| Don't forget! |
[May. 1st, 2009|06:22 pm] |
Nightwish is a Pop's next Friday, the 8th.
In other news, this is funny:
This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert’s political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert’s political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion. |
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| Scenes from the campaign trail |
[Sep. 22nd, 2008|09:35 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
I've been putting in a little bit of time phone banking for the Obama campaign recently. This is an odd thing for me, since I'm normally the highest caliber of lazy. Anyway, I've gotten at least one good story out of it:
Today my list contained a man named "Santa," which means that I was actually required to, for Democracy, call a stranger's home and ask, "Is Santa there?"
In case you're wondering, Santa would prefer not to talk about who he's planning to vote for. Also, Santa would like to be taken off the list. What a hypocrite!
While we're at it, anybody who is not registered to vote should really go do that. |
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| England Plays Cruel Prank on Arachnophobes - Awesome Ensues |
[Sep. 3rd, 2008|04:52 pm] |
Today residents of Liverpool woke up to the news that their city was now home to a fifty-foot high spider. This would be awesome if the spider was just hanging on the side of a building scheduled for demolition, which is currently the case, but no. There's more.
On Friday the spider, which it turns out is mechanical and powered by 12 people who will be strapped into it, is expected to wake up and "explore the city" as part of an elaborate street-theater act put on by people who apparently do this sort of thing all the time.
No, really. It turns out that in the past they practically shut down London with a giant mechanical elephant and a gargantuan marionette from space. I'm not making that part up either: http://theverychronicles.blogspot.com/2008/01/sultans-elephant.html
I don't think I need to explain how awesome it is to able to honestly say, "The English have built a fifty-foot mechanical spider that draws its power from humans," but there's an even more awesome level to this if you think about. Losing yourself in a fantasy is something that we spend huge portions of our lives and our checkbooks on; reading books, watching movies, playing video games, what have you.
Then some crazy English guys just woke up and said, "You know? Let's just bring it to the people," and made something amazing for the pure purpose of instilling wonder in the general populace (and scaring the living bejeasus out of anyone who thought they were coming to see a less insane form of street theater). I don't know about you, but if there was a giant mechanical spider walking my streets, I'd be pretty drawn in to whatever story it was playing out. For all the hype that goes around modern media, I don't think anything can draw you in quite as well as having it happen right there around you.
Also, the English have built a fifty-foot spider that draws its power from human beings. I just thought everyone should know. |
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| A discourse of a plethora of pleasurable topics. (Except not.) |
[Jul. 10th, 2008|09:55 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  blah | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Nocturnal Rites - End of Days | ] |
==Employment:
So yeah. I am now employed. I don’t like the job, and upon returning home from my first day there immediately applied to several other ones, but I like money. It seems kind like kind of an unethical thing to accept a job that I intend to leave as soon as I possibly can, but I think that a paycheck will help me live with myself.
( Beyond this point thar be a plethora. ) |
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| Run away! |
[May. 22nd, 2008|06:02 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | happy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Kamelot - The Fourth Legacy | ] |
Well, we can now add a movie version of Runaways to the list of comic book movies that I'm pleasantly surprised to see announced. Like Invincible, which is also on the aforementioned list, the book's creator is on hand to do the screenwriting.
"Launched in 2002, the series revolves around a group of teenagers who discover their parents are super-villains. They run away from home, band together, discover they have powers of their own and vow to make up for the evil wrought by their folks...Series co-creator Brian K. Vaughn, who is also a producer and writer for Lost, is penning the adaptation, with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige on production duties."
http://movies.ign.com/articles/875/875934p1.html
Runaways, which is now penned by Joss Whedon, and will soon pass on to Strangers in Paradise scribe Terry More, has been one of my favorite running books since I got into comics, and given that this series has already come back from one cancellation I'm pretty shocked to see it getting the Hollywood treatment. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 20th, 2008|03:56 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  cynical | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Edguy - Under the Moon | ] |
Okay, first off, I disagree with that smilie being "cynical." That just looks angry.
But in other news:
-I graduated. Yay?
-This weekend I drove with Lisa down to New Mexico for her internship, which is the last time I'll see her until the end of the summer. I'm not too happy about that, but there was an upside. To prepare for the trip Lisa bought not one, not two, but three heavy metal albums. I'm so proud. In addition to that, she get her sister into Nightwish.
-Speaking of Nightwish, has anybody else listened to any of Dark Passion Play, and if so what do you think of the new singer?
-The last time I went to the comic shop I spent $27. It was a catastrophe. I had to explain to the clerk there that I swore that I would never be "that guy." He had to explain to me that everybody does. Yeargh. At least some things are ending.
-Speaking of comics, I saw Iron Man last Wed. I liked it, but somehow I feel biased.
-I'm having trouble thinking of books that I want to read, and I find myself just going back to the same couple of authors over and over. Somebody needs to recommend something decent. Preferably something that's not a fantasy novel.
And in entertainment news:
-Since Scrubs was interrupted by the writers' strike, the series has not wrapped up. It will not be continuing on NBC, but has been picked up for "at least one more season" on ABC.
-Joss Whedon's new show, Dollhouse, will start on Fox next season. IGN currently has a trailer up.
-There's a Short Circuit remake in the works: http://movies.ign.com/articles/864/864524p1.html
-Remember Transformers: Animated? Yeah, it's easily the best Transformers show since Beast Wars. I have no idea how that happened, but it did. The Spectacular Spider-man has also been baffling good, especially compared to the show that we got when we were kids.
Edit begins here:
While I'm thinking about it, is anybody still interested in ThickerThanInk? I finally got into creative writing this semester, and I have a small amount of backlogged material because of that.
Speaking of Creative Writing! I signed up for that class three times. The first two times it got canceled due to lack of interest. This time we had the class, did poetry for the first half of the semester, and then our teacher was sick for most of the second half, so the time spent on fiction was much shorter. Bogus.
But back on track - I should put some time in rewriting Rhaus the Conqueror and moving forward sometime in the near future. It would also be nice to actually use my camera for something while I'm at it... |
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| Suck it, deadline! |
[Dec. 21st, 2007|11:36 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Symphony X - Of Sins and Shadows | ] |
25 minutes to spare! Now I am going to sleep. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 16th, 2007|12:13 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Royal Hunt- Never Give Up | ] |
Exams are done! No more homework for some time, which means no more excuses! I checked out Orson Scott Card’s Characters and Perspective from the library and started trying to remember just what the crap was going on in Rhaus the Conqueror when last I worked on it.
One thing I can say, for sure, is that taking this long of a break was a terrible, terrible idea. It’s so easy to second-guess everything that’s already written, especially after so much time away from it. I feel like I should go back and smooth out that abrupt revelation from Chapter 4. I feel like I should go back and spend more time on having the characters actually do things other than mill about and have short-ish conversations, but I know that I could spend forever and then some rewriting things that I feel like I should change, and I know that I should keep pushing forward if I ever want to finish the story. Sure, the forces of Good are arriving to the party a little late, but if I go back and change the early chapters to have them show up sooner, then it’ll take that much longer to actually get to any new content.
Does everybody else get stuck in that cycle? I know Scott took a long time off from Born Again, and I still see Steve break out his Nero story every now and again. How do you guys get past rewrites and get back into actually writing? |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 3rd, 2007|09:20 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | contemplative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Twilightning - Delirium Veil | ] |
I don’t remember if I ever wrote about the Rolla Student Film Festival in LiveJournal, and I’m pretty sure that I did not post the results of that whole ordeal, but in any event, the existence of the event and the movie are both semi-important to this story, so now they’re posted. Four people entered the Student Film Festival, and five people attended (the four entrants and Steve, who I had to beg to attend). My movie didn’t work on the laptop that was used, so the only person who saw it was Matt, who organized the event (he transferred the movie from a HI-8 tape to a DVD for me, since I don’t have a DVD burner.).
Anyway, so recently I ran into Matt at the library, we talked for a while about a second annual festival, and he started telling me about his fairly nebulous idea for a webcomic, and asked me to see if I could write anything based on that. So, after about a week of being super-busy, I sent him back a general outline and some character descriptions based on his idea, and got back an e-mail saying that we should hang out and discuss it in more detail sometime. We’re supposed to do that tomorrow, as of like 10 second ago, so....yeah.
I’ve got to say, I’m actually pretty excited, even though I’m not sure that we’ll even get anything off the ground. Nobody’s ever actually asked me to write anything for them before. I’ll probably post again if anything develops, which I hope it does.
Oh yeah, and about that Rhaus 6......................................er......someday. |
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| Happy day! |
[Nov. 25th, 2006|01:31 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | excited | ] |
I've got my key to Supreme Commander's open beta. Do you?
C'mon...you know you wanna. |
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| Heads up |
[Aug. 2nd, 2006|07:38 pm] |
If Steve was planning to get transportation from me tomorrow, then he has to make other plans because I won't be leaving from South County to go to filming.
Also, I found another dart gun, so hopefully Nick M will read this and have some money to buy that from me with. Also, Nick Z still hasn't completly paid for his.
Someone remind me to return Boukenger and Scrubs to their respective owners tomorrow. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 30th, 2006|11:47 pm] |
Got back from a short family trip to Branson, which mainly consisted of listening to my siblings fight. It was mediocre.
In the news:
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/07/30/e3-canceled-for-next-year-and-beyond/
I would just like to say, "WHAT THE FUCK!?" E3 canceled? Lame. Lamer than you. Lamer than me. Possibly lamer than you and me combined. That's pretty lame.
AMD will be buying out ATI. This puts me in an odd predicament, since I love AMD but hate ATI.
Apparently the guy who will be mine and Steve's roommate this coming semester wants us to move in this Saturday. That's apparently cool with Steve but I feel hesitant to go back to school any earlier than I have to. So...yeah. We'll see how that works out. In any event, if there's going to be any closure to Spo then it has to come soon.
How many people are actually reading the Thickerthanink stories?
V for Vendetta is coming to DVD on August 1st! Go buy it! |
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