For my roommate Stephanie’s 21st birthday this Saturday, she mandated that everyone dress up as something she would like. I opted to be Amy Wong from Futurama and Audrey here is Derek Jeter from an SNL sketch:
But before the party, Steph and I proceeded to watch our football team get trounced by some raging behemoths from Alabama. 41-30. Damn, it was a down right rape, that was.
I stumbled across this on Youtube today while I was looking for music videos on my favorite sci-fi movie, Serenity. I thought it was rather relevant to the conversation we had about trolls awhile back. I’m still not sure what to think of this overall, so I’m wondering what you guys think.
Most of you are somewhat familiar with World of Warcraft. It’s a popular Tolkien-esque role-playing game boasting over 8 million players. In the game, you choose to be on opposing sides, Alliance or Horde, and battle each other throughout the world.
According to the back story, a girl who played a Horde character had recently died in real life. The friends she made in the online realm decided to have a WoW funeral in her honor. Unfortunately, they chose to have the funeral in a player-versus-player (PVP) zone, sections of the world where members of opposing forces are allowed to attack each other. You can probably guess the fatal flaw of this endeavor.
They posted the time, date and place for the funeral on the public forums. And despite the repeated posts and pleas to respect their dead friend, members of Alliance guilds, Serenity Now and Gnomeland Security, crashed the funeral and began killing funeral attendees.
Here is the YouTube video they took. I suggest skipping ahead to 4:00 where you actually see the Alliance players raid the funeral.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHJVolaC8pw]
This incident reeks of the same “malwebolence” seen in the Mitchell Henderson case we read about in class.
But my conflict here is, weren’t the funeral organizers basically asking for this when they chose a PVP zone?
Like any forum on the Web, there are WoW players out there who are just plain immature trash and would revel in harassment and trolling. By hosting this girl’s WoW funeral in a player-vs.-player sector of the world, how could they not take the precautions?
Just asking players to respect the dead doesn’t work in an online capacity. Look at Mitchell Henderson. And WoW is a breeding ground for malcontents, they should have known better.
Here’s a comment on the YouTube video seemingly from a funeral-buster:
“Yeah we are f**ked up,yes we are assholes… deal with it… The only reason blizzard temp banned us and put us all on different servers is because they where under a lot of pressure. And lets think of how retarded they where for not expecting us! HA! They new we where going to come its there fault for not having guards.”
Underneath the horrid grammar, I hate to say it, but the poster has a point. So I’m conflicted. I don’t know which feeling is stronger. Disgust at the Alliance players who did this or disappointment with the Horde members who didn’t see this coming.
Here are some Photoshop stills I made of my anticipated online portfolio. I like them, though I find myself once again teetering along the line between fun and professional:
“It’s a red hearted vibration
Pushing through the walls of dark imagination
Finding no equation”
- Idlewild
Of the grey surbanite house I’ve lived in until I was 5, I can only remember one thing. The ghost-woman that lived in my closet. She slept in the basket of my winter clothes and wrapped herself in Wal-Mart plastic bags. Stockily built, but guant, her eyes were inky black and her hair was long and white. She often held me close and whispered about a past I can only begin to unravel now.
Only the women in my family knew about her. My mother knows her because she sated her with incense smoke and paper money. I know her because I saw her in these half-dreams. My grandmother knows her best because she was the one who brought her from China in a beige faux leather suitcase. She called her the White Lady.
In the 1940’s, when White Lady was twenty, she hid from the Japanese in the nearby hills and never came out. I imagine her crawling in the dark, sipping fetid rainwater and feeling around under rocks for moss. I think that my grandmother found her body and accidentally brought her spirit back to the village in a water bucket. Having no family to claim her body, she claimed us as her family.
And no matter where we’ve moved, sometimes I think she follows us, casting long shadows into our lives.
2001: Space Odyssey
Watching 2001: Space Odyssey for the first time right now. [Oddest beginning, I wonder if some of those monkeys are real.]
It’s so funny watching antiquated movies’ visions of the future. Even though the films try so hard to depict worlds of high technology and convenience, they always manage to date themselves within their era’s technological context. For example, in 2001: S.O., there’s androids, zero-gravitiy and spiffy white space uniforms for everyone, but NO CELL PHONES. The good doctor still needs to go into a booth to make a call. Perhaps the idea of carrying around a phone was beyond the imagination back in 1968.
And I don’t know where it’s written that fashion must regress so horribly in the future. So many sci-fi movies assume that everyone will be dressed uniformly in space utopia. I, for one, don’t see individuality, or capitalism for that matter, ever letting that happen. A government would have to mandate it, and if it tried, there’d be an outrage amongst the fashion community. Christian Siriano would have to cut a bitch.
What I wouldn’t give to live long enough to see space travel be as normal as walking to class. Sheer curiosity gets the better of me. I want to know what it will be like. Will we be able to find new resources to facilitate so much space travel? Will life be like the Firefly universe? Because I’d love for it to be.
One lifetime isn’t enough for me. I want to see the ebb and flow of the worlds. I want to know how humanity turns out in the end, if there is an end.
Who is this woman? Why does she have my name? And why is she such a prolific blogger?
Her presence takes up at least three pages of Google before it even gets to my Facebook page. Apparently, she’s a micro-celebrity who likes to give talks about online blogging and identity. All the while, my online presence is shunted to the side.
Could this be a good or bad thing? One thing, it may confuse people into thinking I’m much more famous than I really am. Then again, my talents are being outshone by a soccer mom…who isn’t even Asian!
Like a box of chocolates, pick and choose:
Coconut:
Fresh off a successful but unnecessarily extravagant Olympics, another fiasco over tainted products. Only this time it’s so much more…depraved. Here’s the CNN article that Audrey posted on the EB thread today.
Maybe its my biological clock starting to wind up, but I really got pissed over this. I can’t imagine how it must feel, the realization that you have been slowing poisoning your child. I wanted to go into those pictures and pick up the babies and just cradle them.
It just goes to show, China is the real paper tiger. All show and empty inside.
Caramel:
I’m pretty sure I’ve founded a new breed of indie elitism. I am an Asian indie elitist. I find that I’m much more likely to enjoy an artist if he/she is Asian. Prime example: Priscilla Ahn, my new impulse album buy. I’ve had a “to buy” list going on for weeks. Today, I hear “Lullaby” on Pandora.com and I immediately threw my plans to the wind and got her entire album.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBNMdh6SeBA]
Raspberry:
Starting watching the new show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” I enjoy it, but I’m not a fan…just yet. The humor is definitely my style: awkward, off-beat Arrested Development-esque. There were certainly laugh out loud moments. I think I just need time for it to grow on me. Arrested definitely had to grow on me, and now I’m in love with it. Angel took about two/three episodes to get me hooked, as did Outlaw Star. Firefly however, had me at hello.
Chocolate: A memory came surfacing up like a corpse finally decayed enough to loosen from the concrete.
Let’s get drunk
You can drive us to the harbor
Wish upon a star but
Do you know what stars are?
Balls of fire, burning up the black space
Falling from the landscape
Exploding in the face of God
Let’s get crazy,
Talk about our big plans
Places that you’re going
Places that I haven’t been
Build my walls up
Concrete castle
Keep this kingdom free of hassle, yeah
- Something Corporate
With the hope of standing out and finding a right company who appreciates a creative, quirky soul, I stayed up until 3 a.m. last night adding cool, boxed graphics onto my plain jane resume. I figure, the layout would highlight my graphic design skills, keep me in the reader’s mind, and help me narrow down to an open-minded employer with a flair for fun. I know it’s still kind of a big risk to alter the traditional layout this way, but since I got a few months before I really have to start worrying about a job, I see this as a grand experiment. Do employers truly appreciate originality or just say so to trick and entrap an prospect? My ideal boss would think my alterations on the resume are innovative and fresh. The only thing is, I imagine many would see it as childish and unprofessional. I DON’T WANT TO WORK FOR THOSE PEOPLE. My career search is as much a test for my employers as it is for me.
This morning I was dressed and ready to make a cheery but professional impression at UGA’s general fall career fair. I strutted down Clayton Street with a semi-confident air, expecting to make a few key connections with at least six companies. I make my way to the Classic Center and get a list of all the employers present. To my dismay, there were hardly anything but insurance, education, or retail companies. No worries I thought, I could talk to the retail people. Kohls, Target, Bloomingdales were all there. Perhaps I could chat about their communications departments.
What a disappointing 15 minutes.
EVERYONE was there for business management or risk management or information management or some damn form of MANAGEMENT major. Argh, it was so frustrating to see their “Oh….yeah…you’re not exactly what we’re looking for here today” faces. I either was absented-mindedly given a flyer or blandly directed to the company’s Web site where I needed to contact “corporate office” for communications openings.
Fuck that. No. Not my path. I don’t want to get stuck in a miserable office where everyone is 40 years older than me and all I do is harp about the same shit every single day. I’m not PR or advertising. No more corporations.
It just makes me angry that they marketed this career fair like it was an all-major, diverse thing. I swear, 99% of the people there were only looking for business majors. 80% of that were companies who were looking for recent grads as lackeys to operate satellite franchises. If I’m going to work for a retailer like Target, you bet your ass I’d rather work at corporate communications rather than settle as “store manager” in Podunk, USA. No way, I know I’m better than that.
Ever get the feeling that you’re meant for something big? I get that feeling sometimes and then I push it back because I know I’m being cocky and overconfident. I’ve achieved a lot of what I’ve set out to do in college, but that’s not a sign for success in my future career. I have no problem saying I was top dog in high school, but college put me in my place, and it was way lower on the pecking order. I only imagine that the real world will really bump me down. But sometimes, I get some praise, an award or something, and I get this glimmer of hope. Maybe I can make it. Maybe I can make it to the big time at a major publication. I CAN hold my own at a magazine like SciFi, Paste, EW.
But how can I get the hell out of here, when the people I need to talk to, to network with, are nowhere near me?
I have maniacally pasted this video on every one of my friends’ Facebook wall/threads since I discovered it about three hours ago. I have a tendency to obsess over YouTube videos that I find hilarious.
I can’t stop talking about it for days and I’ll play it constantly for about two weeks to everyone I know. It happened with Samwell’s “What What in the Butt,” Buffalax’s Benny Lava, The THX bush baby, dramatic squirrel, and a score of others.
I’m not even sure why this particular video amuses me to no end. I guess it’s got the same type of humor as “What What in the Butt.” Gay men being ludicrous and synced to a retarded song. It’s hilarious! I’m pretty sure I’ll have this stuck in my head all day tomorrow.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyqUj3PGHv4]
With Ipod earphones in my ears, laptop on my lap, cellphone in my hand, I blog on the bus. I am the connected, the on-the-go, the early 20s audience, the “it” market. Burdened and overloaded with information gluttony, my wrists and head hurt from typing and staring on the computer all day. I absorbing the feeds and regurgitate it back. I am a wreck if I can’t call you when I need to. I’m a mess if I can’t access the Internet. I wish my laptop was lighter and worked faster. I want things to be done loading before I blink. Oh when oh when will the next innovation relieve me of waiting one more second?