\o/

/Fatness isn't free

nobody@vox.com(orcist) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:51:56 -0500

For the third year in a row, the proud state of Mississippi is the fattest state in the nation. Congratulations, guys. You're making me real proud.

As today is the Fourth, I'm sure that copious amounts of beers and fried pies will be consumed throughout my fair state, doing little to alleviate the fact that one in three people are obese.

[Via Caloriela. Thanks (?) Andrea!]

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/Belle and Sebastian - The Chalet Lines

nobody@vox.com(orcist) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:20:58 -0500

Current obsession

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/Gato gato gato

nobody@vox.com(orcist) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:53:07 -0500

Chrono Trigger Resurrection - Remake Project

In the wake of the veritable internet shitstorm that occured when a "leaked' Weekly Famitsu scan and an official-looking countdown site hinted at a Chrono Trigger DS game, Nathan intoduced me to Chrono Trigger: Resurrection, a fan-made, 3D remake, of sorts. It was never intended to be a fully-fledged game, just ten individual scenes strung together. Square Enix shut it down a few years ago, but I'd never heard of the project before last night.

I'm not quite sure what to make of the project -- it's technically impressive, with production values far higher than I what I imagined a few dudes with no budget would be able to pull off, even if there aren't any textures. However, I'm not sure if I can wrap my mind around the character models or art design, apparently inspired by the Toriyama-designed anime cutscenes from the Final Fantasy Chronicles PSOne collection. Something about it seems off, like Chrono is too bulky and beefy.

That being said, I'm anxious to see how Square will "enhance" CT DS. Don't get me wrong, I love Final Fantasy III DS, another classic remake, but the superdeformed characters didn't always translate very well. This, of course, didn't stop me from sinking several hours into the game, nor will it stop me from enjoying Chrono Trigger, should this rumor pan out. I do, however, think that, when trying to adapt classic games for a modern audience, there's a lot to be said for sprites. See Dragon Quest IX (another Square Enix game), Odin Sphere, and Grim Grimoire for examples of beautiful sprite work.

Chrono Resurrection Playthrough

Anyway, back to Resurrection. It's a nifty little project, and it's a shame that it got cancelled. The animation was fluid and the transition into the first combat (around the 8:14 mark) was absolutely seamless, a design choice I wish more RPG developers would make. The little battle intro transition thing is jarring and adds unnecessary time to already long and sometimes tedious games. It is a convenient way to hide loading times, though. Too bad Resurrection's translation was just as bad as the original. I've never seen someone butcher English the way Frog does.

For comparison, here's some footage of the original Chrono Trigger.

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/Fan art as text adventure

nobody@vox.com(orcist) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:04:55 -0500

Teta fixes it all

Teta has drawn you as a whale.
>Is this awesome? Y/N

>>Y

The Destructoid community is more attractive and more talented than you are. Also, it is unlikely that Chris Kohler gets very much fan art.
>Are you perpetually amazed? Y/N

>>Y

You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

>>Use shotgun

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/Scope

nobody@vox.com(orcist) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:37:29 -0500

Biggest drawing in the world

Just watch.

I let out an audible gasp when I realized what was going on.

[Via Hoygeit's tumblr]

P.S. If there was a way to keep up with people's other blogs from my Vox account, that'd be sweet.

Self-defeating, but sweet.

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/Better living through science

nobody@vox.com(orcist) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:34:52 -0500

More ROKK, less TOKK

In the past three years as an intern at various publications, I haven't learned dick about photography. Well, that's not entirely true -- I've learned a bit about shutter speeds and aperture and f-numbers. I haven't, however, learned how to take good pictures.

That being said, it's delightful to have someone who knows what they're doing take your picture.

The photo to the left was taken by my editor, Buck, as part of a promotional packet for the admissions department, an attempt to highlight the Domain's extensive hiking trails and miscellaneous outdoors-ery. We hiked from Proctor's Hall to Morgan's Steep, and then about half a mile towards Bridal Veil.

We took about thirty pictures, most of which will probably never see any sort of publication, besides what little necromantic power I can bring into the equation. There are about a dozen of my favorites on my brand new (and likely to be seldom-used) Flickr account.

Quite frankly, Flickr's just an easy way to organize photos quickly and effectively -- it's communal aspects don't particularly appeal to me. Photobucket, while a good place to store individual images, is quite cumbersome with regards to albums or sets of related photos, hence my defection, at least for today.

[Editor's note: One of the best things about blogging is that it lets me and my like-minded narcissicists become the kings and queens of our respective e-domains. Which means that I get to make the rules. And no one can call me vain for posting pictures of myself. As pro-consul of this here blog, I deem that all who think me vain just GTFO right now.

There. That was fun.]

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/Gambling! Music! LOOSE WOMEN!

nobody@vox.com(orcist) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:33:31 -0500

and spitoons!

Those are the feelings evoked by the font (Rosewood Std) I used in my first-ever Destructoid c-blog banner, the result of a lack of creative vision coupled with being Photoshop retarded. Rosewood wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I started, but it was the most compelling font that came standard with my copy of Photoshop, since I didn't have internet access at the time of creation, no, evocation. After staring at it for about half an hour in the bottom of a dormitory, ostensibly helping conditional freshmen make insightful arguements about Othello and King Henry IV, Part I, the Rosewood started to grow on me, and I really can't be dicked with changing it. It'll do, at least until (if?) I get any feedback on more viable options.

Whatever -- I made it, it's mine. Just don't laff.

Even with a wider variety of typefaces available to me at my work computer, I don't feel particularly pressed to alter it. Besides, Rosewood Std might be the only font that looks good (?) in yellow. That being said, though, I'm going to make it a point to steal some of this computer's more interesting fonts for my own use, particularly an Edwardian Script, Desdemona, Colonna MT, and bauhaus 93.

While I enjoyed cobbling this banner together like some sort of trendy machinist, I don't know how much creative juice I have left in me. I considered similarly mishmashing something together for Nathan, my roomate, who is equally devoid of Dtoid banner imagery, but I realized that my only ideas were variations on the theme. It's an aesthetic I enjoy, at the expense of not being able to do anything else. This is due in part, I hope, with my limited knowledge of Photoshop. Perhaps as I acquire more tools, I'll be able to drum up something more compelling and complex.

Nevertheless, I'm happy with it, and it works a lot better than the shitty Undertow concept art that I had been using as a place holder for over a year.

The banner is composed of clips from: a picture of an art piece that Andrea took the last time we went to Chattanooga. It's one of many steel and wire crows perched throughout downtown; Hermes from Persona 3; and a Destructoidification of counterculture icon Ken Kesey, courtesy of itemforty. The other three images are from various and sundry wallpaper images floating around my nebulous hard drive.

P.S. I think I have some spyware on my work computer that is preventing my browser from accessing Photobucket. Which means that any Photobucket-hosted images appear broken, or not at all. The internet is broken.

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/In which I don't curse nearly as much as I wanted to

nobody@vox.com(orcist) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:06:19 -0500

Oh balls

I should preface this little bit (I'm hesitant to call it a "review" -- it's more the ramblings of a disgruntled hipster and wannabe academic): I am perpetually behind the entertainment times. When the 18 - 24 demographic collectively ejaculated onto Garden State, Zach Braff's lovechild with himself, I missed the proverbial boat. I saw it a few months later when the hype had died down and didn't really see what all the fuss was about, barring, of course, the delightful soundtrack.

In December, when Diablo Cody's Juno hit theatres, things played out similarly: indie soundtrack, quirky protagonist, collective internet boner, consequent ennui. Don't get me wrong -- Juno isn't a bad movie, but it hardly lives up to its own expectations, and that's a shame.

With a character as immediately likeable and clever as Juno, you would think that the writers could've come up with something more than a handful of one-liners. Fast-paced and legitimately funny dialogue is alright, but it's not enough to carry such a character-driven movie. Let's clear the air here: there's no plot to speak of. Juno gets knocked up by her knock-kneed boyfriend, has the minion, and then the credits roll. With no compelling narrative to push the movie along, Juno (rightfully) depends on the strengths of the characters, which, by all accounts, should've been a workable game plan.

The thing about Juno is that it has tons of potential. The characters are charming and endearing, but Cody never really takes them anywhere. It's like she conjured up Juno and Bleeker and Bren, the stepmom, using God knows what kind of arcane voodoo magic and then ran out of pickled skinks and bat wings. Instead of developing or evolving, they just make googly eyes at each other and run amok for two hours, like those brooms in the Sorceror's Apprentice scene of Fantasia.

For example, at one point, Juno is upset at her babydaddy for going to the prom with someone else. During the particularly nasty repartee, we're expected to feel angry at Bleeker; however, it falls flat because we haven't seen Michael Cera's skinny ass in the past 45 minutes. Instead, Juno's been too busy trying to fuck a married man who is interested in adopting her unborn child. I'll go ahead and tell you now -- that amounts to be a similarly promising but underdeveloped relationship.

The movie is really just a series of jarring interactions with no depth or emotion between painfully flat characters. It's hard to care about Bleeker when he's pushed to the side after about 10 minutes; it's equally hard to care when he goes to the prom with some other girl; and it's ultimately disappointing when Juno finds her true feelings and professes her love for him. They were pulled, presumably, out of her post-partum ass. The flat relationships would have been acceptable had they led to a more profound understanding of the titular character. They don't.

I'm not naive enough to think that all movies should be socially aware, but it's too bad that Juno is never presented with any sort of difficult choices to make. The decision to have the child (rather than abort it) is made in about 30 seconds. She chooses the baby's adoptive parents out of a wanted ad. Bleeker's first line, in reference to the pivotal coitus is, "I've been looking forward to this for a long time." THEN YOU HAD PLENTY OF TIME TO INVEST IN A CONDOM, YOU DUMB TWAT! Unfortunately, Juno never addresses these issues and features very little inner conflict, and it's a weaker movie because of it. Sure, it kept things lighthearted, but it's not good storytelling and it hardly makes a compelling movie. Comedy and character development are hardly mutually exclusive, but Juno seems to have missed that part of English 101.

That being said, it wasn't all bad. The movie features some nice, legitimately funny dialogue and all of the characters are likable, albeit boring. Like I said, it's not a bad movie, but it hardly scratches the surface of the potential to be found in such promising characters.

I was also impressed by some of the visual imagery that Juno manages to provide. For those that don't know, Bleeker is a member of the school track team, and many scenes feature a group of gangly teens running in formation. More often than not, Bleeker's runs are interrupted by conversations with Juno. At one point, after rejecting that married guy's advances, Juno is seen in her car, all alone on the road, as a long train chugs endlessly alongside. Taken in conjunction, these two images create really poignant statements about the fleeting nature of time and biology and the humanity that can be found in the two. Again, it's not a particularly profound or well-explored theme, but it was certainly a nice touch in an otherwise underwhelming experience.

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/Turn a mother out

nobody@vox.com(orcist) — Sun, 04 May 2008 17:52:58 -0500

Picasso - La Vie

Two weekends ago, I had the delightful opportunity to go to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts (which is a user-friendly way to say "art museum") in Nashville. I had a bevvy of other things to do, since my life is so action-packed and fabulous, but I (correctly) reasoned that I'd never go to an art museum without a little prodding. Besides, art is dank.

The Frist is brand new, in the heart of Nashville, and looks totally generic. It doesn't have a permanent collection, only a series of traveling exhibitions from bigger, classier, more culturally relevant museums. Which isn't to say that the Frist isn't really cool and neat and posh in its own right.

Nevertheless, the Frist currently houses an impressive collection called From Monet to Dali, a series of paintings and sculptures from the Cleveland Museum of Art that chronicles the evolution of art from realism to surrealism. The collection seems relatively standard and academic, and I recognized a lot of the work from my obligatory and perfunctory art history classes, but it's impressive nonetheless. I know I should've picked up on the way art has evolved and which elements from X period were used to create art from Y, but to be honest, I didn't really see it. Obviously, I can tell the difference between impressionism and surrealism, but I never really got a sense of evolution or progress or development as I moved through the galleries. I like art and all, but I can't say I have a particular knack for it.

What was impressive, however, was the sheer scope of the works. Gustave Courbet's Dent du Midi and Picasso's La Vie, for example, are both enormous. They are surprsingly, overwhelmingly big. One of the results of such grandiose works, and the Frist's particular habit of there being nothing separating you and the painting (seriously, what's stopping people from just pawing and drooling on them?), is the startling amount of physical detail available to the casual viewer. Being able to see individual brush strokes and the cracks and creases in the paint cemented these prints as tangible physical works. Picasso is no longer relegated to being some sort of abstract historical figure -- he was a real man, with real hands, and real paint who really worked on an enormous painting. I know because I saw it. Obviously, academically I knew that Picasso was a real guy, but the ability to see the tangible results of his mind really brought that concept home for me.

Courbet - Les Dents du Midi

Also, Artstor doesn't work in Firefox. Fuck that

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/I withdraw my previous apology

nobody@vox.com(orcist) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:56:08 -0500

Subject: [girl] gets smoked by professor
From:    [redacted]
Date:    Mon, March 3, 2008 10:22 pm
To:      [redacted]
Cc:      [redacted]

[girl]'s been disrupting her Psych class with [professor]. She and
[professor] have been having it out over email and [her] stupid ass has
replied all to the entire class and so this is getting sent out to pretty
much every frat.

On Feb 21, 2008, at 11:22 PM, [girl] wrote:

Hi [professor] - Thank you for this email because I was overly
discouraged/ frustrated after lab today. I have been working hard all
semester to participate as best I can and fully engage myself. I am
extremely interested in psychology, and do my best to stay on topic
butsometimes it is HARD over such a long class period. It is really
hard as astudent to try to add meaningful commentary and hear the response
"that is completely irrelevant" from a professor. I thought that in psych,
nothing is irrelevant, there are always confounds to experiments that
should be discussed.
I am a curious learner, I like asking questions and
bringing in new ideas - I understand that you are interested in your own agenda
as a teacher, that's your duty, but isn't it also your duty to give the
students who desire it active time to participate and feel
appreciated?
After today, I have no desire to participate in class anymore
because of how you made me feel. However, thank you for your apology, its greatly
appreciated.
[girl]
PS I truly was not talking at the end of class - a lot of the rest
of the class was and that sound builded up. I know when to be quiet, pay
attention, and listen.

And the response:

Hi, [girl],
your email deserves another response from me. You're right in
general that the instructor should give students who desire it active
time to participate and feel appreciated, but apparently it's time
for at least one instructor to be a little more brutally honest with
you since you can't seem to take a hint. It's also the instructor's
obligation to keep the class on track and keep any one student from
dominating the conversation/discussion, ESPECIALLY when that student
continues to disrupt discussion by being off-topic and not
understanding the point of the discussion.
(1) You (and your group) were definitely a continuing distraction and
annoyance througout most of the class yesterday and it was really
ticking me off. It made it difficult at times for the entire class to
hear and attend to the presentations of other groups. Perhaps at the
particular time I addressed your group, you weren't talking. I don't
know. But it is a fact that your group was disruptive during most of
the class's attempt to discuss other groups' projects, and then when
you were paying attention to others' presentations your contributions
were largely off-topic.
(2) you truly don't seem to understand the difference between simply
wanting to contribute noise/talk instead of contributing something
productive and on-task. It seems to me as an instructor and to the
rest of the class in general that despite your enthusiasm for
participating, your contributions are mostly off-topic and
distracting, as if you talk before thinking, or as if you're really
not understanding what's going on. Yesterday was an example of this.
I repeatedly tried to tell the class as a whole, and you in
particular, that your personal experience/intuition about the
possible results of a study and the underlying explanations for those
results was not the topic or point of the discussion. After several
weeks of trying to politely listen to your input then having to
return the conversation/discussion back to real point, I think it was
about time someone did indeed shut you down a bit.
If you really think that "in psychology, nothing is irrelevant," then
you need to do something else with your time. If you really think
that you "know when to be quiet, pay attention, and listen," you are
sadly mistaken and I can't imagine I'm the only instructor or fellow
class student that thinks this. There's a real and important
difference between constructive engagement and participation in class
and simply talking about what ever tangential information pops into
your head. Clearly I took the wrong tone in my previous email. I was
hoping that by taking an apologetic approach it would lead to a
productive conversation (with give and take) about your behavior in
class. Instead you seem to think that you're not at fault at all, and
I find that just another bizarre example of how clueless you can be.
I withdraw that previous apology -- it was not warranted nor deserved
-- and simply ask that if you continue to attend lab, do not continue
disrupt class and attempt to dominate the discussions.
[redacted]
Visiting Asst. Prof,
Dept of Psychology & Dept of Math & Computer Science
[redacted]
(###) ###-####

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