To Roll or Not to Roll

Step one, click this link.

For those of you that fell for that consider yourself Rick Roll’d. For those of you that didn’t, just wait I will get you yet.

For those that know these kinds of things “Rick Rolling” is a what is referred to a “Meme”.

A Meme is an idea, a phrase or in some cases a program that is spread from person to person. Think of it as a contagious idea. In the case of “Rick Rolling” it is an internet meme, which implies that it is transmitted across the internet. At least it was originally spread this way.

If you were to trace the Rick Roll back to it’s orgin you find that it began at 4Chan.org as “Duck roll’d”. To be Duck Roll’d would imply that you followed a link or looked at a picture that was labeled as one thing, then turned out to be a duck with wheels attached to it.

Duck Rolling then evolved into Rick Rolling. In Rick Rolling the duck is replaced with Rick Astley singing his hit from the 80′s “Never Gonna Give you Up”.

This in and of itself, is not that interesting, but what is intriguing is that the individual that first Rick Roll’d a 4chan thread has been lost, but the popularity of Rick Rolling has increased steadily over the years.

As it stands right now there is a debate over what the largest Rick Roll actually was.

In 2008 Rick Astley appeared in the Macy’s Day Parade and Roll’d the entire crowd.

At the Democratic National Convention a gentleman in the back came equipped with a large sign that proudly displayed “Never Gonna Give You Up”.

Currently the largest recored Rick Roll belongs to the the BlinkenLights company that displayed the music video proudly on the Toronto City.

In other news everyone should be ashamed with themsleves for letting moot become the most influential man on the year.

To Shake or Not to Shake

An Application for the iTouch and iPhone was pulled from the App Store yesterday. It was called the “Baby Shaker”. “Baby Shaker” was programed to make the iProduct produce crying noises and display a baby on the face of the device. The user was then expected to shake the device. If the device was shaken hard enough the crying would stop crying and a set of two red X’s would replace its eyes.

That’s right “Baby Shaker” is a an Application that is intended to simulate Shaken Baby Syndrome.

Despite the Application displaying the warning “Never, Never shake a baby” Activist groups are outraged because they feel “Baby Shaker” will teach parents to shake their babies into silence. The Sarah Jane Brain Project is calling for an apology from Steve Jobs for letting the application slip through Apples normally stringent App screening process.

“Baby Shaker” is likely one of the more immature and insensitive programs released into the consumers world. But let’s be honest about this. Is this really News?

At Newgrounds.com a user can search a whole genre of Dead Baby games. These games are without a single doubt disturbing, crude and far below the level of class “Baby Shaker” depicts, but activist groups have not been asking for an apology from the Newgrounds Developers.

At UrbanJokes.com there is a category of jokes about Dead Babies. Activists don’t attck them with zeal and demand to be apoligized to.

The outcry over “Baby Shaker” seems to be less of a legitimate concern over whether an iPod will teach new parents to shake their babies and more of publicity stunt.

Granted this is negative publicity, but any publicity is good publicity.

The real question then is who is really trying to make this into something?

Is Apple discreetly trying to attract the Baby Shaking crowd?

Or is the designer of “Baby Shaker”, Sikalosoft, trying to drum up some attention for its other iTouch and iPhone applications?

Maybe this is actually a case of a malicious software developer attempting to curb the spread of the human race by teaching its impressionable twenty-somethings to solve thier parental tribulatations through a few shakes of thier iPhone.

And I Did Nothing

I wake with a start and glance at my clock. The old digital clock reads 3 A.M. and I briefly wonder what woke me up as I flop back down. The fan in my room buzzes away contently and I start to doze back off.

As I lay there with my eyes closed I hear a noise. Voices. My first instinct is that someone is in my home. I strain my ears trying to hear what is being said. There seems to be two voices. One voice is high pitched, but the other is louder and deeper. Briefly I wonder if the television or stereo was left on.

It dawns on me that the voices are more than likely outside my apartment; I close my eyes and wait to fall back asleep. “Most likely someone coming home late from a club or something”, I tell myself.

The voices yammer on for a minute. One of the voices sounds agitated about something. Groaning, I grab a pillow to pull over my head to drown out the noise. Then I hear it.

“Bang”

Once again my instinct takes over and I duck down in to the covers. Then I realize it wasn’t a gunshot. It sounded more like a “Clap” or a “POP”, like an open-palmed hand across someone’s face.

I freeze waiting to hear what comes next. A minute passes and there are no sounds. The small crack in the blinds lets me see out onto the sidewalk, but no one is there. Holding my breath I can hear the air conditioners running. The voices are gone though.

A thousand thoughts rush through my mind. Is someone in trouble? Should I go out there? What if someone has a gun? Should I try to go out with some kind of weapon? What if I just make the situation worse? What if the sound is really nothing?

Maybe it was just a slammed door, or a dropped book. Or maybe it was a fist.

I cannot help but think of Moira Jones. Moira was raped then murdered in a Glaswegian park on May 28th last year. Four people listened to her scream, and did nothing. No one even called the police. Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death outside of her apartment building while 38 people watched, and did nothing.

All sorts of terrible scenarios play out in my head. I reach over to grab anything that might be intimidating enough to be a weapon. Then I stop myself. There still haven’t been any noises. Maybe the voices were nothing. I look at my clock again. Over five minutes have passed.

Three weeks ago an unidentified woman was beaten and sexually assaulted on a busy Massachusetts road during Rush Hour. Hundreds of people drove by and did nothing.

“I will not be one of those people. If I hear anything else…” I whisper to myself.

Another air conditioning unit clicks on and the crickets croaking covers up all of the other noise of the night. The voices do not come back though. Slowly sleep comes back for me and I doze off as I lie looking out through the blinds.

I wake up with the alarm and shove aside the blinds. There are no police taking statements. No yellow crime scene tape or clustering reporters. No signs of anything.

I inspect the sidewalks as I walk to my car. Everything seems to be in its place. The grass is bright green, the sky is blue and the air smells like rain, but nothing remains to prove that the voices were ever outside my window.

It is a beautiful day and the birds as singing, but no matter how hard I try I can not help but feel like I let someone down last night as I peeked out my window, and did nothing.

Transmetropolitan

Transmetropolitan Cover

Transmetropolitan is a serialized graphic novel written by Warren Ellis and Darrick Robertson.  Transmet reads as a social satire of American and British Culture. With topics ranging from sketchy religions, to crooked politicians, to DNA-altering youth movements, and of course a two-headed cigarette-smoking house cat.

What makes Transmet spectacular is Ellis’s character of the Spider Jerusalem.

Spider, while having many elements that influenced his creation, is heavily based off of Hunter S. Thompson.

Spider is a Journalist of the Gonzo school. He is unable to separate himself from the events he covers, and becomes part of the story because of this inability to detach himself. In the first view issues of Transmet Spiders role changes from that of a journalist reporting the facts, to a voice that is reminding the citizens of the City how mad and cruel their home is.

The “City” is a pseudo-fictional megalopolis that is taken from New York, London and Los Angelos in the not so far future. Roberston’s art brings the city to life through pages that are packed to overflowing with details. Robertson almost has a biological need to cover all of his canvas. Whether small, simple, fourth-wall shattering jokes, individual faces in a group or a pile garbage that is made up of clearly labeled condom wrappers and french fry buckets, everything is choked full of eye candy.

The series opens with Spider’s messiah-like return to the “City” after a 3-year hiatus which was instigated by the election of a very Nixon-esque President that Spider has termed “The Beast”.  Spider’s return coincides with the following election which he is coerced into covering.

The incumbent loses to the usurper and the “Smiler” is voted into office. Unfortunately, the very John F. Kennedy/ Tony Blair-esque “Smiler” is a case of the worse of two evils. No point in ruining the story, but Spider adopts the role of Righter of Wrongs and Slayer of Abusers of power to fight against his new foe.

Spider Observing

Constantly dealng with the life in the City, beset on all sides by a growing army of fans, and armed only with his bowel disruptor, two “filthy” assistants and a laptop Spider’s fight is sure to be an up hill battle.

Slither

Slither poses as a spiritual successor to the great horror films of the 80′s and late 90′s, but it is in reality something more. It takes the feel of these films and turns them on their head. Director Jason Gunn manages to combine creep, camp and comedy into one finely crafted package.

Slither acomplishes what few movies can by smoothly rotating through protagonists, but Police Chief Bill Pardy, played by Nathan Fillion (Firefly), steals the show. Gunn takes what is stereotypically expected of this role, works his magic on it, and gives the audience something that defies what they expect.

Fillion, rather than being the gung-ho, sure-fire, action hero, he turns out to be a clumsy, scared and in most cases bumbling small town law-man. Fillion nails his role as Pardy. At times he doesn’t even seem to be acting but, just doing what he would have done himself.

Fillion is supported by Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker and Greg Henry, as the heroine, the monster and the foul-mouthed Mayor respectivly.

Banks truly shines in her role as Starla. She grasps the essence of Starla’s character, which is that she is a survior. Banks brings this out 100 percent of the time, whether she is stabbing a posessed police officer through the neck with a stop sign or whispering words of love to a giant tentacled squid thing.

The biggest flaw in Slither is the flow. Becase of Slither’s terribly low budget every once in awhile there will be a scene that just don’t seem to match. Plus, between the conglomeration of physical special effects, puppets and computer generated graphics every so often there will be a little hair-line fracture in the flow of the movie that says “Hey! Stop paying attention to the movie for a second and pay attention to this flaw in the lighting”.

All in all Slither is an excellent movie that can be appreciated by anyone that is a fan of “The Thing”, “The Fly”, “The Evil Dead”, zombie and alien genre films and “Firefly”. And lets be honest thats everyone that counts.

Twilight

Stephanie Meyers’s “Twilight” mirrors the age old tale of boy meets girl, but with the boy replaced with a century old vampire and and the girl switched with an angst-ridden teenage emo-child.

The roles of Vampire and Teenage-emo-child are acted out by Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen, and Kristen Stewart as Isabella or ‘Bella. Both actors embrace their roles with the zeal and talent of a middle-school reproduction of “Hamlet”.

The majority of the supporting characters are rather flat as well, maybe this is due to limited talent on actors part or just an abysmal director, but the one character that seemed cinema worthy, James the bad-guy tracker vampire, SPOLIER ALERT!gets about 5 minutes of screen-time then is literally torn into bloody chunks then thrown into a fire. It seems vampires don’t like getting out-acted.

“Twilight” to its credit is a highly stylized movie. There seems to genuine effort put into making the movie match what was depicted in the novel. Then “Twilight” took it a step too far by trying to visually depict  some things that are better left to the imagination. Such as, the vampire’s running, jumping, climbing, flying, talking, walking, and well just about anything as that the fanged hero does.

A semi-avid movie watcher would come to the uncanny realization that they had seen “Twilight” before. Everything about the movie was eerily familair, from the main story of vampire falls in love with a human (“Vampire Hunter D” the movie or the comic “Crimson”), the idea of a vampire surviving on non-human blood (Anne Rice’s Lestat, “Blade” or “Crimson” again) even the main characters names seem cloned from another source (Edward and Bella of “Twilight” versus Ebin and Stella of “30 Days of Night” … coincidence?)

One interesting things about this film is the underlying tone abstinence.

“Twilight” following from Anne Rice’s lead makes “Siring”, when a vampire is created, very sexual and appealing. Meyers piggybacks on this idea by making Edaward unable to “express” himself due to the fear that he would lose control and bite ‘Bella. This makes an interesting statement about teenage sexuality by depicting ‘Bella, the female, as longing for Edward. And Edward, as the male, responsible for restraining himself and ‘Bella. Thereby, preventing the teens from “expressing” and ‘Bella from walking the vampire’s path.

Or maybe I am just reading to much into a silly teen movie. Who knows.

Obama’s Press Conference

As of Tuesday’s press conference Obama has become just another politician.

This may seem to be a bit of a truism, of course he is a politician, but the point is that he no longer seems to be all that different. This isn’t to belittle his historic campaign and historic election, but to state that he no longer talks like a starry-eyed idealist, but a true-blooded public servant.

That is to say he answered very few questions directly and participated in the ever enjoyable round-robin of finger pointing.

His response to the question on his feelings towards the Israel/ Palestine conflict, and whether he believed the change in Israel’s government to a Prime Minister that does not favor a two-state solution and a Foreign Minister that has been known to insult Arabs makes the situation harder, he snidly replied “Well it doesn’t make it easier”.

Now while he is telling the truth it represents an unwillingness to to say something that people don’t want to hear, and in doing so says nothing.

Furthermore, when asked about his thoughts concerning his reversal of Bush’s ban on Stem Cell Research all that he is willing to admit is that he ,”wrestles with it all the time”, rather than actually state what his administration’s stance truly is

Finally, Obama’s use of the extended finger is admirable. Rather than address the question of his proposed plan increasing the deficit, he reminds the assembled reports that the Bush Administration and the Right were responsable for the debt in the first place.

It would be worthwhile to remind the White House that Mr. Obama was elected as a breath of fresh air, something new, that these actions, while seemingly nit-pickingly insignificant, should be nipped in the bud.

Will the TAKS Test Go the Way of Disco?

The TAAS test has come and gone, and its successor the TAKS test may be on the chopping block. The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills Test, also known as TAKS for brevity’s sake, is the standardized tests that has had Texas schools buzzing for the better part of the last decade.

The TAKS is used as a benchmark to measure students skills and a passing score is required to advance to the next grade. TAKS focuses on testing the knowledge of the individual students based on their skill with the TEKS, or Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills.

Following from the TEKS comes the notion of “Teaching to the Test”. Teaching to the test is action of focusing on TEKS at the expense of other areas of instruction in order to increase test scores. This usually means that Social Sciences, Fine Arts and Physical Education will take a hit to compensate for the focus on Reading, Math and Science.

In addition to causing a narrower focus of instruction the TAKS has also been critized for its invalidity as an accurate measure of skill.The reason for this is that the TAKS has a habit of changing every year in order to make test scores seem higher. These changes make it usless as a tool to compare the scored of Texans to any other state.

Furthermore, the stress it puts on Students and Teachers to reach higher test scores prevents preparation for college and or careers.

So if the TAKS gets the axe everything will get better right?

Maybe. Nature abhors a vacuum so something must replace the TAKS. Best case scenario is that a focus on preparation for the SATs and the ACTs will come back to the foreground, but as long as NCLB, No Child Left Behind, is in effect school will be required to prove thier students apptitude with a single test score.

No Child Left Behind + Texas Miracle

Just Another Case of Police Brutality?

Over the last couple of days the footage of Malika Calhoun, 15, being beaten by a Seattle Police Officer has been popping up. Malika was being held in a holding cell after her arrest for joy ridding in a friend’s mother’s car. The video speaks for itself.

While the footage is undoubtedly brutal the incident itself leaves a lot of unanswered question. Such as where is all of the conventional reporting on this?

While bloggers across the country have succeeded in their role as watch dog, the mainstream news outlets are rather conspicuous by their absence. Which raises the question do they not know, or do they not care.

Unfortunately, due to the press’s investigative prowess when it comes to politicians, it is doubtful that they don’t know about this incident. Which means that they just don’t care.

But who is really to blame for that? Stories are “News” if they are interesting or shocking to viewers, watchers and readers. So if the News doesn’t cover an event, does that mean that we, as the consumers of news don’t care?

Well the answer seems to be yes, and no.

The Stolen Lives Project, an organization that was created to keep track of all individuals that have been killed by Police Officers, does their best to keep track of the numbers, but a quick flip through their database sheds some light on our question.

It isn’t that people don’t care, but that it is all to common an occurrence for a community to care about police violence unless in occurs in their community.

News cast and Footage + Interview

Will Watchmen go the same way as the Dark Knight?

It is possible that I got carried away with my labeling of Watchmen as a harbinger of change. Watchmen may not be the catalyst that will change everyone’s mind about “comic book” movies, but that it has the potential.

Watchmen is a serialized graphic novel (that means it came out in comic books), written by Alan Moore, that describes a world very much like our world. In this world Nixon was elected, America fought in Vietnam, and the US is in the midst of the Cold War with the U.S.S.R..

The differences are that United States in Moore’s Watchmen had heroes. Not heroes like Superman or the X-men. Just normal human vigilante types that took it upon themselves to “watch” over their fellow man.

This doesn’t mean that the “heroes” are all that heroic though. They run the gamut from impotent to sociopathic. What makes Moore’s heroes compelling is the gritty reality of them.

Add that to a masterfully written story and the intense Wall of Sound, or consistent 9 paneled page construction, and you have a solid literary work. Watchmen really is a literary work too.  It crossed the line that separates “typical” graphic narratives from other “typical” literary works.

So if all of this is true, and Watchmen is a god among mortals, why is there only a possibility that it will be great?

Because like most “novels” the written word is not easily translated to the silver screen. Creative license will be taken to modernize the story and characters. The gritty reality will need to be replaced with air-brushed actors and computer generated effects. And finally the complex parallel plots will need to pruned down to a central storyline that is more easily digestible.

Therefore, the real question is after Watchmen is movie-fied, will there be enough left to show the academy what the graphic literature genre can produce? I’m keeping my fingers crossed.