Sunday, July 22, 2012

Haiku

wherever I live
I drink with moderation,
except for Boston

the sun starts a climb
I turn and see the bed and
my wallet emptied

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Why Being a Banana can be Tiresome

Many times in my life I find myself being a banana, which has its benefits; it's an excellent conversation starter, you can easily hide booze in a banana costume, you get invited to more interesting parties.


But of course to all good things there is a foil and the downside to being elongated yellow fruit is to deal with the same 6 jokes, constantly. I'm not even sure that some should be defined as jokes or just lazy reference to internet humor. Spend one day as a banana and count how many times a stranger will come up to you singing 

"Ring, ring, ring, banana phone." 

And swear every time someone walks near me saying woo hoo HOO hoo HOO

A worse part is that they all think they're the first person to do this. The worst part is when they ask me to sing along. Maybe I'm having a smoke or I'm on my mobile, doesn't matter. They will come up asking for something.

Maybe I just want to eat cereal and not deal with your shit
I've had the songs Banana Phone, Peanut Butter Jelly Time, Chiquita Banana, and my personal favorite Day-O all sung to my by complete strangers like plantain pattern songs and fruit-centric serenades.


Sadly, no one does the dance

Oddly, no one ever chooses the Jack Johnson song Banana Pancakes.


One of the worst experience was a teenage girl insisting, while I was on the phone, that I sing Peanut Butter Jelly Time. Giving her the universal signal for 'fokk off, I'm on the phone' didn't work. I tried a simple "no" but the girl was relentless.

It's not just teens though, something about a man in polyester yellow makes people disregard social customs and people my parents age will allow their etiquette to slip into something so poor its only found on the internet.

Sometimes I just wanna chill
Comments and questions are fine, they are to be expected but joke-wise, my god if it's not the same 4 internet references its some poorly created innuendo. You're not hilarious for realizing that a banana is a phallic shape.

Only in Montreal did no one make the same comments, they simple laughed and proceeding on their French-Canadian lives.

Me and King Gansta' Bear/le Roi Gangst'our

I'm not complaining about my life as a banana, but I challenge you to do the same (not during Halloween) and we can commiserate.

Getting Over an Ex

I dare you to type the above phrase into Google or Bing or Gling. The assault of hilariously poorly written books, blogs, online essays, and advice columns would be every synonym for large on BigMac steroids. So here's a small list, because people love lists.


  • Get a haircut, everyone feels better after a haircut
  • Rearrange your furniture, a cheap trick to make your brain think you're in a different environment
  • Change your bed sheets
  • Start (or continue) some form of exercise
  • Spend time outdoors, the sun makes you feel better - fact
  • Avoiding sitting all together,  couches aren't your friends post-break-up
  • Listen to music you haven't enjoyed in quite a while

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Cambridge Graffiti

I'm a little obsessed with graffiti, so here are some photos I've taken in the basement of student housing buildings at Harvard






















After leaving, I saw a bunny




Monday, July 9, 2012

Community and Such

Between my graduation from university and my recent move to Boston, I spent a a few weeks at my folks' house reading, seeing friends, and generally accomplishing not a damn thing.
my accomplishments
After watching the first few episodes of Dan Harmon's Community and burdened with an exhaustive personality, I decided to watch every episode over a three day period. If you've ever watched the show, you must know the fascinating breakout character Abed who makes constant pop-culture references and comparisons between his reality and the reality of various films and shows while lamp-shading common themes, motifs, and tropes. Overall, he's a fascinating study in postmodern programming.


 So many naked lamps
While every form of televisual media references or borrows from others, Community stands out by announcing aloud when it does so. When young people are forced into an academic building for extended time, he literally says "This is kinda like the Breakfast Club, right?"

So why is this bad? It's not bad per se, but Abed constant stream of tv/movie reference encourage you to watch more. Moreover, his jokes almost act as a reward system for anyone who opted to watch The Chronicles of Riddick instead of being social.

Lost reference. Haha! My years of difficult TV watching has finally paid off!

After watching the episode where they parody mob films, I opted to watch Scareface. I didn't even realize that Dan Harmon had encouraged this until my friend commented.

So, while I certainly don't believe that shows like Family Guy or Community are going to make us less social, I do believe it will just sink our sense of comedy deeper into a post-modern paradigm.









Sunday, July 1, 2012

Internet Photos vs. Internet Videos

Before you read any further, stop and think of all the real (they get paid to be published) photographers you know. I'll give you a minute.

Ready? Great. I came up with three. David LaChapelle, Kevin Carter, and my sister. And if try real hard I come up with...three. And that's only because LaChapelle is so off the fokken wall

No Idea what's happening

Kevin Carter was actually in the news, because his pictures of starvation were so haunting




And my sister, because I love watermeleon


                                                          


So who cares? Now please, stop and think of every YouTube star or collective you can name.

Done? Awesome. In 30 seconds I came up with Chocolate Rain, Tron Guy, Light Saber Kid, Mega 64, Epic Meal Time, Numa Numa Guy, and Rebecca Black

I
And if I think just a bit longer...YTAS, Jenna Marbles, Leslie Hall, WOW freakout kid, Lana Del Ray, Grimes, and AutoTune the News.
Stole
If you gave me a search engine I could fill up a whole (terrible) coffee table book brimming with (awful) internet nostalgia. Moreover, I've only see about 2/3 of those I listed, the rest I knew through word of mouth or Tosh.0.
So why do we care? This extreme dichotomy of notoriety and medium is probably most interesting in terms of dollars.
Now that YouTube has started its process of monetization, if your video is popular enough you get money. Sucks to be Chocolate Rain.
Compare that to the tens of thousands of photographers and kids with cameras seeking cash or just simply recognition. They get dick.
But even worse, they loose the chance for receive a cent, the second their photos hit the web. My computer filled with photos I have no right to. The three images above all Google search provided. 
All
These
Photographers are almost aggressively ignorant at keeping claim to their work. I've found very few sites that offer any protection at all. If you go on Disney to look online at photos there are two big diagonal lines you only get removed by paying. Other websites have programs that don't allow the right click Save Image As.. to even happen. Look at my sister's photo above, she put up no protection, but in exchange for all the free exchange taken play on her hard work, she gets free publicity by throwing her name on.
The amount of people trying to get into the photography world is staggering and the number of dumb ones even more so. If someone can steal your work with a right click why even hire you? Look at memes. No one cares who took the original of ANY of those photos, but they all belong the collective internet now.
For Free
The same goes to artists who publish on the internet without protecting yourself or throwing your name somewhere on the thing itself. That's simply foolish.

Now let's discuss ownership.
As I said before, once your photo hits the web, it's gone and you've lost ownership. So slap on a name or no one will remember the works creator.
Videos, since 2007 are almost universally uploaded through YouTube.
So what? This gives the uploader/user recognition and control, which the photographers are so desperately seeking. Moreover a user can choose to take down their video whenever they feel like. After the universal hatred aimed at Rebecca Black after Friday was released, she took the video down (not that stopped anyone). So for a while, you couldn't find it through the most instantaneous method. She put it back up now with ads to make money btw.

In summation, photographers and artist make it so that stealing your work isn't an instantaneous process and maybe people will stop.


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