ACTimMEDIAtely

Well, it has been awhile since I've written here, mainly because it wasn't for a grade anymore. And I seriously doubt any one will read this, I had to write this post.

Now I'm a huge fan of Kevin Rose's site, digg. Now there's a digital riot as it were. Digg took down some posts about the subject of this post. That seemingly meaningless string of characters is used to decode the encryption on most HD-DVDs. Now the users of digg got pissed and started posting post after post with the key in it, and now Kevin Rose's blog said that they wouldn't take down any of the posts with the key in it. Looking at the main page, and the second, third and I believe fourth and fifth pages are just bunches of posts about the key.

Personally I think its great that the users are fighting back and making their voices heard. But seriously, is digg the place to do it? I love reading the site everyday, but now is anyone going to take digg users seriously? I guess we'll just have to wait till the riot quiets down a bit and see where everything goes.

But to the digg users out there, I salute you. Keep doing what you think is right, and maybe, just maybe you'll make the internet world a better place.

Well since the semester is now just about over and its finals week, I thought I should try to get one more post out. I'm sitting her on my futon with Child Psychology pouring out of my mind I'm shuffling through my 9000+ songs (about 50GB for those of you keeping track) looking for something I actually want to listen to, and I still have another subject to study for tomorrow morning. Two finals tomorrow and its half past 4 in the morning.

I haven't posted much lately, and if you read the previous posts about me being lazy you know why. I'm not going to make any kind of excuses for my laziness. I just wanted to say that this class was informative and I learned a lot about digital self, as well as what goes on in the world. And if I put half as much effort into the second half of this semester as I did with the second half of this semester I think I would have done better.

I think really right now the biggest thing on my mind was the death of James Kim. Though there has been much to talk about that I wanted to blog about, he is what has been on my mind lately (not including relationship problems) I just really respected him and he was a good guy on the very large staff at cnet.com I've never met the man before, but I just had an instant bond with him. I don't mean to sounds racist or anything, but I think it was because he was Asian. As a psych major this makes sense to me, but if you don't do any spelunking in the human mind, humans just have a natural sense to go towards people that are like them. But enough of the psycho-babble.

I just wanted to say something about how that whole story broke out. After the initial coverage on the Crave blog (which Kim co-ran with someone else) it then exploded on digg's front page getting several thousand diggs during the first few hours. After that local media caught it, then it went to the big cable news outlets. I was speaking with a friend about this, and he said if it were anyone else, like just a joe blow, it probably wouldn't have had the same kind of exposure. In a small way I believe this to be true. James Kim and his wife weren't by any means famous, but Kim's name was relatively well known on the internet.

When I found out that they had recovered his body, it just really saddened me. I didn't expect to be so sad when I found out. I guess my hopes had been really high when they found his wife and kids to be fine a few days before.

Ha ha. I know this isn't a personal blog, but I wanted to get those feelings out there with people that are techy like me, lol.

Well with that, I'll try to get another post out before the final, and if not, farewell my friends who read this. If I decide to keep this blog going, I'll probably switch to Wordpress just to get a better server and move away from the teenie-bopper-ness of livejournal. And maybe it'll update it more ;)

Thanks for the class Lilly. Definitely an experience.

If you haven't been following the saga with James Kim and his family here's an update. Kati Kim and their two daughters were found in good condition last monday in their car. James had left the car early sunday morning to go look for help. after they have found Kati and the daughters the search was renewed looking for James. This morning the searchers had found James' body.

I cannot express how I feel. He was just a guy, you know?

Here is the most updated page with all the information:
kgw.com

and CNET's news.com should be the first page to be updated.

My prayers go out to James and his family.

Well I don't consider my blog to have a very high readership, especially since I haven't updated much. But I thought I should help spread the word. One of CNET's Editors, James Kim and his family has gone missing. He went to Seattle via car with his wife and two kids. They left Oregon Saturday afternoon and haven't been seen yet.

Those with information about the Kim family's whereabouts are asked to contact San Francisco police immediately at 415-558-5508 during normal business hours and at 415-553-1071 after-hours. Portland police can be reached at 503-823-4000.

My heart and prayers go out to his family and I hope all is well.

Most of this info was from this post at Crave.

I know that this blog is made for a class. But seriously, a blog is something that someone chooses to write in as they choose. Yes this may seem like an excuse for my laziness, but seriously I should be able to post in my blog whenever the hell I want to. Maybe one day its a slow news day and all I've read about is how a couple of EB employees fake a PS3 robbery or how how those crazy Japanese keep making strange gadgets (no offense to my friend Tomoyo) Or sometimes you've got those crazy 8 page papers that you've managed to forget that creep up on you.

But here for the first time ever (on this blog) I'm going to admit I'm lazy. I do keep another personal blog (kept within the confines of the "friends only" option) and I barely post on there. The last time I posted there was Oct. 28th. I only post in there when I really feel like it. And I feel that it should be the same in here. Yes I know its for a grade. I propose a system where the grader (in this case, Lilly) checks at the end of the semester or at the end of the week. Granted that this is more work for her and I guess the procrastinators will wait to make like 50 posts at the last minute.

I understand what Lilly is having us do and its a great cause for our future. I just kinda wanted more flexibility in our blog posts. But for the rest of the semester I shall try to get all my blog posts out. And I just needed to get this out. Congrats to the people that resisted the turkey coma and the black friday bruises to continue with their blogs.

Time to get off my ass and make some posts.

Ok, well not really. But something close to it. According to this post by Michael Castellon, KFC decided to make a giant picture of the Colonel himself and large enough that it can be seen from space. They put it near Nevada's fabled Area 51. Pics after the break.

( is this really necessary? )

Okay so what's the point you ask? I have no idea. I for one really just think this is just wasted money. Who the hell are they trying to market to? Aliens that crave for the Colonel's 51 different spices? Or are they teasing people up in Heaven that can't have their Popcorn Chicken? Honestly, who is this ad marketed to? If I'm on a cross-country trip on a plane, the last thing I want to see on America's great land is an advertisement for for fried chicken. As we all know (or don't) that KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and even Long John's Silver are all under the Yum! Brand So are we going to see 87,500 sq ft Crunch Wrap Supreme or a 100,000 sq ft Deep Dish Pizza? The next thing we're going to see is the Rushmore Monument defaced with giant D&G glasses and enormous gold chains.

Please America, stop this obsession with advertisements in places they shouldn't be.

Well it's been awhile, and I've probably lost some points for not posting, but I will catch up, or else I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

Well orgasms. Quite the interesting subject. If you haven't been following the latest happenings in the PMP (portable media player) world, Micro$oft has just recently released (like today I think) a new PMP dubbed the Zune. The Zune is the fabled iPod killer, though it will be hard to compete with the 70% market share that the fruit player has. But more on that later.

The following news site Newsvine has an article about the installer program for the Zune. Some people were able to pick up the Zune before the release date and tried to install it. The install was crap and a lot of people had problems with trying to install it. But what drew more attention was the image in the background (after the break.)

( interesting photo... )

So what do you think she's doing? Listening to some really bad music without headphones? Wondering how the Zune is going to "kill" the iPod? Is some unknown person pleasuring her off the screen?

Well I guess its all up to your interpretation. But hey anything to sell a product, good stuff Micro$oft. Sex does sell!

Well, not exactly. Meteorite Flo, or m-flo as they're known, is a hip-hop/rap/r&b group straight out of Japan. They have been around for quite some time now, starting in the late 90's. I first got into them, now don't laugh, but by playing Dance Dance Revolution where one of their songs was featured. Their music was like nothing I've ever heard before. It was a combination of smooth rapping along with some great vocals. From there I did some research online and found some songs and instantly I was hooked to the hip-hop sensation.

m-flo (it is properly spelled with the lowercase m) is as of right now a duo with Verbal and Taku Takahashi. Verbal handles the rapping vocals, while Taku is the man behind the turntables dropping the beats. For their first two albums they had a third member, Lisa, who was their songstress. Though she also had a mean rap she occasionally used in some of their songs. The trio met each other in an international school in Japan. After they met they started as an underground group mainly playing for hip-hop clubs and the like. After they were discovered they released their first album, Planet Shining (which I'm proud to say I actually own, like the real life plastic CD that cost me like $35 dollars to import). And from that first CD they exploded. Releasing four studio albums over the span of five years. But that doesn't include all the remix albums, singles, collaborations, dvds, and even vinyls. They have been quite busy over the last few years.

The reason I'm writing about m-flo, is that I want you guys, my readers, to get into some music not from the US. Sure domestic music is great and I'm not saying you should stop listening to it. But getting out there in the world and learning about music internationally.

Now for some media:

from the last album that the original trio did, it was a "best of" album. From left to right: Verbal, Lisa, Taku


this is actually the song that got me into them in the first place.

Or, well at least Lilly has been waiting for it.

As many of you may remember, or not, I was the production assistant for the crew sent by Juma Entertainment to film the first day of many for the finalists of the Chevy Challenge. The day for the lack of a better word was interesting, very interesting. I guess I'll start at the beginning. I picked up the crew at San Jose International at around 8 AM. There I met the producer Marie and her video guy Robin. Both were tired from the early flight out of LAX but were both excited to be out here. We got their luggage and we went to my small car. Amazingly enough all their gear fit in the hatchback, good thing I got that 12in sub out the night before.

From there we went to school. I honestly had no idea why these people were here so I asked. They were to film the reactions of the people who were selected as finalists in the Chevy Challenge. And surprisingly enough, I remembered what Lilly had said about it and suddenly regretted not joining. But moving beyond my regret, we get to school faster than I thought we would and were now looking for something to eat. We walked by the Jazzland Cafe near Sweeny Hall? I'm not quite sure. What really got me was their reaction to premade food. They didn't like it, not all at. I found that kind of strange, I don't know, its just whenever I'm on a trip fast food is my friend, but I guess its not the same for everyone. So I led them to the Novel Cafe on the first floor of the Library. They grabbed some food (still didn't like it) and we went to Lilly's office.

Once we got there, they had some talks about what was going to go down that day and what not. I was just standing there for the most part currently wondering what I was going to do that day. My girlfriend said to me the night before I was probably going to be a lackey for them for the the day, and at this point it really did seem like that. They interviewed Lilly and got some action shots. It was cool seeing the behind the scenes of the filming process. I felt really kind of useless during the beginning part of the day. I didn't do much just standing around and trying to keep out of the background in the shots they were taking.

After the action shots with Lilly, we headed outside to take some b-roll. B-roll stands for background roll, just some extra stuff they shoot as filler whenever they need something random. For example a narrator speaking for just something to show between shots. We shot a good amount of b-roll. After the b-roll was shot, we headed back to look for Lilly and maybe look at our classroom. So here's a little neurosis on my part, I really can't remember for the life of me when classes start and end, especially if I don't go to class. That day was no exception. I look into our classroom and think, hey its almost empty. I look to my watch and think yeah classes should be over. So I walk in with Marie and Robin and the professor was still there and he said to us, "what are you doing, we're still in class" and at the point I think my face turned a nice shade of red. Haha, well that was bad, but it was okay.

Soon after the fiasco, we start getting ready to film within our classroom. As people start to walk in, there's kind of a strange tension in the air. I don't know how to quite explain it and for the most part I thought it was just me. But it was really cool to know what was going on before everyone else knew. Right before our "press conference" I was given a crash course on how to operate the boom microphone. A boom microphone is essentially a "shotgun" microphone placed on the end of a stick. It seemed simple enough to do and I was excited to finally get to do something. Now I know what you're thinking and no it is not as easy as it looks. It's actually quite hard holding something that long, steady for than a few minutes at a time. I now have a new found respect for the sound guys that hold boom mics for hours at a time. I could barely do it for the few times they had me doing it through out the day. Maybe I just wasn't used to it, but damn my arms were all shake-y, and I felt really weird. Also it might have been the fact that I didn't eat anything through out the day. But other than my tremor filled arms, the shoot felt like it went really well. So I stood around with boom in hand ready to jump at anything robin told me to focus at. So we did that in the classroom for a few minutes, actually the entire class time. But even more after the class time was up. So we moved to several different locations doing interviews and meeting new people.

Actually, the day went by kind of slow. Everyone else had a lot to do, but there I was just waiting on my next instruction. Then we came to the conference call with the local radio station. There I was instructed to use my head as kind of like a fulcrum where I would balance the boom on my head and control it with with my arms. Who ever invented this position was a genius and at the same time a lunatic. This position by far was one of the hardest positions to keep still and not make any movements. The interview over the phone didn't last very long, 10-15 minutes max. But those few minutes were hell for me and my tremor-y hands. But it did pass and after we went to film some more shots from Lilly.

This is where it felt kind of strange for me. Lilly speaks of how a reality show is shot and it is as far from reality as it could get, and I witnessed it for the first time that day. Were filming Lilly again and this time it was supposed to be before we had made the announcement. Mind you this is like three or four hours after the real announcement. Lilly made all kinds of references to time and everything, like saying around 12 etc. etc. But the thing is, the sun was setting behind her. Well not exactly behind her, but the lighting was not exactly 12-noon lighting. It was more like "hey the sun's setting we need to get this shot before it does." But hey thats how things go, reality is never really real.

After that scene with Lilly, some more b-roll was shot and eventually we headed over to Gordon Biersch to kick back with a few beers and finally some food in my stomach. There Marie, Robin, Lilly, and myself got to know each other just a little better before I had to drive Marie and Robin back to the airport.

After all was said and done, like I said before, it was quite and interesting day. I learned a lot about the behind the scene work and how it was to be a producer and the skills necessary to be a good one. Looking back now at it, I would have liked to do more than just be the lackey and hold the boom around. But I did have fun doing the job and thats what matters right?

So is the CD really dead? The CEO of EMI music seems to think so. Check out this article at Torrentfreak.com Like we were talking about at the beginning of the semester, technology just evolves faster than what people are used to and is increasing in speed every day. During the 80's when the CD was cutting edge technology people never thought they would get rid of their music collection in cassette tapes or vinyl. And here we are again at another junction in the media format wars. Is everything eventually gonna go the way of iTunes and its digital media distribution method? At this point in time, I seriously think so.

But at this time we are in the middle of a format war with high def content. It just isn't feasible yet to transfer 50GB worth of stuff over current internet access lines. With the advent of Blu-Ray Disk from Sony and the HD-DVD standard coming out it'll be interesting if the audio disk and the standard definition DVD will still stick around. I'm sure that it will in the form of blank media, but not even to the extent that it is today. I, myself haven't used a blank CD in a while, all the burning I've done in recent memory is with blank DVDs. Stuff is just getting larger and larger making the older technologies obsolete.

The CEO guy thinks that the audio CD has gone the way of the 8-track and tape cassette. I think its time to bust out those iTunes Media Store gift cards for christmas and melt those CDs for the plastic thats goes into my Portable Music Player (PMP)

test post. please ignore.

Lets see, a couple days ago before I started work I was surfing around one of my favorite websites and I came across this blog post. There he speaks of a scary Playstation3 commercial, which I will embed at the end of the post.

Watching the 30 second commercial, it really is fucking creepy. Now I've been a long time Sony fan, or if you will "fan-boy," and I've always had a kind of brand loyalty. I think I got this from my dad, but I will explain that with another post, maybe. A lot of the technology I have is by Sony, and I trust the brand name, but after seeing a commercial like this, my loyalty waivers a bit. Well I guess Sony has always made weird ads. The first post I made in this blog was about Sony's racially charged PSP advertisement. I remember the Playstation2 ads that were running back when it came out in 2000. It was a strange ad for the PS9 or something. Ah ha, after searching for several seconds (quite too long for the internet now a days!) I found the ad off of Youtube, so that shall be posted later in the post. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Sony's ads a very strange, though what I'm thinking they're doing is appealing to the Passive Audience. In the world of Public Relations (my minor) there are two types of audiences passive (needing creativity among other things to garner attention) and the active audiences (they already know about the product and need more precise information to get their attention) Sony knows that they already have a portion of the hardcore gamers behind them, and as a result they try to get ads that will have a lasting effect on the casual or even non-gamers.

Well come on already Sony, I know what you're doing, just stop trying to scare people already. I had a nightmare about that scary-ass baby a few nights ago. I should sue for mental anguish.

Time for the commercials.

the first shall be the current Playstation3 ad.

fucking creepy right?

the 4 year old Playstation2 ad.

tell me what this had to do with the ps2?



UPDATE!
Well, well, well. Maybe this was planned or someone over at SCEA (Sony Computer Entertainment, America) was reading my blog. but they released a new commercial as seen here.

"PS3 US Rubiks Commercial" on Google Video
2nd US Launch TV spot / commercial for Sony's PlayStation 3 featuring Rubik's Cube and the Cell CPU.

Well, it has been quite some time since I've been able to post here. Between midterms, work and other commitments (my dates with my bed have been postponed due to the marathon studying that have been going on) But here I am finally some downtime to finally get some posts belted out. Speaking of getting stuff belted out, congrats to the three that were accepted into the finals of the Chevy Challenge.

Three heads are better than one right? How about 3.5 billion heads? Thats roughly the population of the earth right now. Seriously, what if you could harness that much brain power to solve problems that plague the world on a day to day basis. I think this is what Nickolas Negroponte meant when he coined the term "convergence." Convergence according to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary is the act of converging and converging means to come together. I'm sure he meant to talk about technology to be converged, but we should pull people together. Great minds always worked better when they were teamed up.

But thinking about it now, convergence isn't necessarily a good thing either. I'm sure all of you have noticed that when a piece of technology tries to combine other pieces of technology, the result isn't the best thing in the world. For example, the Nokia N-Gage. What the hell is it? Is it a phone? Is it a portable gaming system? Who the hell cares, because it did either poorly. The next generation did better, but it still had a case of DID (disassociative identity disorder for those non-psych majors) One minute it's a crappy phone and the next its an even crappier portable gaming system.

I think its these "Swiss Army knife" kind of tools that detract from the meaning of convergence. Speaking of the Swiss Army type of mentality, this brings to light Negroponte's 100 dollar laptop. Doing a search at Engadget for "Negroponte" yields a fair amount of coverage on Negroponte's endeavors with the 100 dollar laptop. Its quite a noble effort to do something like this for the kids that aren't as well off as the rest of the kids in the world. But looking at all the problems that Negroponte has encountered, is it worth it? I mean during Black Friday 2005 Wal-Mart had a full fledged laptop for 100, given that it was after the mail in rebate, it was still 100 dollars. And for those of you who don't know what black friday is, its the friday right after Thanksgiving, unoffically the the first day of the Christmas shopping season. But nowadays the first christmas shopping day is December 26th of the year before. But I'll get into the consumerism of the holiday with another post. Well the point I was trying to get across was that sometimes you gotta adhere to the KISS process. And no that isn't referring to the rock band with black and white face paint. KISS stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. Sometimes the best solution to a problem isn't a new one, but one that has been proven time and time again.

Remember that the best Swiss Army knife is the actual Swiss Army Knife. To converge, we need to fix what we have before trying to combine two unrelated objects together. ie: Camera phones... whoops too late.

Amazing, huh? Ha ha... well I've never really though of why TV was or could be important to society, let alone my life, but its true. But here's my list.

1. South Park

Yeah, I was debating if this show really was important, but in the end it turns out it is. Much like The Simpsons, the South Park gang deals with all the current events, but with a twist. I view South Park as a show that takes on everything as a social critque. In recent memory they took on the game World of Warcraft. With all the press (mainly bad) that the game has been getting, it was just about time for them to make fun of the show. While most things they do wouldn't really happen, its quite interesting how they interpret people (mainly celebrities) and their actions. A big one in memory is when they took on Paris Hilton. Without South Park, who is there to make fun of the celebrities?

2. E.R.

ER is one of the shows that I watch religiously. It plays syndicated on TNT in the mornings from 10-12. So naturally it's TiVo'ed. The first thing me and my sister do when we get home from classes is to spend two hours watching the drama that is ER. I think it is by far one of the best medical shows on tv. ER is a great medical show, but not by any means the first of its kind. But what I believe what makes it important is, once again what it deals with. Everything from HIV infected staff, to children that are born deaf, to life threatening brain tumors. Now I understand not everyone has expierenced something like that, but the show really hits a chord with people in the medical field. My parents are both in the medical field, and my mom specifically loves watching the show becuase she can relate to it. I think its the first show that actually shows how tough it is to be in any kind of medical field, be it nursing or being a doctor, most people don't understand how hard of a job it is. The episode that sticks out in memory that really demonstrates this, was one where a med student as well as another doctor were stabbed by a patient that had an undiagnosed schizophrenia break. It may never happen in real life, but it has the potential to.

3. The Simpsons

Hell yes this is here. Over the years The Simpsons has been the very definition of TV importance. With a phlethora of sepecial guests and what not The Simpsons have made a very important impact on TV and everything assoicated with it. From dealing with hard hitting topics (making light of them for the most part) to just making fun of anyone, (I remember when former president George H. Bush moved across the street from the family). I think its important just simply for the fact that its been on now for almost 20 years. Also I think its important that people are able to make light of other people and events that have happened through the years.


Quite amazing what TV actually is when you think about it.

More like pauper of all media. Ok well, I'm talking about mr. private parts himself, Howard Stern. I don't know much about the guy and all my knowledge I do know about him comes from tv. He seems like the kind of guy that I would not be able to get along with, but hey thats my opinion, lol. From what I've heard, he does some fairly crazy stuff on his radio show and pushes to the limit of the FCC, well when he was on terrestial radio. Now I don't agree completely what he does, as noted from previous posts, "I don't completely agree with him, but will fight to the death for him to say it." I heard that quote from a Family Guy episode once, I don't know where they stole it from though.

Stern's influence on radio is a fairly big one. Sure there are other guys like him out there, but really haven't reached his status as an icon in the telecommunications world. Its quite amazing what he has done. Constantly pushing to the edge of the FCC and censorship envelope. To my knowledge there isn't anyone else that has come close to him in pushing that envelope. It is quite amazing what he has done through out his years on the radio waves. But since he recently transfered over to satelight radio, it just seems like he isn't all there anymore. When I did listen to him (like 2 episodes) when he would say something that didn't belong on the air, it was quite exhilarating. But now when me and a friend listend to him on Sirius he basically said anything he wanted to, and the shock value just wasn't there anymore. So honestly now I don't know what he's gonna do to shock his fans or what not. I guess his 15 minutes are up.

Referenced: Wikipedia

Well more like two: Jack Thompson.

If you're a gamer, like myself you've most likely heard this name before. Jack Thompson is a lawyer from Florida who took it upon himself to lead a campaign against violent video games. I'm all for stopping kids from getting into the violent games if their not ready for it and to gauge when their ready for such things. But nope Thompson goes above and beyond like a good lawyer always does. He wants to ban all violent video games and arrest all the developers of said games. Recently case he made "A Modest Proposal" I'm just gonna sum up what he proposed and give you a link where he placed the letter. He basically said that he will donate 10,000 dollars to a charity of choice if his proposal is made. Basically another game that he considers violent. Check out this link to read the letter in its entirety. Well a lot of of the video game community was up in arms after they heard about Thompson's little proposal. One particular web comic called Penny Arcade really stuck it to him. A group actually did go through with Thompson's proposal, and he didn't pay up the 10,000. The two guys at Penny Aracde did. They actually took 10,000 from their Child's Play Fund (a charity they started) and donated it. They did get invovled with the whole fiasco. If you want to read it here is a link to Their posts from October 12, 2005. Read through to a about the 19th to get the whole story. I'll post Their comics after the break

( Comics! )

Well what I'm triyng to say about this guy is that he's nuts. He wants to ban all games like GTA and what not becuase it's a "murder simulator." He wants to ban the game Sims 2 becuase the PC verison can be modded (not supported by the manufacturer) to remove the blur on the private parts of the sims. He blamed the game Doom on the reason for Columbine. Like I said before, I'm all for judging what kids can and can't play according to age. But the complete banning of all violent games? Fuck, all we'd be left with is Barbie's Super Fun House and I know thats a great game, but sometimes I just want to blow some shit up, as it were. Yes there is some correlation between teenagers and violent video games, I'm not denying that. But if everyone were affected by it, we'd all be carrying around guns and shooting everyone. EVERYONE has played a violent video game from time to time, and in turn mostly everyone has been okay. ALSO it is not the government's or video game developer's responsiblitiy to regulate who gets to play the game. It is the parents! I mean come on, the kids in their early teens who Thompson believes is most influced by violent video games, don't have the means to buy the games, they have to ask their parents! There is a rating system in place by a group called ESRB (Electronic Software Ratings Board) on every single video game that is released (most of the time they're wrong, but we'll get into that in another post.) And the system is fairly well labeled. All violent games are marked as M (for mature) and if parents can't understand this, please give the kids to the DCFS.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that banning video games of any variety is a direct violation of the first ammendment. And that is never good.

And here's a little bonus, this is a clip from The Daily Show about the Congress meeting about violent video games.



Jack, please DIAF. (comment to get the meaning, lol)
Extra link: The Wikipedia Entry on Jack Thompson

Well what can I say about this movie. A Face In The Crowd in a nutshell is about a guy that let power get to his head and dominate his life. The main character known as Lonesome Rhodes (played by Andy Griffith) is a typical hobo that makes it big and has his 15 minutes of fame. Now the character was depicted very well. Griffith really was able to appropriate how his character grew from his humble beginnings to his almost god-like status among the TV happy US citizens. The rest of the actors and actresses were also very good with their acting.

But what really got me not to like this movie was the plot. Although it was believable, it just can't happen. A man so rich and famous that he was going to help with a presidential election? Sure he was good at what he did, but looking at his past, he should have never been able to do the things they let him do. I don't know I just didn't like the story much.

The movie production itself was actually fairly good. The dramatic close ups really helped showing the character's facial expressions. This is just not done in modern pcitures today. Also the settings were great in displaying where he came from to his penthose apartment in the sky.

Overall the movie and its production and its actors were a great representative of Hollywood at the time, I just didn't really like the plot, and thats my honest opinion.

Well I kinda forgot to write that magazine entry, so hopefully I can write it and get some credit for it.

Well if you haven't figured it out yet, I am a huge video gamer. Well I guess I haven't talked about it much, but moving along. When thinking of magazines the first thing I think of are the video game magazines. Ones such as GamePro, Official Playstation Magazine and even Playstation Magazine (not assoicated with the magazine stated before.) As a kid the video game magazines were always the magazines I'd read at the Walgreens while waiting for a prescription to fill. That was back in the day though, back in the "dark ages" before the internet really got big, also before I was on the net. So the magazine was always the first place I'd hear about a new game coming out, the release of a new system, etc etc. I was also able to learn more about the things I loved, video games. Generally those magazines lasted longer than anything else I have. I can still find magazines from long, long ago somewhere in my room, it's quite cool to be cleaning my room and finding something from the turn of the centur, which admittedly isn't that long ago, but still.

But as I grew older (not necessarily more mature) the internet grew with me, as did everthing else. Like I've said before with the newspapers and books, the internet is the future. I haven't subscribed to a magainze in years, and if I have, its is a free subcription found somewhere on the net. Instead of waiting a month or sometimes 3 months, for a new magazine with the information I crave, the internet is the best place to feed an addiction of knowledge. When I stop by a newsstand and look at the magazines, I normally already know everything that was written about, since it would be about two months old already. But I'm always interested to read the magazine.

I guess I'm just too technology orientated.

Oh well.

Well, well, well. Here we go again with the censorship of America. After finding this article over at Digg I just find it quite amazing what people will do. This guy Alton (Not Brown for you Food Network fans) Verm over in Texas really needs to get his priorities straight. Basically he wants to ban Ray Bradbury's famous book Fahrenheit 451 becuase it has bad words among other un-religious reference to it. He even admits to not reading the book before he calls the ban to it. I mean WTF. This is almost as bad as rejecting someone on a date based purely on looks! Talk about judging a book by its cover.

For those of you you haven't read this great book by Bradbury, the gist of the book is about censorship and government control of media, mainly books. HOW FUCKING IRONIC. I remember reading this book in the EIGTH GRADE in a fucking CATHOLIC PRIVATE SCHOOL. Verm's daughter is currently a sophomore in high school. If my class of eigth graders (back in 1998) is more mature than a sophomore in high school, I don't know what's going wrong with education now a days. I just can't get over this story. I loved this book in junior high school, so much so that I taught it to a group of sophomores during my senior year in high school, and if you don't remember my high school was also a Catholic private school.

Are all the good books and stories going to be banned from school becuase they contain bad words? I mean if this guy as a parent can't look beyond the bad words, the cigarettes, and the drinking and see what this book really is he has failed at life. I know he's exercising his right to free speech, but so am I. If they try and ban this book, isn't that an attempted blockage of Bradbury's right of free speech?

I really don't know what else to say concerning this issue. I am just really, really pissed off at the ignorance of America right now. To summerize, I found this blog post through Technorati Where the blogger says "ignorance is strength."

God damn, this is crazy.

The world has changed drastically since that faithful day back on September 11, 2001. That event that happened on that day has touched the lives of the global community, not just here in America. Sure, here in America we’ve been subject to extra long lines at the check-in counter at the airport, higher gas prices, and even a color-coded terrorist alert system. And we’ve bitched and complained about the invasions of privacy because of the Patriot Act. But it is all because we wanted to be safe. The Taliban, the group who claimed responsibility for the 9/11 terrorist attack, has since then became a household name. Who is to blame for that? The American mass media is culprit behind the Taliban’s infamy. All American’s have heard about the Taliban’s country of residence, Afghanistan, and immediately that country and ALL of its inhabitants were blamed for what happened on US soil. And after that almost all people of Afghani decent or anyone that looked like them were suddenly discriminated against. It was and is still kind of going on today. People of their decent are still being double inspected at the airport, being pulled over because “they fit the description,” and have had just generally bad attitudes pushed towards them. But there always is another side to the story. Surely not everyone in Afghanistan has ties to the Taliban or is apart of their army to drive out the infidels. Even the Afghanis that live here in America probably had no idea of any of the attacks that would happen. What must have it been like for people on the other side, the people that we were bombing? How about the innocent people? Were there even such people? Some Americans probably would say no and to keep bombing them till we find Bin Laden and kill him. But one man Khaled Hosseini and his book The Kite Runner aim to change that. The Kite Runner is a story about a man and his life and times in Afghanistan before, during, and after the occupation of the Taliban. It could be argued that such a story like this could be considered propaganda. What exactly is propaganda? Propaganda is something that aims to change someone’s idea about something. In a way this book could be seen as propaganda, according to that definition. While providing a different view of Afghanistan and its people, The Kite Runner is by definition a book of propaganda by changing currently held views of Afghanistan.
By providing an “insider’s view” of Afghanistan, The Kite Runner shows its readers something they could have never seen before. The story revolves around a child, Amir, and his journey through childhood to adulthood. While Hosseini describes the childhood of Amir he also shows how the country of Afghanistan was before any association of the Taliban and terrorism. He shows that Afghanistan was like any other country before. There were the neighborhoods, the rich as well as the poor that lived in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. The Afghani people did the same thing American people did during the 60’s and the 70’s. They watched movies, well those who could afford it, and wore jeans and typically lived life like nothing was wrong. This view of Afghanistan has never before been seen by anyone outside of the country, Americans for sure. In this sense the book is propaganda. It changes the ideas of people as they are reading the book. I, myself, never imagined Afghanistan’s history to be like that. I always thought it was just people living in straw and mud huts on the side of the road. I never thought that someone would actually be driving a ’67 Mustang down the streets of Kabul, but there Amir’s dad goes with the Mustang driving him to school. The rich heritage of Afghanistan also shows through with Hosseini’s writing. The battle of the kites that happens every winter was something I would have never associated with Afghanistan and its people. By showing this to his readers Hosseini is forcing the change of ideas and preconceptions.
Showing what the Taliban has done to Afghanistan and its people before and during the 9/11 attacks also changes the preconception that everyone in Afghanistan is evil. For the most part no one in Afghanistan was apart of the Taliban because the Taliban fought the Russians for control of the country. In this sense, Hosseini reveals a part of history that probably no one knew of. This changes the idea that Afghanistan was apart of the planning in attacking America. But as time went on, the Taliban was just as bad as the Russians forcing them into a regime that was just as controlling as ever, if not more. Hosseini did a very good job of describing the oppression the Taliban had over the people of Afghanistan. This too changed my preconception of that everyone in Afghanistan was enjoying the power of the Taliban. In fact according to the story, they were much better off in the 60’s and 70’s. This part of the story also proves to be propaganda because just like the earlier part of the story it shows information that was not previously known.
Over all the term propaganda has such negative connotation to it that I feel bad for calling this great book propaganda. But looking at the definition again, it is quite appropriate to call it such. My views on Afghanistan and its people have changed drastically from starting this book till the last page. Admittedly, I have never heard of the country let alone the culture of the people before the 9/11 attacks. And after the attacks I like many other people immediately associated any one that even remotely looked like the pictures of the Taliban to be bad. But after reading this book it has made me realize that Afghanistan is full of people being oppressed by a corrupt regime and most of them had nothing to do with those acts of terror back in 2001. Reading this book has changed my view of Afghanistan and its people.