“What to my wondering eyes should appear?”
Just a little perk for your Sunday morning.
A new video. Music by Massive Attack; directed by Edouard Salier. And absolutely wonderful.
No critique needed, just grab the headphones, and pump up your screen resolution.
Doesn’t that feel better?
Found via Popwhore
I know that I should be doing my homework…but I have been in a metal mood recently and can’t seem to get this music out of my head. So, to my much needed break from homework, I bring you this South-African post grunge/alternative metal band, Seether. This song is from their album, Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces.
effing enjoy, you dumacooches!
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All too often in the West, anime becomes one of those forms much maligned as unsophisticated, lacking in depth and perspicacity; and while I can understand much of where this misconception is derived from (and there are too many examples out there to pick on one or two specifically), there are some truly notable instances of deeply psychological anime (Perfect Blue comes to mind, which I will run happily if I can ever find a decent embed). And much like Cash’s Understanding Comics piece, I thought I’d share a couple of the more thoughtful anime I’d come across.
So tonight we’ll shift gears a bit, and actually take on a love story, Le Portrait de Petite Cossette. Well. Sort of.
With a bit of a Noir feel to it, the entire run is worth a look, even if only for the slow tormented progression of obsessiveness that overcomes the protagonists.
…continue reading Friday Night Anime Block: Le Portrait de Petite Cossette
LAND OF THE LOST - Greetings, friends and potential bone thieves. It’s time again to take stock of all the news dinosauria of the past three months. Or for the two weeks preceding this one. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeird. Note: three of these dinosaur-themed articles came out on Jan. 28. What’s the deal there?
…continue reading Cash Money’s 2nd Quarter Dinosaur Factorum in Revue
It appears that some scientists are teaching robots how to learn, cooperate, evolve, and hunt. That’s right, Hunt. It looks like we might not be at the top of the food chain for long.
<Top secret underground science laboratory hidden inside of an inactive volcano.>
Working in a top secret lab all day making top secret things that you can’t tell anyone about has got to be one of the loneliest existences in the world. I know it may sound glamorous, but it’s not. That is why these scientists made little modular robots as desk pets. Aw…cute, it dances! Then they would swap pieces and make new robots that did more things, like fetch. These pets adapted and started thinking for themselves and made better generations of robots. At first it was cute… new robot babies! So, they started encouraging the behavior thus making them even smarter, more adaptable, and more plentiful.
This of course started cluttering up the work spaces,a la tribblesque. This got annoying real quick. The balance of order was upset, the cute little robots had no predators. So, to brake the monotony of working in a top secret lab and inventing stuff all day these scientist made a game to reduce the robot population.
Lets play Robot Survivor! Two teams of robots stranded in one break room competing to see who can..uhm…survive. You’ve seen the show. They have to learn to work as a team to gain survival points. See them work as a team to move bigger disks to gain more points. Wow!
This of course allowed for a couple weeks of gambling, but then the bosses caught word of this and locked up the break room and ordered everyone to get back to work. Doomsday wasn’t going to bring itself! Neglected, the robots’ resources were dwindling, out of desperation the waring tribes started learning to hunt other robots. This started culling them out pretty quick, but then they started developing defensive maneuvers. By spinning around they could make sure no one was sneaking up on them. Who would have thought!
I know this sounds pretty elementary, but they taught themselves to do that. Darwinian robot evolution at it’s finest. Eventually those robots will figure how to get out of that break room, and get revenge on their negligent makers.
The moral of the story: Don’t procrastinate on constructing the end of the world, because you might just end up designing your doom.
Yes, 2012 is right on schedule.
Read this travelogue from Guardian UK writer Douglas Rogers.
His experience is a perfect photograph of every experience I’ve had on an Amtrak train east of the Mississippi for the last two decades. Right down to the bomb scare (mine was simply a large battery underneath the train catching fire at 2 a.m. in the middle of The Badlands, but hey, it was the ’90’s and Fear wasn’t in vogue yet).
Look how HARD he has to rationalize his account. His train is stopped by a bomb scare – but it’s OK! It’s near a really quaint little town with a used bookshop! Really! It’s alllll part of the allure of train travel in America!
Also, keep track of the number of times Doug mentions booze. In fact, every time Doug mentions booze, take a drink because that’s how you keep face on an Amtrak trip: ANESTHETIZE!
Best part: Doug has to cut it short to FLY home because his wife goes into labor.
Oh, Doug.
Poor Doug rides trains like I ride trains: willing to take any level of bullshit because we are so enamored of old black and white pictures like this:
And it is not like that. At all. If you think you are treated like Second Class Citizens on this nation’s domestic air flights, you have never enjoyed being a third class citizen on Amtrak. I mean, they don’t even capitalize it, look!
Sad. Sad. Sad.
I WANT to love you, Amtrak.
[takes swig of teeny-tiny bottle of Amtrak merlot]
Why you got to make me hurt you like this?
[collapses into corner and begins sobbing]
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Earlier this year (well, actually as early I as supposed it’s possible to get as far as years go) I’d posted a roundup of animation to help get you through the Morning After (insert dramatic music here). I hadn’t realized it at the time but the director of tonight’s entertainment is the same one who also gave us that wonderfully animated and visceral version of Kafka’s Country Doctor, Koji Yamamura. Atama Yama, also known as Mt. Head, a short but visually stunning piece reflecting some of the more, shall we say, cyclical aspects of nature, both human and ecological. And our inability to really do much of anything about them.
It cropped up again recently, in one of my more inspired link wandering episodes, and for the longest time I couldn’t remember where I’d come across it before.
Then it hit me. I’d seen it late one evening while drinking wine years ago as part of an anthology, and interspersed with viewings of early David Lynch films (you know, for context. It was that kind of evening). I’d forgotten how much I’d loved the animation, particularly in the design of the background, and the narrative’s presentation as fable. It’s one of those works that will give you something new with every viewing, even if you don’t notice it at the time.
A fable of infinite regression. How enticingly ‘Meta’. I think I might actually be able to get behind that if my world looked this damned interesting.
Excuse me, I should probably open some wine.
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@Etruscan@Nekogirl@Gestalt