Podcast 116 – My Avatar Goes All 2012 On You

November 29, 2009 in Uncategorized with Leave a Comment

Lovehatethings 116 – My Avatar by Anthony Marco  
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lovehatethings – My Avatar Goes All 2012 On You.mp3 (13870 KB)

From 2012 to Brizzly to Flowcharts to Deals to James Cameron to Avatar to Writing to Shakespeare to Paul McCartney to Doing it in the Road, the epic Podcast 116 awaits your eardrums.

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thinglets: 25 Single Words That Identify Authors

November 28, 2009 in Uncategorized with Leave a Comment

I tried to avoid character names which would be very obvious and key title words that didn't exist within the texts. I've also tried to go for the most generic words I could find that the authors "made their own"… well, maybe except for "fardle". Feel free to add your own in the comments.

1. riverrun – James Joyce
2. Shantih – T.S. Eliot
3. fardle – William Shakespeare
4. towel – Douglas Adams
5. windmills – Cervantes
6. robot – Isaac Asimov
7. soma – Aldous Huxley
8. Maine – Stephen King
9. precious – J.R.R. Tolkien
10. thoughtcrime – George Orwell
11. plague – Albert Camus
12. horrorshow – Anthony Burgess
13. jungle – Rudyard Kipling
14. ode – John Keats
15. tyger – William Blake
16. albatross – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
17. paradise – John Milton
18. inferno – Dante Alighieri
19. waiting – Samuel Beckett
20. nevermore – Edgar Allan Poe
21. darkness – Joseph Conrad
22. moors – Charlotte Bronte
23. Rockland – Alan Ginsberg
24. daffodils – Wordsworth
25. whitewash – Mark Twain

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thinglets: 10 Reasons You Should Not Go To See Avatar

November 27, 2009 in Uncategorized with Leave a Comment

Really, go see it if you want. Just be appropriately disgusted as blue slinky creatures fill the screen in a world reminiscent of Endor.

1. It cost $237 million US to make, which is bigger than the GDP of nine countries.
2. The Na’vi killed and ate the Ewoks before taking over their planet.
3. Sigourney Weaver doesn’t answer to the name Ripley.
4. James Cameron hasn’t made a film since Titanic and may blow a gasket when isohunt.com posts a copy a day early.
5. Leonardo DiCaprio ain’t the king of this world.
6. Big let down when you find the entire story is just John Connor playing a video game on Skynet.
7. The film could never live up to Cameron’s masterpiece Piranha Part Two: The Spawning.
8. If there’s not a place for Tom Arnold in a film, I just can’t support it.
9. Sam Worthington’s in a remake of Clash of the Titans; don’t encourage him or next he may re-imagine Krull.
10. Remember the budget for Waterworld? I’m just sayin’!

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a literary lovehate: Paul McCartney’s “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?”

November 26, 2009 in Uncategorized with Leave a Comment

Why Don't We Do It In The Road? – Paul McCartney

Why don't we do it in the road?

An early surface interpretation might suggest McCartney evoking the obvious late 60's "Summer of Love" mentality of free love, anywhere, any time. His push toward the public expression of sexual gratification in the middle of a city street hearkens to a time period of rebellion against taboos around the world. He devolves us to the apes rushing to copulate "helter skelter" on the asphalt thumbing their nose at older generations who strut around like roosters in tuxedos… with bow ties… drinking single malt.

Why don't we do it in the road?

By repeating the earlier sentiment, one could think McCartney is making us really question the element of the pronoun "we". We assume that McCartney means himself and a lover, but considering the social unrest occurring throughout the western world during this time period, it's highly likely that, in fact, the "we" refers to the group of disenfranchised youth that exercised civil liberties by hitting the streets with placards and chants. It is a call to arms against the military-industrial complex that funded the Vietnam war and sent young people to their deaths while profiteering on death.

Why don't we do it in the road?

In the third proclamation of the title line, the walrus recalls the focus on the word "it" as we realize that perhaps our assumption of the copulation expected in line one was perhaps a bit simplistic in interpretation. We realize that it could be anything. The operative part of the sentence comes later in the revelation that no matter what "it" is, "it" should be done in plain sight. The conveyance of the action (2it) to the road reveals a relatively simple mathematic formula that helps to define the logic of the lyric. To put it simply (Y – [I + U] + 2it) / C200H246N2S7O4.

Why don't we do it in the road?

Only by the fourth repetition do we realize the true pain and suffering behind the artist's vision. Echoing the repetition of Eliot at the end of Hollow Men, McCartney goes to a fourth step that reveals his intention. 

The final question in the WDWDIITR puzzle lies in the "in". The preposition has been a long time misnomer. Does McCartney mean "in" or "on". We normally say phrases like "out in the street", but does this mean we are consumed or buried in the asphalt? Does Sir Paul indicate that we are up to our necks in road and can only rise up by doing it? Are we drowning in the road? It would be easy for McCartney to say "on" the road, but would that really convey the true sentiment of his tortured soul that, at this point, was being swallowed by the Beatles to the point that he essentially recorded this song entirely by himself overnight on October 9th, 1968. McCartney feels dragged down by the rest of the band and stuck in the gooey asphalt that is restricting his creativity. The line is meant to be ironic. Instead of saying "Why don't we just all restrict our creativity and bog each other down?", he instead asks the title line.

No one will be watching us.

McCartney develops the continuing theme of the popular juggernaut that was The Beatles by waxing satiric on the legions of the band's followers. They buried themselves in studios, tried to run to India, ran off in different directions, but still remained more popular than ever. Gaggles of girls waited outside of every door. Television and newspaper reporters waited around every turn. There is no small sadness in the fact that McCartney only feels that his only chance of escaping prying eyes would be in blatant public view. Unfortunately, even an attempt at this strategy didn't work a scant year or so later when The Beatles climbed up on a roof top and the cameras still followed.

Why don't we do it in the road?

Resigned to his fate of never being able to escape the pressures of being in the most popular band in the world, McCartney presages the angst-ridden singer-songwriters of the 1990s and 2000s by contemplating suicide. He wants the entire band and all their fans to join him in a suicide pact while awaiting an oncoming vehicle to run them all over. I know that some of you may think this a bit far-fetched, but I call your attention to the Abbey Road album cover from less than a year later. The fab four lined up like carnival game targets just waiting for a speeding lorry to end "it" all.

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thinglets: The Pretty Evolution of the Movie Vampire

November 24, 2009 in Uncategorized with Leave a Comment

The uglier the vampire, the better the ranking for the film. Even the generally populist imdb.com can't seem to find any love for the "pretty" vamps of Twilight. Bring back Nosferatu and Barlow; they scared the shit out of me. Hell, even Blacula beat Twilight – but, as I'm sure Cuba Gooding Jr. will say in a sure-to-be-made Disney vampire dog family flick: "Show me the MONEY!" I think Twilight vamps are Vulcan; they bleed green.

Nosferatu (1922) imdb – 8.1

Salem's Lot (1979) imdb – 6.5

Blacula (1972) imdb – 5.4

Twilight: New Moon (2009) imdb – 4.5

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thinglets: The Five Grooviest Schoolhouse Rock Songs

November 23, 2009 in Uncategorized with Leave a Comment

Best Episode Ever 03 – Gilligan’s Island

November 23, 2009 in Uncategorized with Leave a Comment

Best Episode Ever 03 – Gilliga by Anthony Marco  
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best ep 03.mp3 (7449 KB)

A sitcom with an incredibly high level of "rewatchability": Gilligan's Island. With a great theme song, some totally bizarre plot lines, and a concept ripped off from classic novels of Romance and swashbuckling, the characters were fun, stupid and engaging at the same time. Some fantastic episodes and a really fun show to grow up with.

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Podcast 115 – An Idiotic Ramble in Search of Inspiration

November 21, 2009 in Uncategorized with Leave a Comment

  
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lovehatethings – An idiotic ramble in search of inspiration.mp3 (11729 KB)

A long-winded impromptu ramble on topics including:

• the impending holiday season, 
• the music associated with the holiday season, 
• being thankful for not having to awake for weekend work, 
• the front yard attached to the holiday season, 
• the good faith of neighbours, 
• the proliferation of driveway garbage bin rentals, 
• on the habit of collecting and purging, downloading via Bit Torrent, 
• the ridiculous legal remedies being suggested by music publishers, 
• the impact of big business and lobbyists on government and citizens, 
• the obfuscation tool that is H1N1, 
• the Harmonized Sales Tax in Ontario, 
• the waste of taxpayer money on H1N1, 
• the reflection on the process of this podcast.

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lovehate: 3 Found Websites, 300 Subscribers

November 20, 2009 in Uncategorized with Leave a Comment

It’s not often I just start picking up new websites/services. It’s not that I intentionally avoid such things, it’s simply that I spend more time writing and recording than exploring. This past week, however, I’ve jumped in on betas of a few sites that range from the popular to relatively unknown: Brizzly.com, Flowchart.com, Deals.Woot.com.

Brizzly has certainly been the darling of the social media set for the past couple of weeks as every strained to get their invites after being pissed off that they didn’t find invites for Google Wave. Combining your Facebook and all of your Twitter accounts into a web interface is fairly cool, although it’s been done by sites like Hootsuite and Friendbinder plus others.

I haven’t really explored Brizzly enough to find how different it really is from the sites already out there. Maybe that’s because I really enjoy the functionality of a stand-alone app for Twitter. I’ve been using Tweetdeck for the better part of a year now, and I have no real plans to turn back to the browser. I can appreciate the pull toward a browser-based solution by people in Enterprise environments where installing Adobe Air and a Social Networking app is a pipe dream at best. Perhaps in such an environment I would be looking for the best browser solution as well.

I like that Brizzly is doing what it’s doing; I just don’t know if I want to be doing it.

In looking for an online solution to creating flowcharts, I suppose I should’ve guessed that flowchart.com would’ve been a best guess – but I’m not prone to thinking things are that easy and it actually took me a bit of searching to find it. I’m becoming increasingly impressed at the interfaces that are being developed for web applications that create/edit graphics, sounds and video. While this is also a case where a freeware stand-alone app would probably be my first choice. I appreciate that I can do this online.

Flowchart.com does offer a pretty simple interface that I found it really easy to get used to. Admittedly, I have very rare occasion to ever create flowcharts, but I was thinking of making one for a blog post the other night. I realized that, where 10 years ago I used to have a bunch of apps installed on my PC that I could use for such a task, my lack of need to make flowcharts had diminished my software options. At least if I need to make a flowchart in the future, the URL will not be easy to forget.

Wrapping up my triumvirat of web exploration came perhaps the most appropriate site for the upcoming gift-giving season: deals.woot.com. For those of you that fondly remember Woot-Offs when a series of deals would revolve around at woot.com, the makers have basically added Digg functionality to deals. Users can submit their own deals and rate and rank them. What you essentially end up with is a dynamically-changing deals network. As you start to shuffle through some of the deals, you’ll be able to sort by keywords, online stores or users and vote up the deals that you like. They’ve even aggregated a leaderboard that allows you to check out all of the deals stats that you could want.

Living in Canada, there are many of these deals that I can’t take complete advantage of, but that’s what snowbird parents and VISA are for. Not a brilliant trio of websites for sure – but certainly functional for the right reasons at the right times. I don’t regularly “review” websites anyway… I know, a pretty weak lovehate right?

Actually, all this is a prelude to saying thanks to my 302 subscribers on Posterous. I had to wait a week to break 300, but I’ve been busy and beat and bereft of ideas when I get home most nights. (I hope at least some of you are enjoying the eclectic video embeds.)

I know that when radio stations get one caller for a contest, they have the market research that establishes the ratio of callers to listeners. I have to say that the community here at Posterous has been a joy to share ideas with and to gain so much knowledge from. Thanks Garry and Sachin for kicking things into gear a year and a half ago. Thanks to the new team members for the great additions. And thanks to everyone who has read even one full post from lovehatethings.

I’ve got to keep writing for sanity alone. If someone enjoys the reading, that’s an added bonus. There are plenty of other communities out there. I’m glad I found this one when I did.

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thinglets: Roger Ramjet Meets the Vampire

November 18, 2009 in Uncategorized with Leave a Comment

via youtube.com

Okay… Roger Ramjet, Count Bat Guy, and a Proton Energy Pill battle… give yourself a five minute levity break from whatever you’re doing and drink in the nostalgia of almost 45 years. You can have your Twilight with it’s dark, broody, angst-ridden vamps, but Count Bat Guy is the real deal.

And what better group of dysfunctional kids than Yank, Doodle, Dan and Dee? This is the culmination of some crazy superhero meets the supernatural story arc that no teen based fiction could ever match.

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