad (ladies know what I'm talking about) is also a good thing to mention when you are just rocking backj and forth on your feet and looking blankly at another person. Thanks for reading.
-Renji
Thursday, September 23, 2010
On Boredom, Getting down with the Sickness, and how!
Hello audience
Usually I'd make a blog-related quip here, but I have recently come to the conclusion that a "blog" sounds more like a bottom-feeding swamp creature that survives solely on it's own farts than an interweb based compendium of thoughts. So I'm not going to.
I have recently become rather sick, not in the totally gnarly way, nor the Rage Against the Machine way, but in the way that your throat decides it's going to be hosting some mitotic party for amoeboids who never wish to leave the confines of my tonsils. This wouldn't be so bad if not for the taste, the lack of stomach and the ridiculous pain caused by what I can only describe as the perpetual dance floor of bacterium grinding against one another in a state of drunken ambiguity towards each-others attractiveness so as to cause a whole new generation of bastard bacteria to take up the party once their old-folks (or old-nuclei or whatever bacteria call their ancestors) are long gone. But I digress. Usually, despite this pain, I love getting sick.
Seriously, think about it. Being sick gives you excuses like never before. Watching the entirety of the OC with directors commentary. Pretty sad. Oh, you're sick? WELL! That's OK then. Getting through a large of portion of the extended directors cut editions of both The Fellowship of the Ring AND The Two Towers? Impressive, but not exactly admirably. Oh, your new monkey spleen transplant was rejected? Well then, that seems perfectly reasonable! Playing Magic: The Gathering for the 23th time by yourself? Just...well...just plain dismal. Actually, perhaps being sick doesn't quite cover that one. But my point stands.
It also gives you an excuse to do stuff that you couldn't otherwise do, like begin to write that book you always wanted to, or that song, or that script. There is a bevy of creative outlets for your sickness boredom that can be constructive and conducive to you feeling better than ever once you get your health back. Personally, I've used my sick time to grow a beard. Of course, my ability to grow a beard is similar to an African Elephant's ability to cook a satisfying bacon omelette, but this is hardly relevant. I also use my sick time to catch up on work I really should have done a LOOOOONG while back but never did. It's amazing what the world of sickness can bring you.
The only problem with being sick is you are, well, sick. I was going to be filming this week, which would have been no problem even if I was sick, but unfortunately it turns out my voice went the day I was going to start filming. Just the luck you'd expect of Lewis von Shady. However, I have enjoyed the amount of nothing I've managed to do this week.
I was also pondering the reason for my sickness the other day. While my parents believe it was probably because I have run myself ragged between uni, work and parties, I believe it comes from a different, far more maleficent source.
Because last week, I saw The Last Airbender.
But first, some back-story. I am a huge fan of the TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender. Sure it's techniquely a kids show, but many of the themes are fairly complex, none of the characters are definitively good (Though Aang and Sokka give it a good try) or evil (except, perhaps, The Fire Lord). The scripting was amazing, the story engaging, the animation flawless, the comedic timing without parallel and the action so awesome one can barely describe. It dealt with some pretty heavy characters and ideas, such as Aangs' guilt for the deaths in the war and Zuko's constant search for honour, but never lost it's upbeat attitude and quirky story-telling.
None of these things, unfortunately, have managed to be transferred into the multi-million dollar turd shat out by M. Knight Shyamalan. He wrote it. He produced it. He directed it. He ruined it. This surely seems like the perfect kids mid-year blockbuster. It has colourful environments, a powerful child protagonist, humour and a really cool core idea. What's even better is that he only had to make the first in a trilogy. Now, while fitting an entire season of a TV show into one film isn't easy, it certainly allows a lot more story-telling and character development to take place as you don't have to tie everything up to make it end nicely. What should have been happening in part 1 is a lot of character basing, showing you how each character works, interacts, talks and, almost as important, fights. In the Avatar TV series you really feel attached to just about all the characters. There's not one character that, when they come up on the screen, you fell like "oh god, not that guy, he's so boring" or "she's so dreary" or "he's so predictable".
This movie makes every character seem just about the same with varying levels of anger or fear. You don't really grow attached to any of them as none of them seem to show any sign of a personality, except, surprisingly, Prince Zuko. Dev Patel, in a brilliant casting decision, pulls this character off really well. Every scene with Zuko in it is watch-able, sometimes engaging even. But even then, his problems remain so unexplored he seems almost token at times. His uncle Iroh is almost interesting sometimes, but was horribly miscast as some Pirates of the Caribbean reject so it largely falls on it's face, though interestingly. Everyone else is simply a lump of soggy cardboard pretending to be grief stricken and fearful.
Aang, played by a precocious performing child nobody has even heard of, seems completely unsuited to the job. This kid doesn't look like he knows how to have fun. He also can't act, so I don't know how or why he was chosen.
Sokka, played by Jackson Rathbone, takes everything too seriously and is way to forced. Sokka, voiced by Jack DeSena, was fairly easygoing in the series, and extremely extroverted. He stole every scene he was in! Here, Sokka seems like a tag-along that never wants to be there, a stale character that just shouldn't have gotten past the script editor, let alone given to THAT actor.
Katara...well, there's nothing WRONG with here except she can't act. Otherwise I guess the choice wasn't too far off. Well, not too far off if you go by the movie's arcana. In the series, all the water tribe people were tanned, because they were meant to be tribes of Inuit! In this film we just get a whole lot of white guys posing as Eskimos...It doesn't sit right, I can tell you right now.
The racial differences between the four elements and their respective people also put me off somewhat. The water tribe were meant to be a tanned, strong people able to ward off the harshest environments. Instead we got lazy, white fisherman. The earth kingdom people were supposed to be far more diverse, but in the film they are passed off as purely asian, which always felt wrong. The couple of air nomads I see throughout the film look exceptionally white, when in the series they are by far the most buddhist in their cultural beliefs. I will admit, though, I really dug the Fire Nation being largely sub-continental. That was something that wasn't in the series that actually really worked in the film.
But these are just the casting and ideas decisions that didn't work. There were a whole lot of more practical things that were far worse I can tell you.
The movie is far too short, for the amount of information and story Shyamalabingbong was trying to convey. It comes in at 103 minutes, which doesn't seem exceptionally short, but given he was aiming to include at least 7, maybe 8, episodes of content into this film it really needed a bit more time to develop. Many scenes seem to just skip over themselves before they've reached their conclusion.
The editing is also pretty incredibly choppy, with some jump cuts being made that leave you confused as to what happened and irritated at the direction. At one point, Aang is fighting off a legion of Fire Nation troops in a training circle for airbenders in an air temple. This seemed like it was going to actually be a GOOD fight scene, but as soon as I thought that, it suddenly jumped to Aang somehow on a cliff about to jump off the temple and escape on his glider. I'm sorry, WHAT!? This seems like B movie editing, like what I'd expect as a joke from some grindhouse film or similarly related robert rodriguez mock. Here it just looks cheap and really brings down the movie.
Finally we move to the special effects. Now. If this is an Avatar: The Last Airbender movie, you'd expect the effects to be pretty good yeah?
Well, sir, you'd be wrong, according to M. Knight Shykaka. The effects can only be described as flimsy. When anyone bends any element, it looks like crap. Water looks weak and largely useless. Earth seems like it might as well be air, with no shuddering, no strength. Fire, which fared the worst, looks like you could wave it off with your hand. Air just...well I can't even really see it most of the time. It all just looks really average, as do the benders themselves. Shyamatwain seems to to have just told the actors to flail their arms arbitrarily for a couple of seconds. There is no essence of martial arts, no flow. It just looks stupid. They also stand they're flailing for about 2-3 seconds before anything even seems to happen. Like they're just waking up their awesome elemental powers so they can through another bucket of water at you.
All we can hope now is that the series is renewed under a different director with a team of writers preferably. Maybe we'll get season 2 and 3 given they're own movies as well! A well, a blogger can dream.
See you round folks, this has bee Shady.
Usually I'd make a blog-related quip here, but I have recently come to the conclusion that a "blog" sounds more like a bottom-feeding swamp creature that survives solely on it's own farts than an interweb based compendium of thoughts. So I'm not going to.
I have recently become rather sick, not in the totally gnarly way, nor the Rage Against the Machine way, but in the way that your throat decides it's going to be hosting some mitotic party for amoeboids who never wish to leave the confines of my tonsils. This wouldn't be so bad if not for the taste, the lack of stomach and the ridiculous pain caused by what I can only describe as the perpetual dance floor of bacterium grinding against one another in a state of drunken ambiguity towards each-others attractiveness so as to cause a whole new generation of bastard bacteria to take up the party once their old-folks (or old-nuclei or whatever bacteria call their ancestors) are long gone. But I digress. Usually, despite this pain, I love getting sick.
Seriously, think about it. Being sick gives you excuses like never before. Watching the entirety of the OC with directors commentary. Pretty sad. Oh, you're sick? WELL! That's OK then. Getting through a large of portion of the extended directors cut editions of both The Fellowship of the Ring AND The Two Towers? Impressive, but not exactly admirably. Oh, your new monkey spleen transplant was rejected? Well then, that seems perfectly reasonable! Playing Magic: The Gathering for the 23th time by yourself? Just...well...just plain dismal. Actually, perhaps being sick doesn't quite cover that one. But my point stands.
It also gives you an excuse to do stuff that you couldn't otherwise do, like begin to write that book you always wanted to, or that song, or that script. There is a bevy of creative outlets for your sickness boredom that can be constructive and conducive to you feeling better than ever once you get your health back. Personally, I've used my sick time to grow a beard. Of course, my ability to grow a beard is similar to an African Elephant's ability to cook a satisfying bacon omelette, but this is hardly relevant. I also use my sick time to catch up on work I really should have done a LOOOOONG while back but never did. It's amazing what the world of sickness can bring you.
The only problem with being sick is you are, well, sick. I was going to be filming this week, which would have been no problem even if I was sick, but unfortunately it turns out my voice went the day I was going to start filming. Just the luck you'd expect of Lewis von Shady. However, I have enjoyed the amount of nothing I've managed to do this week.
I was also pondering the reason for my sickness the other day. While my parents believe it was probably because I have run myself ragged between uni, work and parties, I believe it comes from a different, far more maleficent source.
Because last week, I saw The Last Airbender.
But first, some back-story. I am a huge fan of the TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender. Sure it's techniquely a kids show, but many of the themes are fairly complex, none of the characters are definitively good (Though Aang and Sokka give it a good try) or evil (except, perhaps, The Fire Lord). The scripting was amazing, the story engaging, the animation flawless, the comedic timing without parallel and the action so awesome one can barely describe. It dealt with some pretty heavy characters and ideas, such as Aangs' guilt for the deaths in the war and Zuko's constant search for honour, but never lost it's upbeat attitude and quirky story-telling.
None of these things, unfortunately, have managed to be transferred into the multi-million dollar turd shat out by M. Knight Shyamalan. He wrote it. He produced it. He directed it. He ruined it. This surely seems like the perfect kids mid-year blockbuster. It has colourful environments, a powerful child protagonist, humour and a really cool core idea. What's even better is that he only had to make the first in a trilogy. Now, while fitting an entire season of a TV show into one film isn't easy, it certainly allows a lot more story-telling and character development to take place as you don't have to tie everything up to make it end nicely. What should have been happening in part 1 is a lot of character basing, showing you how each character works, interacts, talks and, almost as important, fights. In the Avatar TV series you really feel attached to just about all the characters. There's not one character that, when they come up on the screen, you fell like "oh god, not that guy, he's so boring" or "she's so dreary" or "he's so predictable".
This movie makes every character seem just about the same with varying levels of anger or fear. You don't really grow attached to any of them as none of them seem to show any sign of a personality, except, surprisingly, Prince Zuko. Dev Patel, in a brilliant casting decision, pulls this character off really well. Every scene with Zuko in it is watch-able, sometimes engaging even. But even then, his problems remain so unexplored he seems almost token at times. His uncle Iroh is almost interesting sometimes, but was horribly miscast as some Pirates of the Caribbean reject so it largely falls on it's face, though interestingly. Everyone else is simply a lump of soggy cardboard pretending to be grief stricken and fearful.
Aang, played by a precocious performing child nobody has even heard of, seems completely unsuited to the job. This kid doesn't look like he knows how to have fun. He also can't act, so I don't know how or why he was chosen.
Sokka, played by Jackson Rathbone, takes everything too seriously and is way to forced. Sokka, voiced by Jack DeSena, was fairly easygoing in the series, and extremely extroverted. He stole every scene he was in! Here, Sokka seems like a tag-along that never wants to be there, a stale character that just shouldn't have gotten past the script editor, let alone given to THAT actor.
Katara...well, there's nothing WRONG with here except she can't act. Otherwise I guess the choice wasn't too far off. Well, not too far off if you go by the movie's arcana. In the series, all the water tribe people were tanned, because they were meant to be tribes of Inuit! In this film we just get a whole lot of white guys posing as Eskimos...It doesn't sit right, I can tell you right now.
The racial differences between the four elements and their respective people also put me off somewhat. The water tribe were meant to be a tanned, strong people able to ward off the harshest environments. Instead we got lazy, white fisherman. The earth kingdom people were supposed to be far more diverse, but in the film they are passed off as purely asian, which always felt wrong. The couple of air nomads I see throughout the film look exceptionally white, when in the series they are by far the most buddhist in their cultural beliefs. I will admit, though, I really dug the Fire Nation being largely sub-continental. That was something that wasn't in the series that actually really worked in the film.
But these are just the casting and ideas decisions that didn't work. There were a whole lot of more practical things that were far worse I can tell you.
The movie is far too short, for the amount of information and story Shyamalabingbong was trying to convey. It comes in at 103 minutes, which doesn't seem exceptionally short, but given he was aiming to include at least 7, maybe 8, episodes of content into this film it really needed a bit more time to develop. Many scenes seem to just skip over themselves before they've reached their conclusion.
The editing is also pretty incredibly choppy, with some jump cuts being made that leave you confused as to what happened and irritated at the direction. At one point, Aang is fighting off a legion of Fire Nation troops in a training circle for airbenders in an air temple. This seemed like it was going to actually be a GOOD fight scene, but as soon as I thought that, it suddenly jumped to Aang somehow on a cliff about to jump off the temple and escape on his glider. I'm sorry, WHAT!? This seems like B movie editing, like what I'd expect as a joke from some grindhouse film or similarly related robert rodriguez mock. Here it just looks cheap and really brings down the movie.
Finally we move to the special effects. Now. If this is an Avatar: The Last Airbender movie, you'd expect the effects to be pretty good yeah?
Well, sir, you'd be wrong, according to M. Knight Shykaka. The effects can only be described as flimsy. When anyone bends any element, it looks like crap. Water looks weak and largely useless. Earth seems like it might as well be air, with no shuddering, no strength. Fire, which fared the worst, looks like you could wave it off with your hand. Air just...well I can't even really see it most of the time. It all just looks really average, as do the benders themselves. Shyamatwain seems to to have just told the actors to flail their arms arbitrarily for a couple of seconds. There is no essence of martial arts, no flow. It just looks stupid. They also stand they're flailing for about 2-3 seconds before anything even seems to happen. Like they're just waking up their awesome elemental powers so they can through another bucket of water at you.
All we can hope now is that the series is renewed under a different director with a team of writers preferably. Maybe we'll get season 2 and 3 given they're own movies as well! A well, a blogger can dream.
See you round folks, this has bee Shady.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
The Gland
Good afternoon blogfiends! I hope that you are all feeling quite well because unfortunately, I am feeling a little under the whether. After weeks of feeling awful and run down, I finally ventured off to the doctor. A 20 minute wait, a short consultation, some cold hands, and a needle in the arm later, I found out that I had been given a massive serving of Glandular Fever with a side order of Tonsilitis; Mysterious Followe of the D.I.D a Mess blog likes to call it "The Gland" because it makes him sound like a super villain. Anyway, the point is: even though I am well over the Tosilitis, The Gland still continues to wreak havoc on my life.
I am not supposed to drink alcohol, take part in any strenuous activity, stay up too late, wake up too early, do any exercise, work too much, get too stressed out, go out too much, or have a life of any kind. I never feel sick... but I always feel tired which is a pain in the butt, and I guess the wholre tired thing is why I am not supposed to be moving from this chair.... ever. So in light of my new situation of needing to 'take it easy' (I am getting sick of that phrase), I have started to create a 'glandular timetable' for myself. This timetable is a complete screw up of my life; it has better eating (content, times, portions, and less snacking because I can't exercise that shit off), early bed times, lots of reading and TV series on DVD that I have to watch because it is not stressful, and I also took the opportunity to put some time for driving in there as I have done a pathetic FIVE HOURS of driving on my L's and I really do not want my little sister to catch up to me two weeks after getting her Learner's permit.
The question is: is all of this habit changing worth it to avoid the possibility of Chronic Fatigue? Those who have had Chronic Fatigue would probably say yes, but even when I WAS doing exercise it was nothing even close to real exercise; walking the 30 minute round trip to Safeway and back to buy chocolate doesn't really count so I question the likelyhood of me ending up with Chronic Fatigue. The alcohol thing is also a bother because I am a uni student afterall; how am I supposed to resist the endless temptation of the sweet, sweet booze? There is an endless supply of alcohol at many of the BBQs on the Menzies Lawn and the Boob Lawn where you can buy tickets to events with free alcohol and then go to the bar where your friends are with discounted alcohol if you have your MSA card. I admit that I RARELY drink at uni but now that I can't I want to so bad; plus I just bought my Science Ball ticket and that $85 is definitely not going to be wasted on an alcohol free night.
So basically this post is pretty useless because it is just me complaining. I apologise. If I wasn't so desperate to post something this would not have even made it onto the page but I haven't posted on any of my blogs in AGES so I thought I should. Forgive this post. Thanks for reading.
-Renji
I am not supposed to drink alcohol, take part in any strenuous activity, stay up too late, wake up too early, do any exercise, work too much, get too stressed out, go out too much, or have a life of any kind. I never feel sick... but I always feel tired which is a pain in the butt, and I guess the wholre tired thing is why I am not supposed to be moving from this chair.... ever. So in light of my new situation of needing to 'take it easy' (I am getting sick of that phrase), I have started to create a 'glandular timetable' for myself. This timetable is a complete screw up of my life; it has better eating (content, times, portions, and less snacking because I can't exercise that shit off), early bed times, lots of reading and TV series on DVD that I have to watch because it is not stressful, and I also took the opportunity to put some time for driving in there as I have done a pathetic FIVE HOURS of driving on my L's and I really do not want my little sister to catch up to me two weeks after getting her Learner's permit.
The question is: is all of this habit changing worth it to avoid the possibility of Chronic Fatigue? Those who have had Chronic Fatigue would probably say yes, but even when I WAS doing exercise it was nothing even close to real exercise; walking the 30 minute round trip to Safeway and back to buy chocolate doesn't really count so I question the likelyhood of me ending up with Chronic Fatigue. The alcohol thing is also a bother because I am a uni student afterall; how am I supposed to resist the endless temptation of the sweet, sweet booze? There is an endless supply of alcohol at many of the BBQs on the Menzies Lawn and the Boob Lawn where you can buy tickets to events with free alcohol and then go to the bar where your friends are with discounted alcohol if you have your MSA card. I admit that I RARELY drink at uni but now that I can't I want to so bad; plus I just bought my Science Ball ticket and that $85 is definitely not going to be wasted on an alcohol free night.
So basically this post is pretty useless because it is just me complaining. I apologise. If I wasn't so desperate to post something this would not have even made it onto the page but I haven't posted on any of my blogs in AGES so I thought I should. Forgive this post. Thanks for reading.
-Renji
Thursday, July 29, 2010
The Art of Whore
Two posts in one day!? Is this madness? No dear friends, this is war. The art of said noun in fact. Quite simply, Shady has received some bad news and is feeling a bit down. However, there is a simple remedy concocted from shame and the exploitation of it!
Schadenfreude, my dear friends, Shadenfruede.
Quite simply, today I will be taking the status of a facebook broadcaster and comparing it to Sun-Tzu's The Art of War to properly pinpoint exactly where it went wrong. While this sounds like a particularly tricky, even finicky procedure, do not despair! Because the status in question allows me to broadside it with the equivalent of about 30 tactical warheads of pure, unadulterated ridicule. If you are one to enjoy the killing of a fly with 30 fly swats composed solely of lightning and rage, this should be something you'd want to read.
Here Goes. All names are kept secret. All similarities and likenesses to any other status you may have read are perfunctorily apt and analogous.
Our mysterious facebook "whore", as they have been known since the rise and fall of Myspace in the mid-high school era, posted this status:
Now, this is somewhat related to my previous article. I (or my "internet-self" as I concluded last blog, herein referred to as my iSelf thanks to an infuriating naming revolution of my generation) have no sympathy for this broadcaster. I barely know thee, I barely want to know thee. Don't clog up my news feed with this. But since you asked for it, mysterious stranger, here goes.
I believe the primary purpose of this poorly punctuated post is to garner some attention in what could be a possibly bad time for you. However, over the course of 6 hours since you made this post, there were 0 comments and 0 likes. This makes the post completely unsuccessful in concurrence with it's initial aim. This is further compounded by the posts around yours which have gained far more facebook success then your feeble post. This status' are:
a) This car ride just doesn't end : |
AND a wall post simply stating;
b) dislikes the cold
with each getting 3 "likes" and 1 "like" and 7 comments respectably.
How did your status go so wrong?
Well Sun Tzu is here to help. His Art of War is instantly recognisable and relational. For instance, Sun Tzu states that:
He who knows
Neither self
Nor enemy
Will fail
In every battle.
If you do not know where your happy place has gone, how can you know thyself? How can you succeed? If you post annoying posts to try and gain pity and compliments from your friends, then how could you possibly know your enemy? How can you succeed? Shortly, you don't.
You fail.
This is, of course, assuming your friends are your enemies in this scenario. You must metaphorically defeat them to have them comment on your status! However, I am sure if one were to keep up this incessant abuse of the news feed, it may not be metaphorical much longer.
Sun Tzu goes on to say:
Of old,
The Skilful Warrior
First ensured
His own
Invulnerability;
Then he waited for
The enemy's
Vulnerability.
You see! You have admitted your vulnerability! No wonder you fail, you've been going about things the opposite way! What a goose you are. You've become like a sponge finger, not a mighty warrior! You are meant for cake, not the emotional battlefield!
But it is not all your fault. People must have been adept at noticing the subtle cues to your unhappiness. You went fishing for compliments, but your iFriends must know
Do not swallow
A bait.
For we all know the trap of the compliment fisherman. They will pull you out of the water, scale you of all your compassion and slowly gut you with a knife of such unbridled despair that you feel free to let your inner beliefs (here represented by a carps entrails) go just to make them leave you alone with their self esteem raised just enough that they wish to fish more, while you are left filleted and lonely with your eye-balls a bit protruded and your bowels moved for the experience.
The final comparison for this puzzling fisherman is to strike the final blow, to put the nail in the coffin of your victory and to prove that your way of waging emotional war on those who have no choice but to listen to you is misconceived and wrong.
In War,
Victory should be
Swift.
Six and a half hours after you waged your battle, naming the field of war and warfare components, you have not won. Any victory from here is protracted.
No Nation has ever benefited
From a protracted War.
Thanks Folks,
This has been Shady
**as a side note, after I published this the status was deleted by the person who made it after no-one continued to comment on it. This person does not read this blog. Nor any blogs I do not believe.
***ALSO
goats:
g
Schadenfreude, my dear friends, Shadenfruede.
Quite simply, today I will be taking the status of a facebook broadcaster and comparing it to Sun-Tzu's The Art of War to properly pinpoint exactly where it went wrong. While this sounds like a particularly tricky, even finicky procedure, do not despair! Because the status in question allows me to broadside it with the equivalent of about 30 tactical warheads of pure, unadulterated ridicule. If you are one to enjoy the killing of a fly with 30 fly swats composed solely of lightning and rage, this should be something you'd want to read.
Here Goes. All names are kept secret. All similarities and likenesses to any other status you may have read are perfunctorily apt and analogous.
Our mysterious facebook "whore", as they have been known since the rise and fall of Myspace in the mid-high school era, posted this status:
"where can i get a new happy place? ive seem to have lost mine..."
Now, this is somewhat related to my previous article. I (or my "internet-self" as I concluded last blog, herein referred to as my iSelf thanks to an infuriating naming revolution of my generation) have no sympathy for this broadcaster. I barely know thee, I barely want to know thee. Don't clog up my news feed with this. But since you asked for it, mysterious stranger, here goes.
I believe the primary purpose of this poorly punctuated post is to garner some attention in what could be a possibly bad time for you. However, over the course of 6 hours since you made this post, there were 0 comments and 0 likes. This makes the post completely unsuccessful in concurrence with it's initial aim. This is further compounded by the posts around yours which have gained far more facebook success then your feeble post. This status' are:
a) This car ride just doesn't end : |
AND a wall post simply stating;
b) dislikes the cold
with each getting 3 "likes" and 1 "like" and 7 comments respectably.
How did your status go so wrong?
Well Sun Tzu is here to help. His Art of War is instantly recognisable and relational. For instance, Sun Tzu states that:
He who knows
Neither self
Nor enemy
Will fail
In every battle.
If you do not know where your happy place has gone, how can you know thyself? How can you succeed? If you post annoying posts to try and gain pity and compliments from your friends, then how could you possibly know your enemy? How can you succeed? Shortly, you don't.
You fail.
This is, of course, assuming your friends are your enemies in this scenario. You must metaphorically defeat them to have them comment on your status! However, I am sure if one were to keep up this incessant abuse of the news feed, it may not be metaphorical much longer.
Sun Tzu goes on to say:
Of old,
The Skilful Warrior
First ensured
His own
Invulnerability;
Then he waited for
The enemy's
Vulnerability.
You see! You have admitted your vulnerability! No wonder you fail, you've been going about things the opposite way! What a goose you are. You've become like a sponge finger, not a mighty warrior! You are meant for cake, not the emotional battlefield!
But it is not all your fault. People must have been adept at noticing the subtle cues to your unhappiness. You went fishing for compliments, but your iFriends must know
Do not swallow
A bait.
For we all know the trap of the compliment fisherman. They will pull you out of the water, scale you of all your compassion and slowly gut you with a knife of such unbridled despair that you feel free to let your inner beliefs (here represented by a carps entrails) go just to make them leave you alone with their self esteem raised just enough that they wish to fish more, while you are left filleted and lonely with your eye-balls a bit protruded and your bowels moved for the experience.
The final comparison for this puzzling fisherman is to strike the final blow, to put the nail in the coffin of your victory and to prove that your way of waging emotional war on those who have no choice but to listen to you is misconceived and wrong.
In War,
Victory should be
Swift.
Six and a half hours after you waged your battle, naming the field of war and warfare components, you have not won. Any victory from here is protracted.
No Nation has ever benefited
From a protracted War.
Thanks Folks,
This has been Shady
**as a side note, after I published this the status was deleted by the person who made it after no-one continued to comment on it. This person does not read this blog. Nor any blogs I do not believe.
***ALSO
goats:
g
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The YouTube Menagerie and their Bastard Keepers.
Readers, today Shady finds himself in the dense, sweaty jungle known as YouTube. It is a sad place filled with memorabilia of the past flogged within an inch of its life, videos meant to suck your bandwidth through it's pleasuring of your curiosity of only the most morbid and sadistic happen-stances of the world today and a gargantuan number of videos based purely and simply on the premise "Animals do the darndest things".
It is whilst wading through the marshes of YouTube Poop and trashy replies to Ke$has latest music video I found myself pondering the latter of the above options. Why are animals so entertaining? If it was a member of the human race we'd find ourselves repulsed and possibly infuriated by their similar antics. But once given that it's only some dumb animal, not only does our sympathy leave but so too our empathy. Does this make animals the best blank canvas for comedy ever?
For instance:
This, discovered within a dusty old Mayan temple filled with contorted faces of fury imprinted on to each and every gargoyle one could find, worshipped on a pedestal of aimless rage, is nonetheless hilarious. What is that cat thinking? on his shelves like that? Thinking he is some sort of tiny, feline Billy Ray Cyrus covered in hair, thrusting it's away along it's self made stage?
But people, think about it. If that guy started yelling at someone randomly, how unfunny would that be? is it because we are used to the "lol-ing" at cats we have become completely unsympathetic towards their kind and their plights? Why are we so completely disenchanted with our animal kin?
Because, folks. We are bastards.
The internet has helped information become a true freedom enjoyed by any who can access it, for now at least. I will leave my furore against such red-barrens (thanks to Damacus for this bit of cryptic naming) and inappropriate, rabbit eared speedo wearers until another time. Right now, we must scrutinise how this relentless incoming tide of information has quite possibly washed away all sense of feeling we ever had.
Exhibit A: 4chan
Why anyone has to post a picture of a pregnant horse being raped by bears dressed in waist coats and fez hats is beyond me, but I'm sure those Betards at 4chan have already got 3 threads devoted to it. Trolls are mythical internet creatures which seek to ruin everything you have ever thought. Forever. These Trolls do this by making obscene images mixed with similarly obscene phrases. Perhaps they feel a need to uphold Rule 43. Perhaps 4chan are our saviours of free speech. Perhaps they have connected every PC throughout the world to take over the better part of our 1st world countries and spread the freedom of speech.
Or maybe they are all bored 12 year olds with too much time on their hands, simply the modern day parallel of a kid with a magnifying glass over an ant hill. Either way, they continue to desensitise us further with their photo shopping abilities and general trolling attitudes. They hammer on the heavy ornate doors of ur minds fortress of righteosness, slowly eroding at our walls like acid rain, perpetuating the never-ending flow of racist cats, dogs, bears, courage wolves and poke-parents that slowly invade and inhabit every space of our internet consciousness.
4chan. It's the kryptonite to our web-superman.
Exhibit B: Facebook
This follows on from the very cool Liutenant Renji and her post on the problems with Facebook. Eventually, it is inevitable the shouting box that is Facebook will eventually bottle-neck enough irrelevant problems from irrelevant people into your mind that you cease to notice them. You stop posting on that birthday girls wall, you stop replying to the suicide messages, the messages of anguish, the break-up sadness that envelopes so many adolescent girls who can no longer pester the boy who dumped her and so equally shares it among her internet "friends".
You stop interacting with people who have problems that they broadcast.
If this was real life, you'd be looking a bit jaded by now wouldn't you?
Exhibit C:onclusion?
Perhaps this is the whole point though. Perhaps your internet self is not your real self. Do we have harder persona's that preclude our far more fragile self from the dangers of the internet? Is it a detachment method in which we act like the proverbial Batman to our inner Robin? The Mario to our Peach? The Condoleeezza Rice to our flimsy George W. Bush? Of course, without it we would become embittered and completely lacking in our trust of fellow beings around us. How can we trust those who don't think for themselves, but participate in meaningless, anonymous and ultimately stupid memes intended to insult and breed fear, misapprehension and hate?
Men In Black put it perfectly:
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
To save our Person, we must protect it from People.
Another slice of unimportant and ultimately aimless babble from me folks,
This has been Shady.
Also, I don't understand the obsession with cats.
Goats are much better.
It is whilst wading through the marshes of YouTube Poop and trashy replies to Ke$has latest music video I found myself pondering the latter of the above options. Why are animals so entertaining? If it was a member of the human race we'd find ourselves repulsed and possibly infuriated by their similar antics. But once given that it's only some dumb animal, not only does our sympathy leave but so too our empathy. Does this make animals the best blank canvas for comedy ever?
For instance:
This, discovered within a dusty old Mayan temple filled with contorted faces of fury imprinted on to each and every gargoyle one could find, worshipped on a pedestal of aimless rage, is nonetheless hilarious. What is that cat thinking? on his shelves like that? Thinking he is some sort of tiny, feline Billy Ray Cyrus covered in hair, thrusting it's away along it's self made stage?
But people, think about it. If that guy started yelling at someone randomly, how unfunny would that be? is it because we are used to the "lol-ing" at cats we have become completely unsympathetic towards their kind and their plights? Why are we so completely disenchanted with our animal kin?
Because, folks. We are bastards.
The internet has helped information become a true freedom enjoyed by any who can access it, for now at least. I will leave my furore against such red-barrens (thanks to Damacus for this bit of cryptic naming) and inappropriate, rabbit eared speedo wearers until another time. Right now, we must scrutinise how this relentless incoming tide of information has quite possibly washed away all sense of feeling we ever had.
Exhibit A: 4chan
Why anyone has to post a picture of a pregnant horse being raped by bears dressed in waist coats and fez hats is beyond me, but I'm sure those Betards at 4chan have already got 3 threads devoted to it. Trolls are mythical internet creatures which seek to ruin everything you have ever thought. Forever. These Trolls do this by making obscene images mixed with similarly obscene phrases. Perhaps they feel a need to uphold Rule 43. Perhaps 4chan are our saviours of free speech. Perhaps they have connected every PC throughout the world to take over the better part of our 1st world countries and spread the freedom of speech.
Or maybe they are all bored 12 year olds with too much time on their hands, simply the modern day parallel of a kid with a magnifying glass over an ant hill. Either way, they continue to desensitise us further with their photo shopping abilities and general trolling attitudes. They hammer on the heavy ornate doors of ur minds fortress of righteosness, slowly eroding at our walls like acid rain, perpetuating the never-ending flow of racist cats, dogs, bears, courage wolves and poke-parents that slowly invade and inhabit every space of our internet consciousness.
4chan. It's the kryptonite to our web-superman.
Exhibit B: Facebook
This follows on from the very cool Liutenant Renji and her post on the problems with Facebook. Eventually, it is inevitable the shouting box that is Facebook will eventually bottle-neck enough irrelevant problems from irrelevant people into your mind that you cease to notice them. You stop posting on that birthday girls wall, you stop replying to the suicide messages, the messages of anguish, the break-up sadness that envelopes so many adolescent girls who can no longer pester the boy who dumped her and so equally shares it among her internet "friends".
You stop interacting with people who have problems that they broadcast.
If this was real life, you'd be looking a bit jaded by now wouldn't you?
Exhibit C:onclusion?
Perhaps this is the whole point though. Perhaps your internet self is not your real self. Do we have harder persona's that preclude our far more fragile self from the dangers of the internet? Is it a detachment method in which we act like the proverbial Batman to our inner Robin? The Mario to our Peach? The Condoleeezza Rice to our flimsy George W. Bush? Of course, without it we would become embittered and completely lacking in our trust of fellow beings around us. How can we trust those who don't think for themselves, but participate in meaningless, anonymous and ultimately stupid memes intended to insult and breed fear, misapprehension and hate?
Men In Black put it perfectly:
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
To save our Person, we must protect it from People.
Another slice of unimportant and ultimately aimless babble from me folks,
This has been Shady.
Also, I don't understand the obsession with cats.
Goats are much better.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
A tear is made from 1% water and 99% feelings.
Actually Mr Facebook Group, I think you'll find that in the chemical composition of a tear, there is no trace of 'feelings'; in fact this molecule has not yet been discovered and I assume you have mispronounced the name of some other molecule that is produced in the tear ducts of a human. It must not be very viscous if it makes up 99% of a tear.
Hello all, and welcome to my "let's make up for the sub-par standard of the last post" post. Hopefully I do not embarrass myself by presenting a post that still lacks anything interesting; I fear that it may be the case because now I am thinking about it. On that topic, there was a good 45 minutes between the last sentence and this one because I was thinking of something else interesting to say. With the opening paragraph and title of this post, the content could consist of a number of topics so I am deciding which one would be the least boring to read and the least boring to write about. As I think about which one would be more interesting, I realise that I have already lost interesting in writing the blog and so I must slap myself and move on with this post about feelings; Facebook feelings.
Let me share with you a story; a story of great heartbreak and of the collapse of the world's greatest love, the devastating downfall of the dynamic duo, the utter tragedy of the expiration of the most perfect, the most amazing, the most beautiful relationship in the history of the universe. That's how it was presented to me via Facebook anyway. These two young lovers were apparently born to be together and managed to have a long and joyous relationship, until they hit a speedbump; a speedbump of DOOM! Their relationship crumbled, and so did the young girl's Facebook dignity. Let's be honest here people; everybody thinks that their love is the greatest love in the world and that nobody understands how special it is, but I have some terrible news for you all. It isn't special, and you are not different; but my views on love are better saved for another time because I am a little bit ill and far too tired to rant about how all it does is cause pain until that short time in which you see hope, only to have it crushed once again. ANYWAY, so the young girl is the one that I have on my friend list, let's call her Rose for now, not that Rose reads my blog, but I feel better if I protect her identity. For the weeks leading up to, and the month or so after the break-up, the only things that were on my news feed were groups, fan pages, and status updates by Rose, all relating to the traumatic time in her life. To be fair, she obviously needed an outlet for her immense sorrow, but does this outlet have to be somewhere that is seen by everyone? If I was one of her close friends I would be more than happy to listen to her complain about her relationship and let her cry on my shoulder, but I am not one of her close friends. I spent one week with her on a camp and then barely kept contact with her aside from the 40 million statuses per day that I had to read about how sad her life is. I'm sorry but maybe posting two or three statuses over the week about being upset or having a bad day is tolerable, I'm sure I did it when my last relationship ended, but I don't need an update on your feelings every single minute; they cannot have changed that much.
To move away from the specific example of Rose, there are just a few names of Facebook groups that I have seen that I feel the need to share with you. The first is, of course, the title of this post. "A tear is mafe from 1% water and 99% feelings". A few more of these include: "having those moments where you miss everything that used to be", "(i) shou(l)d be (ove)r (you)", "I just wish you felt the same", "sometimes you get to the point where you just cant cry anymore", and "if I could go back and fix things I would". These groups, when joined in moderation, can be your way of trying to make your ex see how much they meant to you and to hold onto that tiny bit of hope in some form of reconciliation, but joining every single one of them just makes you look sad. It is the same issue as posting a status update with depressing song lyrics or a quote about how your life is over without your true love.
No matter how bad your break-up is, I garuntee that someone has it worse than you. No matter how perfect you thought your relationship was, someone else's was better. Thinking that you were meant to be, doesn't make you meant to be. This doesn't mean that you are not allowed to be upset, but it isn't necessary to let us all know that you are on the verge of a homocidal rampage because if you can't be loved, nobody can. My last boyfriend cheated on me on three separate occasions with three different girls, and is now regularly fucking one of them, and also fucking someone else. He cheated on me three times, I knew about the last one... the commerce camp whore as I like to call her, and he didn't know that I knew, I found out about the other two afterwards. Then I decided that it wasn't worth ruining our relationship over because I loved him so much so I didn't mention it, but I skipped two uni labs to go see him since I had not seen him in a week, and he dumped me while I was sitting on his couch and then I walked home. HE cheated on ME three times and then HE dumped ME. Yes I loved my boyfriend more than I have ever loved anything but that doesn't mean I loved him more than someone else loves their boyfriend, and yes I have never felt as depressed as I did when I got my arse dumped by the bastard, but that doesn't mean that other people in my situation did not feel just as terrible. When all of this happened, I remember posting one status about having a terrible day, and then that was it. No long statuses about how I wish I was dead, no updates every 10 minutes about how I felt like my life was meaningless, no song lyrics that perfectly outlined my awful moods. That doesn't mean that I didn't feel all those things, it just means that I didn't want to bore Facebook with my love life woes. A good friend of mine dated a lovely boy for three and a half years and they broke up 2 days before my last boyfriend and I did. A relationship lasting that long obviously involves SOME feelings, duh. Obviously that break-up would have been awful and terribly sad, but both of them managed to keep their sadness out of Facebook-land and in friend-land. I was happy to listen to what she had to say about the situation because she didn't plaster it all over the internet asking for sympathy. These are examples of what you SHOULD do with Facebook, although I am awware that I just posted it all over Blogspot, but for the purpose of an example; see the big idea people!
Ok, so enough about tolerating angry and depressing status udates. I have to say that there is something that I hate more that these life-hating statuses and that is the 'I'm so in love with my boyfriend slash girlfriend' statuses. This will be a brief section as I have been writing for too long already and even I want to kill myself reading this. Normally this gross lovey dovey crap is reserved for 13 year olds who have been dating for 2 weeks and think that they know what love is, but I was shocked to find out that it can extend to someone my age. This is an old example, but last year (year 12) he was dating someone 4 year younger than him (year 8) which I think is absolutely rediculous, I mean, does it even classify as a vagina at that age? I'm sure they were having lots of gross, illegal sex. Anyway, the point is, an 18 year old guy posting about how he can't live without his 'gorgeous baby girl' because he is 'so in love' with her after 2 weeks and one and a half clumsy sexual encounters, is just sad and I really do not want to know about it. I would rather see my news feed clogged with unfunny 'lol jks' groups than have it filled with these status updates.
So that is my rant for the day, hopefully it was more enjoyable than my last post that was just for something to do. Thanks for reading.
-Renji
Hello all, and welcome to my "let's make up for the sub-par standard of the last post" post. Hopefully I do not embarrass myself by presenting a post that still lacks anything interesting; I fear that it may be the case because now I am thinking about it. On that topic, there was a good 45 minutes between the last sentence and this one because I was thinking of something else interesting to say. With the opening paragraph and title of this post, the content could consist of a number of topics so I am deciding which one would be the least boring to read and the least boring to write about. As I think about which one would be more interesting, I realise that I have already lost interesting in writing the blog and so I must slap myself and move on with this post about feelings; Facebook feelings.
Let me share with you a story; a story of great heartbreak and of the collapse of the world's greatest love, the devastating downfall of the dynamic duo, the utter tragedy of the expiration of the most perfect, the most amazing, the most beautiful relationship in the history of the universe. That's how it was presented to me via Facebook anyway. These two young lovers were apparently born to be together and managed to have a long and joyous relationship, until they hit a speedbump; a speedbump of DOOM! Their relationship crumbled, and so did the young girl's Facebook dignity. Let's be honest here people; everybody thinks that their love is the greatest love in the world and that nobody understands how special it is, but I have some terrible news for you all. It isn't special, and you are not different; but my views on love are better saved for another time because I am a little bit ill and far too tired to rant about how all it does is cause pain until that short time in which you see hope, only to have it crushed once again. ANYWAY, so the young girl is the one that I have on my friend list, let's call her Rose for now, not that Rose reads my blog, but I feel better if I protect her identity. For the weeks leading up to, and the month or so after the break-up, the only things that were on my news feed were groups, fan pages, and status updates by Rose, all relating to the traumatic time in her life. To be fair, she obviously needed an outlet for her immense sorrow, but does this outlet have to be somewhere that is seen by everyone? If I was one of her close friends I would be more than happy to listen to her complain about her relationship and let her cry on my shoulder, but I am not one of her close friends. I spent one week with her on a camp and then barely kept contact with her aside from the 40 million statuses per day that I had to read about how sad her life is. I'm sorry but maybe posting two or three statuses over the week about being upset or having a bad day is tolerable, I'm sure I did it when my last relationship ended, but I don't need an update on your feelings every single minute; they cannot have changed that much.
To move away from the specific example of Rose, there are just a few names of Facebook groups that I have seen that I feel the need to share with you. The first is, of course, the title of this post. "A tear is mafe from 1% water and 99% feelings". A few more of these include: "having those moments where you miss everything that used to be", "(i) shou(l)d be (ove)r (you)", "I just wish you felt the same", "sometimes you get to the point where you just cant cry anymore", and "if I could go back and fix things I would". These groups, when joined in moderation, can be your way of trying to make your ex see how much they meant to you and to hold onto that tiny bit of hope in some form of reconciliation, but joining every single one of them just makes you look sad. It is the same issue as posting a status update with depressing song lyrics or a quote about how your life is over without your true love.
No matter how bad your break-up is, I garuntee that someone has it worse than you. No matter how perfect you thought your relationship was, someone else's was better. Thinking that you were meant to be, doesn't make you meant to be. This doesn't mean that you are not allowed to be upset, but it isn't necessary to let us all know that you are on the verge of a homocidal rampage because if you can't be loved, nobody can. My last boyfriend cheated on me on three separate occasions with three different girls, and is now regularly fucking one of them, and also fucking someone else. He cheated on me three times, I knew about the last one... the commerce camp whore as I like to call her, and he didn't know that I knew, I found out about the other two afterwards. Then I decided that it wasn't worth ruining our relationship over because I loved him so much so I didn't mention it, but I skipped two uni labs to go see him since I had not seen him in a week, and he dumped me while I was sitting on his couch and then I walked home. HE cheated on ME three times and then HE dumped ME. Yes I loved my boyfriend more than I have ever loved anything but that doesn't mean I loved him more than someone else loves their boyfriend, and yes I have never felt as depressed as I did when I got my arse dumped by the bastard, but that doesn't mean that other people in my situation did not feel just as terrible. When all of this happened, I remember posting one status about having a terrible day, and then that was it. No long statuses about how I wish I was dead, no updates every 10 minutes about how I felt like my life was meaningless, no song lyrics that perfectly outlined my awful moods. That doesn't mean that I didn't feel all those things, it just means that I didn't want to bore Facebook with my love life woes. A good friend of mine dated a lovely boy for three and a half years and they broke up 2 days before my last boyfriend and I did. A relationship lasting that long obviously involves SOME feelings, duh. Obviously that break-up would have been awful and terribly sad, but both of them managed to keep their sadness out of Facebook-land and in friend-land. I was happy to listen to what she had to say about the situation because she didn't plaster it all over the internet asking for sympathy. These are examples of what you SHOULD do with Facebook, although I am awware that I just posted it all over Blogspot, but for the purpose of an example; see the big idea people!
Ok, so enough about tolerating angry and depressing status udates. I have to say that there is something that I hate more that these life-hating statuses and that is the 'I'm so in love with my boyfriend slash girlfriend' statuses. This will be a brief section as I have been writing for too long already and even I want to kill myself reading this. Normally this gross lovey dovey crap is reserved for 13 year olds who have been dating for 2 weeks and think that they know what love is, but I was shocked to find out that it can extend to someone my age. This is an old example, but last year (year 12) he was dating someone 4 year younger than him (year 8) which I think is absolutely rediculous, I mean, does it even classify as a vagina at that age? I'm sure they were having lots of gross, illegal sex. Anyway, the point is, an 18 year old guy posting about how he can't live without his 'gorgeous baby girl' because he is 'so in love' with her after 2 weeks and one and a half clumsy sexual encounters, is just sad and I really do not want to know about it. I would rather see my news feed clogged with unfunny 'lol jks' groups than have it filled with these status updates.
So that is my rant for the day, hopefully it was more enjoyable than my last post that was just for something to do. Thanks for reading.
-Renji
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