One Vision: PlayStation Buttons

While visiting family in Columbia, SC, I stumbled across an advertisement for an upcoming art exhibit called "Different Perspectives, One Vision." The point seemed to be pairing senior citizens with college students and having them work together to create some kind of finished viewable photography piece (the exact nature of the work was unclear from the ad).

However, inspiration struck, and I've invited several people to join in posting our own (humbly, more creativity-stimulating) version of the exhibit: each week, we'll have a challenge to take 4-8 pictures that depict the various parts of a pre-agreed set. One picture per piece, all pictures have to be have been personally taken by the submitter that week, and we'll agree on a layout ahead of time so that we'll have a generally easy time of matching each submitter's depiction of each piece of the set.

Sounds more complicated than it is. Here's this week's One Vision:

WEEK 1: PlayStation Buttons.
The PlayStation controller has four specialized buttons:
* Triangle
* Square
* Circle
* X
Take a photograph that depicts each of these; the final layout is the same as their layout on the PlayStation controller.

--------------------

And here's my submission (click for full-size):



And other submissions:
T Hobgood (who's obviously a better photographer than I): Gamer's Got The Munchies

J Scronce's:


More to come?

Sinibomb and Sugar On Every Bite!

I made this happen.

Word up!

Wordle.net: The world's foremost word-mapping program. So cool. I made the ones above, but this one's currently my favorite:

Man By Your Stand

I hate talking about politics so much. I know so precious little about the intricacies and double-binds that obviously go into every single sentence fragment uttered by the Big Dogs that I can never hope to make a rational and calm argument about anything vaguely connected to the topic.

But that's okay because talking about politics is like that for everybody.

Imagine you and someone else are having a discussion about politics. When you're two people who disagree about the issues, you quickly fall into snarking at one another's failings in debate tactics and personal hygiene. When you're two people who agree about the issues, you fellate each other's egos until you find some tiny point you disagree on and ...GOTO Line 20. (Sorry; Q-BASIC joke)

But here's the thing I'm really sick of: calling out candidates for voting against bills about stuff they say they're for (and vice versa). Rider clauses. Fricking rider clauses will do this argument in nearly every time; you go to vote for a bill as a whole, and people will tack on completely unrelated rider clauses to force opponents of the "main" clause to be FOR the bill as a whole (and vice versa).

But nobody thinks about rider clauses because they're all so niggling and annoying that it's hard to keep track of them.\

So I propose every government official open an Excel Spreadsheet right now and start a Three-Reason List: For every bill you vote(d) on, every addendum you attack(ed), every single piece of legislature that crosses/crossed your desk, you list your top 3 reasons for that decision. Then, when someone attacks your tendency to flip-flop, break out your reasons, and you won't have to play the "Conditions had changed" Vaguery Card.

BONUS USES OF YOUR THREE-REASON LIST:
* If one of your top three reasons for voting for/against a bill is "was paid by Big Tobacco to vote that way," you still have two reasons that you can say out loud. More importantly, it's all in Excel, so you can Sort Data by "Reasons"; if you can't easily count the "was paid by __________" entries, perhaps it's time to consider some self-policing.

* Have an extra column describing what "Proposal 245a-40991z" actually was about. This will save time in the short- and long-term.

* Use the list to remind yourself of whether you were for or against the war, abortion, tax cuts and government reform. Because, let's be honest: sometimes you just forget that kind of thing and let your aide sit in and vote for you.

You Have To Spurn The Trope

So as you may or may not have heard me cheering over the past week, I won a song-parody contest! First, play the game You Have To Burn The Rope (HERE). It will literally take you under a minute. The contest was to write a parody of the closing theme, and to make it about my favorite video game moment.

I wrote it about the game "Shadow of Colossus" and they previewed my entry during this podcast (skip to 1:12:45 ). (They say, "By Kit FitzSimons, which is an awesome name." Whee!)

And then the guy who wrote the original song commented on my parody, and his favorite line was line 3 (heard here - skip to 0:56:08). (He says, "He's got a nice flow with the rhymes.")

Regardless of what you may think of the people who run the podcast, I now have a free DS Lite, courtesy of them!

Thanks to my friend Sketch who suggested the reverb and who found a way to make the claps work so well...and, you know, for running Garage Band and mixing my vocals.

There'll Be A Quizno's On This Later

While at Firehouse Subs the other day, my friend Sketch pointed out that the sandwich I was ordering had an odd description: it came "Fully Involved." According to the menu (their online version pictured below), Fully Involved means that it comes with all the normal toppings (lettuce, mayo, etc).



Now, I don't like toppings on my subs; I'm a meat-and-cheese-only type of guy. But it seems wrong to just ask for the sandwich "plain" when they went to the trouble of coming up with such an interesting phrase to describe a sub being 'with everything on it.'

Therefore, I now present a short glossary of terms for how to order your sandwiches at Firehouse Subs from here on out.

A Sandwich Fully Involved =
Loaded. Complete with Mayo, Mustard, Lettuce, Tomato, Onion and a Dill Spear.

A Sandwich With Commitment Issues =
Sub With No Toppings.

A Sandwich In Trial Separation =
Toppings On The Side.

A Sandwich Just Going Through The Paces =
Limp Piece Of Lettuce, One Slice Of Tomato, and Just A Daub Of Condiments.

A Sandwich Having An Affair =
Fully Involved Toppings Between Meat And Top Bun; With Horseradish, Cole Slaw and Pickle Slices Between Meat And Bottom Bun.

A Sandwich Whose Marriage Is On The Rocks =
Hot Sub...On Ice.

A Sandwich With A Restraining Order =
The Sandwich Is For Here, The Toppings Are To Go.

Death God Of War

I like the anime series Bleach, a series about a normal guy becoming a Death God. I like the video game God of War, a game about Stone-Cold Rambo 'Diesel' Schwarzenegger killing the entire population of ancient Greece. And today, the PSP Fanboy website put the banners for the two of them on top of each other. Way to go, two great tastes tasting great together.

We're Happy You Made It...

The best video game ever...

You Have To Burn The Rope

Words cannot describe how satisfying it is to complete a game in less than 20 hours.

Random Song Select

I have been challenged!

My friend Ted posted this in his blog (and then emailed me a personal link to it as a pointed challenge).

A friend of his found a Photoshop game to keep graphically-inclined people occupied for hours. The game is to create an album cover using random elements.
Find a random phrase (using the Wikipedia Random Article function); that'll be the band name.
Find a random quote (using a random quote generator); the last four words of the last quote on the page will be the album title.
Find a random picture (using Flickr's Interesting Photos); the third photo will be the background image for the album.

Now build the album cover from those three pieces, making use of all your Photoshop skills.

I've been making them all night while I wait for other people or whenever I get a second. Here's what I came up with:

Timeline of Afghanistan is heavily influenced by Evanescence, Linkin Park and the entire Dollar Bin at your local Indie CD store. They feel that they've got a lot to be sorry about, sorry for, and sorry in so far as. Their new CD is a concept album based on what the drummer's troubled youth would have been like if he had tried just one more time to run away from home. Rider Specifications: four (4) bottles of L'Oreal Pox Black nail polish in each band member's dressing room, one (1) bowl of flowers and one (1) hairdryer plugged in next to said bowl.



The Lee County, Florida Sheriff's Office has been talking about putting out an album since 1983, when they first realized 3/4 of their officers had, at one time or another, learned how to play an instrument. It all came together when they needed to raise money to get to a crime-stoppers convention in Illinois and needed to make some money to afford plane tickets. Their first effort (and they had so much fun, they swear it won't be their last) includes their hit single, "Off The Cuffs," a tribute to Jimmy Buffet's music and Lee County's most notorious baddies. Rider Specifications: For the show to go on, there must be at least 30 kids under the age of 12 and/or 40 senior citizens over 60 in the audience.



Fur Seal plays Death Metal with no concern for the fact that a good 95% of the Adult Swim show Metalocalypse has been directly lifted from footage from their episode of Behind The Music. Their lead singer's name is Körgin Billy. That's not a typo or a pseudonym; his parents gave him that name at birth...along with his abdominal scars. Rider Specifications: Someone for the entire band to simultaneously hate, otherwise, they'll turn on each other pre-concert like a pack of rabid opossums.



Anneli Jäätteenmäki's Cabinet is a Swedish supergroup, made up of former members of Ace of Base, Abba, The Cardigans, The Hives and The Hellacopters, from before any of the groups became famous. The lead singer has a crush on Ian Anderson, and she hides his name in every one of the band's songs: anagrams, acrostics, or just using the string of letters '-ian' at the ends of words like 'Canadian' and 'Edwardian.' In fact, she's hidden his name twice on the cover of this newest release; Christ, she's like a demented Highlights editor. Rider Specifications: An open cash bar. Yes, it actually uses that phrase. Most venues assume it means they want to mix their own drinks and leave the money on the counter. No one's complained yet.



Command History likes to think of themselves as Weezer-meets-Barenaked-Ladies, but really they're just a cheap Smash Mouth knockoff. You know, like Sugar Ray. Rider Specifications: Glasses tape. They only wear their glasses on stage; they've all had Lasik. Really, guys? Really?



Varandinha is former Bollywood actress Varandinha Rajadhyaksha branching out to achieve mainstream international diva status. The only way to describe her music is kitschily catchy. Imagine if Shakira had been an Indian princess, and you're almost there. Rider Specifications: Two (2) bottles of suntan lotion, One (1) copy of the latest Danielle Steel paperback, four (4) steak kabobs... she should probably just kiss Richard Gere and get it over with.



Château LaFleur is an all-bisexual 7-member French punk band that prides itself on the sheer number of permutations for in-band relationships it has to offer the media. They also are steadfastly anti-SETI, a sentiment echoed on their new CD. They believe that if/when humans and extraterrestrials talk/meet, we should let it be on their terms and stop wasting all this money on clogging up intergalactic communication frequencies. Also, they hated Jody Foster in Contact. Rider Specifications: Wall-to-wall pillow mats, Jacques Brel over the intercom, and 2 hours of uninterrupted sex time before and after each performance.



Wow. My bands spread out quite a bit, didn't they? That's show biz for you.

A Little Less Conversation

While talking with my friend David the other day, we got to discussing our favorite movies, as friends are wont to do periodically. As always, I brought up the fact that sets my opinion apart from that of the rest of the civilized world: I really love the movie Van Helsing.



I like the movie-monster pastiche it presents, enjoy both the male and female leads (Hugh Jackman & Kate Beckinsale), applaud the true-to-Shelley handling of Frankenstein's Monster, get into the action hardcore, and feel on the whole that it does a good job of transporting a James Bond flick to the 1800s.

I do understand that the movie has several glaring flaws (e.g. Dracula's overacting, the insanity of the subplots, and Kate Beckinsale being an 1800s female who dresses like Madonna and acts like Victoria Beckham), but I forgave the movie all those faults because it looked so goddamn awesome.

I mock movies like it's my job, but this is one of those ones I give a free pass because it gives me all the elements of the most kickass movie ever, and it doesn't give me time during the movie to realize that half of the reasons I like it are my own extrapolations from actual scenes.

That's right: I like Van Helsing partially because I have added to it in my head, making it a better movie by creating new dialog, plot points and action sequences. And I love the movie more every time I watch it...because each viewing means I get to make up more.

Now that I've defended my position pretty soundly, I'll return to the topic at hand: talking about Van Helsing with David. David said that the primary reason he could not even make himself watch the movie is that, when he thinks of Van Helsing, he thinks of the old man who stoically defeated Dracula. In other words, Peter Cushing:



He therefore finds it distasteful and/or untenable that Van Helsing would be a thirty-something action hero. In other words: Hugh Jackman:



To which I replied (in all seriousness), "I can see that. It'd be like if someone's putting out a Sherlock Holmes movie, and you find out it's starring Jason Statham."



Jason Statham, star of the Transporter films, Crank, and (shudder) the DungeonSiege movie -- the man I would consider this generation's Bruce Willis-- playing Sherlock Holmes (also played at one point by Peter Cushing, incidentally), the legendary proponent of Mind Over Matter, Brain Over Brawn, who usually had Watson along simply so somebody else could get powder burns on their hands. Ridiculous and analogous, right?

We agreed on that point, and a few moments went by... at which point I realized that I really, really wanted to see that movie. Not Van Helsing, but:



What a kickass Sherlock Holmes movie that would be. Logical, yes. Willing to bash a few Moriarty-goon skulls to get enough breathing room to use his own, Hells yeah. Able to identify mud by color, chemical content and region of origin, true. Able to pleasure femme-fatale Irene Adler (maybe sexed up in this version to Irina Adlokov) and good girl Mary Russell alike,

Watson could be Mos Def or Paul Rudd or someone similar, and the Baker Street Irregulars would be a teenage street gang led by Shia Labeouf. Moriarty...okay, I'll keep Dennis Hopper as a fallback option, but top choice: Stephen Dorff.



Because even though he's not really that big a name around Hollywood, he may have been the one decent thing about the movie Blade (oh, all right, Jeff, the wall of fetuses was also pretty cool).

Now that I've cemented plans for that movie, obviously, we need others to be similarly directed and cast.

Let's see:
Van Helsing --> Hugh Jackman (today's Kurt Russell)
Sherlock Holmes --> Jason Statham (today's Bruce Willis)
...

Hmm...how about something for Clive Owen (today's Mel Gibson...in...in a good way though)…



They’re making a Hobbit movie, right? Let him be Gandalf. Let’s see those Middle Earth baddies try to pick on the short guys when they’ve got One-step-better-than-Viggo-Mortensen at their backs.



And for Vin Diesel (today's Sylvester Stallone)...



Obviously, we need an Albert Einstein flick. Just before the climax, he realizes he’ll never escape from Germany if he’s got wild, poofy Doc Brown hair, so he shaves it all off and kicks some Nazi ass in:



And something for Daniel Craig (today's Michael Biehn)...



Let's see...some classic role usually played by an older man that stereotypically calls for urbanity and stiff sensibility, but that Daniel Craig can endow with action and bring back to the forefront of an awesome-factor-starved viewing public's consciousness... Oh! I know!

DON'T EAT AT JOE'S

Found via Sketch:

FROM WIKIPEDIA:
*****************************
A Hobson's choice is a free choice in which only one option is offered, and one may refuse to take that option. The choice is therefore between taking the option or not taking it. The phrase is said to originate from Thomas Hobson (1544–1630), a livery stable owner at Cambridge, England who, in order to rotate the use of his horses, offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in the stall nearest the door—or taking none at all. It is analogous to the expression "my way or the highway".
...
In the 1980s there existed a restaurant popular with students in Cambridge (England). Its name was Hobson's Choice. The menu was... Dish of the Day.
*****************************

Well, if they could get away with one restaurant so blatantly based on an obscure-reference gimmick, obviously, I can get away with far more than that.

Fine Dining For The Well-Informed


Come on down to MORTON'S FORK, the cozy little country cafe that's just off the beltway! Wikipedia says, "Morton's Fork is an expression that describes a choice between two equally unpleasant alternatives." And here at MORTON'S FORK, our chef serves up all sorts of equally unpleasant menu options! Scrambled eggs drenched in vinegar! Peanut butter and banana soup! A goblet of menstrual blood! So many things on the menu, you'll have a hard time deciding. Because they're just that nasty.
PS: That logo is from the actual MORTON'S FORK restaurant. Yeah, Britain actually creates these things that I want to make fun of. God bless you, United Kingdom.


Or try THE STRANGE LOOP for some slightly different Italian cuisine. Wikipedia says, "A strange loop arises when, by moving up or down through a hierarchical system, one finds oneself back where one started." Yes, stop on by THE STRANGE LOOP, the home of the bottomless Spaghetti Bowl!


Or what about THE GOLDEN HAMMER, that fancy Chinese place right around the corner from wherever you live? Wikipedia says, "A golden hammer is any tool, technology, paradigm, snake oil, buzzword or similar whose proponents enthusiastically sing its praises. They predict that it will solve multiple problems, including some for which it is obviously not suitable." Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? Bad dancer? Looking for love? Trying to better your backhand? Need to purchase some silver polish but only believe in the barter system and only have Odyssey of the Mind pins to trade? Then order the mu shu pork. We so good it hurt.


And for dessert, stop on by HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO, where it's always Buy-One-Get-One-Free Day at the bakery!

...Actually, that last one would probably be pretty damn popular.

The Ice Cream of the Present...of the Future!

I know I'm a bit late hopping on this bandwagon, but I was at Target the other evening and ran into a wall of Ben & Jerry's flavors dedicated to cultural icons.

I knew about Cherry Garcia and Phish Food; those are classics. I knew about Steven Colbert's Americone Dream and Willy Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler. I'd even heard about Neapolitan Dynamite. But I was not truly prepared for the sheer glut of eponymous flavors available.

Dave Matthews Band Magic Brownies (Black Raspberry Ice Cream Swirled with Sweet Cream Ice Cream & Fudgy Brownies)?


Duff & D'oh-Nuts (Chocolate & Cream Stout Ice Creams with Glazed Chocolate Doughnuts)?


Bohemian Raspberry (Vanilla Ice Cream with Fudge Brownies & Raspberry Swirls)?


VerMonty Python (Coffee Liqueur Ice Cream with a Chocolate Cookie Crumb Swirl & Fudge Cows)?


I've decided that Ben & Jerry's just needs to stop pretending that it doesn't want to make cultural references 24/7; they should go ahead and change their company name to what they obviously have dreamed of calling it for years:



Yes, Zeitgeice Cream: Making frozen treats that reflect the public's interests since regular people bought stuff that reminded them of how much they like famous people.

And now, from the makers of Zeitgeice Cream, try Italian-dessert flavors like "Pope Jelly-Bean-edict" and "Cinnamonica Bellucci" when you have a taste of



(PS: Parody of Gwen Stefani's "The Sweet Escape" over at Trouble in Parodies. Check it out.)