Global Warming and Other, related horse shit

If you've lived on this planet for the last three years i guarantee you've heard about the heated debates. People making claims that the human race is destroying the world and, causing the polar ice caps to melt because my 2003 Ford Taurus doesn't run as clean as the next guy's SMART car or the other guy's Prius. Well all i have to say to that is at least i can keep some sliver of my dignity driving my granny car as opposed to driving one of those overpriced scams, but that's a discussion for another time.

Today i wanted to brush over some of my personal opinions regarding this situation and others related to it in keeping the tradition of my blog's name. The first thing i'd like to go over is that science has already proven in multiple studies that the temperature and the polarities of the planet shift in cycles. the temperature regions of the earth go in a somewhat sinusoidal wave with just about everything. we go into a great freeze, then we go into a great heat, and flip it back around, these changes take place over a very long period of time and the last time we hit a great freeze it pre-dated modern meteorology so there was no science dictating that there was something genuinely wrong with the climates until one year everything started to freeze worse than anything the human race had ever seen before.

This same concept applies for the temperature variations that we experience in the world. For instance, anyone with a basic understanding of Cosmology of Astrology would know that there are two things known as a solar maximum and a solar minimum. The times when the sun is furthest and closest to the earth thus causing it to become warmer or colder those years depending on which one it is. 2012 happens to mark a solar maximum, so expect your summers to be exceedingly hot and then expect a 7 year cool-down period until the solar minimum at which point we will start to climb (over 11 years) back to the next solar maximum. Why is it 7 years from a max to a min and 11 the other way around? don't ask me but i'm guessing it has something to do with gravitational pulls and the cycle of the planets in our system.

Knowing this small tidbit of information sheds light to some of the interesting occurrances that we've been seeing on this planet.

1. It may just be natural that the planet is finally peaking out out the wave from it's last great freeze.
2. Point 1 combined with the fact that we're hitting a solar maximum could easily account for the record high heats we've experienced in 2011 and the even higher ones that are sure to come in 2012

The next interesting topic i'd like to discuss would be the common misconception that if every country on the planet were to fire every nuke they had at the same time and they all went off at the same time, that we could essentially destroy the planet three times over or some shit. Well, i hate to say it but as the late great George Carlin would have put it: "It's all bullshit people, and it's bad for you."

Let's start off by saying that there have been some half-dozen notable extinction events in the history of the planet so far as we know. One of them, which is credited with wiping out the dinosaurs released a whopping 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules of energy, which comes out to to roughly 81,340 nuclear missiles (that's rounding up from just under 81,339 & 3/4). Giving the human species the benefit of the doubt, there are only an estimated 22,000 nuclear missiles (strategic and non-strategic combined) spread across all of the countries that currently have them. If that's not realistic and factual enough for your tastes, the Chicxulub Crater at the Yucatan Peninsula in Southeastern Mexico was caused by an asteroid impact that had a yield of roughly 119,617 nuclear warheads and yet all we have to speak for it is a crater that is 110 miles in diameter and probably no more than 2 or 3 miles deep (there is no official depth so far as i can tell).

How people gathered the idea that we could destroy the entire planet three times over with 1/6th the number of nukes required to make a 110 mile in diameter hole in the ground is beyond me. Never the less, people eat up this information like it's candy and then spread it around till all we have is a misinformed public.

Finally i want to touch on the organic foods movement. In my humble opinion, if you're buying into the organic foods movement, you're not only a sap, but you're letting them rob you blind. Organic foods by definition are foods that are grown with less pesticides and less synthetic growth hormones or any of that dandy stuff. Yet they decide to charge you more for the food that was grown without the pesticides that keep bugs from shitting on it. buying into that money making machine is like walking up to someone and handing them your wallet, watch and phone and turning the other way. I mean really, it's just like fast food joints that charge extra for REMOVING toppings from the burger. You're going to charge me more for less? I'm sure we'd all shout that they're out of their freakin minds and never go back, which is exactly why fast food joints stopped doing that with the turn of the century.

What's your take on all of this? i want to hear some feedback from you guys, i welcome all the hostility you've got, because frankly i don't care if you don't agree with me, we're all entitled to our own, individual opinions. It's what makes us unique, because god knows our fashion choices aren't.

Youtube Partnership 2: Live Action Filming

In the previous episode surrounding the circumstances in which one can attain a youtube partnership, i outlined how to kickstart yourself into stardom by way of doing commentaries of all kinds. whether they be video commentaries, vlogs or tutorial videos. However, that spectrum of videos is very narrow and may not be the best choice for everyone who wants to attain youtube partnership status. As such, in this episode we will be going over a few video capture techniques as well as some different types of videos that users can create to add some popularity to their page.

Youtube is a diverse community that has a new video submitted almost every minute. As such there is quite a lot of variet and unfortunately it becomes extremely difficult to get any corner of the market that has not already been covered before, in every way imaginable. If you manage to come up with a truly unique idea that doesn't yield any results when searching for it on youtube, then by all means, pursue that as hard and as fast as you can because with no good coverage on a certain niche, it becomes very easy to take control of the game and get all eyes on you.

I was fortunate enough to be inspired by the discovery of the then incomplete programming language Small Basic which was developed by Microsoft as a programming language geared towards complete beginners, but as with any programming language, instruction is always desired as it's not like someone can magically pick it up and know how to write properly. When i started recording Small Basic tutorial videos, there were no other tutorial videos, just lots of videos of people showcasing these complex programs that they had written from scratch but never how to make them. So that was/still is my niche appeal. My videos are in high demand because it's extremely difficult to find a series of programming tutorials for Small Basic, let alone one that talks you through from point A to point Z with as much layman speak as humanly possible.

However, tutorial videos may not be your path of choice, a lot of the people have the abilities required to teach the content but just don't have the silver tongue of a teacher. Don't be offended, it's not for everyone. Only people who are okay with making next to nothing and working more than the average human being. Like charity work. For other people there is a greater call to action as we envision cinematic scenes of consuming emotion, gripping action, and gut-busting laughter. For those of us who envision these things, this blog is for you.

When first envisioning your idea for a live action film, you want to write down the core concept of the idea, if you have a good memory, you can expand on the core concept to your entire idea. Most of the time, these small idea fragments are not going to be the entire story arc, a lot of times people are privy to just imagining up the climax of the story as a whole. This means you're not even close to being ready to start filming.

Once you've got your idea down on paper, it's time to expand on this. Remember if you're creating a new youtube account, your account will not be allowed to host videos longer than 10 minutes, so the emphasis on this next point is critical. The more intricate you want your story arc to be, the more spartan your writing has to be. By spartan writing i mean in the same writing motifs as Ernest Hemingway who was famous for removing any excess from his writing. If it was not in his book, it was not needed in his book. No fluff. So instead of having your hero travel across the lands, meet 16 friends and then get into a big fight with the big baddie, start the book with your hero and all of his friends and have them travel to the baddie and fight him end of story. Small adjustments like that will remove fluff. Going to meet up with his 16 friends at 16 different locations adds nothing significant to the story that could not be solved with a paragraph at the beginning of the story arc.

Got your script written? Now is the true acid test for whether i will make the 10 minute cut or not. Get you and a couple friends of your to recite the script. It's not necessary to add any emotion to the script, it's not necessary to memorize the script. Just recite and time your run and see if its finished in about 9 minutes. Why 9 minutes you ask? An optional 30 seconds for an intro animation to the video if you choose and a mandatory 30 seconds for credits.

If it doesn't make it in your 9-9.5 minute limit, take the script back to the chop shop and see what you can cut out further. Rinse and repeat until you have a finished produc that makes the 9-9.5 minute cut and flows well.

Next up we need to storyboard the script. Storyboarding requires a little bit of artistic ability, the images in the story board can be as intricate as concept art or as basic as stick figures and boxes. It all depends on what you're comfortable with doing and how much time you want to spend on the storyboard. The concept for a story board is to create a single frame drawing to sum up each scene in your video. A scene is from camera record to camera cut. Unless you're intending to record the entire video in 1 continuous shot, this always remains true.

After you have a storyboard, assemble your cast and show them the storyboard. Make sure everyone understands what the idea is, what you want the end result to look like and make sure everyone memorizes their lines before you take the time to film the shot. I say this because scripts in a movie look hideous, unprofessional and strip any and all emotion from the video. A lot of what forms human emotion is facial expressions and it's difficult to capture of portray them at all if your nose is in a stack of papers.

Post processing of the video and uploading it to youtube are the last two steps in the process and post processing can be a bear. Depending on how much post processing you have to do, it could take you 20 minutes, it could take you just as long as the entire process up till now (a few days). There are some low-quality, free video editing software out there that would be a poor substitute to programs like Sony Vegas or Adobe After Effects, but if you need to use them, by all means, use them. A lot of times you've got to work with what you've got and do the best you can. However, you want to make life easier on yourself and are truly dedicated to devoting a large chunk of time to doing this in the future, i would strongly suggest investing the capital into either Sony Vegas or Adobe After Effects as they are both industry standards and will make your life worlds easier once you understand their UI's.

Once again i want to emphasize quickly that the chances of you being an instant success over night after your first video is uploaded are slim to none. You will need to keep working at it and let it happen naturally. If by chance you do become an instant success, the subscribers you get from your viral video will demand more equally quality content. If you don't provide, you'll be throwing that success down the drain.

Lastly, i did want to outline a list of professional filmography tools that you can make alternatives to for extremely cheap

• SteadiCam - SteadiCam is a trademark company name that offers a series of camera apparatus' that helps you in the steadying of your camera motions. This helps aleviate a lot of camera jitter caused by shaky hands. Their cheapest models go for around $150.00 and i've seen models sell for as high as $6,000.00 from manufacturer. Naturally, most aspiring filmographers don't have $150-$6,000 to just magically blow on one piece of equipment. So there are dozens of youtube videos on how to make one yourself with about $20-$50 with of PVC, epoxy and gym weights.
• Fig Rig - A fig rig is another camera stabilizer that very much resembles a steering wheel of a car. The camera mounts in the center where the horn or airbag would normally be. An industry standard Fig Rig will cost you about $300.00, you can make one for about $20-$40 dollars worth of PVC piping and epoxy.
• Dolly Rigs - Dolly rigs are used a lot in modern film, specifically when the hero is sprinting through a forest and the camera is staying close to him perfectly to give the movie the feeling of speed. Sufficed to say, a professional dolly rig is no the cheapest thing in the world. In fact, it's one of the most expensive rigs for camera available on the market. However there are plenty of tutorials to show you how you can make your own dolly rig for about $60.00 a square meter of track using 2x4's some railing and a home made dolly.

This blog is getting long so i'm going to end it here but sufficed to say, any type of rig you might need to record that project you imagined up, you can find an alternative that is several times cheaper than industry standards. So get out there and start filming!

Have you ever wanted to record your own videos? what is the main reason that has stopped you from doing so?

Movie Review: Conan: The Barbarian (2011)

Today my blog is going to be a little bit different from the norm as i really wanted to take some time to review the reboot of the Conan series that originally start Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1982. The original movie series wasn't much to write home about in my personal opinion, it was a cult classic to some and developed a rich pre-midevil (earlyevil?) world and clearly drew the lines in the sand between the warring factions enough to create an MMO that funcom proceeded to screw up in there classic style of messing up wet dreams.

The reboot to the series, like the originals weren't much to write home about. The story was dramatically different and took a completely different turn, however the landscapes were clearly and obviously chosen for their resemblance to the MMO's locations. Certain scenes and certain story points were obviously made to emphasize why the world of Age of Conan is the way it is.

All in all i truly felt that the movie was just cliche ridden and was a $90 million B-movie. I did not see any lush story or character development that merited an additional $70 million tacked on to the original cost of producing the original movie. The cast had a few big players such as Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Hellboy2) and the lesser known Stephen Lang (Avatar, Men Who Stare At Goats) but the rest of the cast is B-movie material at best and hence why the movie plays out like one really expensive one.

If the new Conan is to show the shape of things to come for the long slew of Schwarzenegger reboots that hollywood plans to usher out like waste from their colons, i am going to be highly disappointed. It's incredible that the screenwriters guild stiked for raises so they could just reboot old bad movies with potential, rescreen old good movies in 3d and write new scripts that aren't worth the time it takes to write them.

Have you seen this movie? What were your thoughts on it?

The Media Complex

It's interesting to observe how we all react on a daily basis to what is displayed by the media and it's related press. Every day, millions of people tune into the news to get up to date news on the current events of the world, most of those people never even bat an eye or begin to question whether or not what they're being told is true or not. The old, sarcastic saying "well it's on the internet so it must be right" applies just as equally for the same reasons to the news and related medias.

I was never really raised with the impression of question what i saw, read of was told. I was always raised with a strong, finite set of ideals in which i was punished strictly if i strayed away from. To me, it was the way i was raised, to others it makes me a pathetic person for having never questioned anything i was spoon-fed for so many years. It wasn't until late 2008 when the 2008 elections were going on (as well as a very turbulent period with my hormones and relationships) that i began to question media around me. I noticed the people who had raised me began to contradict themselves. talking about how war is the only option one day and then how they demand world peace right now the next. It was quite a paradox and to add insult to injury, it had been going on since the day i was born and had never noticed it.

I began to tire of people repeatedly preaching their opinions onto my "impressionable" mind and started analyzing what they were saying. It was nothing malicious... honest, i mean it. It was just that i was a teenager tired of being told thing i already heard 4 times before and was in a shitty mood to begin with. The more i analyzed what people said, the more i became disgusted with society. The more i became disgusted with myself. I realized that even so much as feeling disgust for them and not for myself was hypocritical and that had become something that i swiftly hated. If there is any one thing i hate in this world over all other things it would be hypocrisy. People who preach it but refuse to practice it.

I'll tell you right now that the following months after this realization were the most turbulent of my life. I spent a great deal of that time trying to figure out who i was. It didn't help very much that my girlfriend of 3 years had just broken up with me after cheating on me and telling me about how bad she felt for doing it then continuing doing it, but that's a story for another time. I was in a genuine state of emotional turmoil. I locked myself out from the outside world and began to re-sculpt the very fibers of my being into something i could live with. Don't get me wrong, it took a very, VERY long time, but i managed to do it, and even though i am still hypocritical, i have learned to pick up on it and i have learned that correcting myself immediately is much better than just sweeping it under the carpet like the rest of society does.

The multi-million dollar monster that we have created and called the media has been molding society any way it wants for generations and very few people have noticed it. Many people fail to grasp the concept that if the media were to come on tomorrow and say that being jewish is a genetic defect that is plaguing society and needs to be exterminated, that there would actually be hordes of people slaughtering any person of jewish decent for weeks maybe even months before it was placed under control. And the government wouldn't blame it on the media for releasing the story because that would be in violation of their first amendment rights. they would simply arrest the people who committed mass homicides and be done with it.

Don't get me wrong, anyone stupid enough to blindly follow that intensely should be arrested to protect themselves from themselves, but the media is just as much to blame as the people committing the crime. They're the ones inciting the riots. They know they have the public in such a malleable state yet they continue to manipulate it in any way they wish.

The true heart of the matter can be best underlined by example. When was the last time you think you heard a 100% true, unbiased story on your local news stations? If you can come up with an answer regardless of the amount of time it takes, you're lying to yourself and you need to stop. History is written by the victor, those in power. And the media has more power than the president himself. If MSNBC, Fox News and CNN were to all band together and say that the Obama Health Care Reforms were in the publics best interest and list 5 bulleted reasons as to why? There would be significantly less opposition to run it through. The alternative is equally true, if all three of those stations were to air that it was the worst bill conceived, the bill wouldn't stand a chance.

I'm not vouching my personal, political opinions into the mix, i am merely using the Obamacare bills as an example. So what can you do to stop it? Question everything you're told. Hear something on the news that influences you in any way? go to the internet, research both sides, research the "on the fence" arguments, and research the indefferent arguments. Research until there is nothing more to research, and then formulate an opinion for yourself based on what you've learned and what you know. Will you still be biased? yes, absolutely, without a doubt. Will it still be as bad a bias as just blindly following anything you hear on the news? Absolutely not.

We're all opinionated scumbags. We all have our individual reservations. It's the steps we take to turn our reservations into educated opinions that makes us better than the rest. What has tipped you off as suspicious in the media recently?

The Consummate Bad Customer

I run a small independent business to consume a small portion of my time. In the time that this independent business takes, i do online technical support for customers as well as contract out Periodicals to local businesses. It's not the most illustrious job, but it puts money in my pocket when i need it most and that's enough for me.

In my travels during these jobs i have come across all kinds of customers and plenty of headaches involving them to go around, but being a professional business man, the customer is always right. you suck it up, keep your mouth shut and move on with your life hoping to figure out a way to broach the subject with tact for next time.

One of the worst kinds of customers you can ever experience first hand is the kind of customer who likes to constantly have you working. This kind of customer will stretch out his complaints and issues for one ticket as far out as they can so they can milk every ounce of service they can out of the pre-agreed price.

I was doing a periodical for a certain local company a few weeks ago  that entailed a few brief articles, some ad-space and some graphics. pretty run of the mill when it comes to these kinds of things however upon submitting my rough draft to be approved by the company, they turned it down and submitted a decent sized list of errors. I have had dealings with this company in the past where they would submit their long list of errors, one at a time. This process would take weeks and cause many nights of frustration and aggravation, but what can you do?

This time their list was so long i was convinced that these changes were ALL of the changes that wanted issued on the periodical. Being satisfied with that knowledge i proceeded onwards with the changes, authored a reviews version and sent it to them for approval. One of the changes was revising a piece of writing that i had wrote with one of the articles i had used to write my piece of work. As such, i issued a standardized e-mail forewarning him that by telling us to add the article he is taking FULL responsibility for any copyright issues that arise in the future. Seeing my work as done i sent it off to him.

The customer responds almost a week later, now beyond the deadline for final revisions (putting me in a bind) with another, equally long list of revisions that were nonexistent on the first list. So the process begins again i tell myself. I read through the changes to see that the customer has made a bunch of revisions to the previously copyrighted material which not only amplifies the instance of plagiarism but is absolutely ridiculous considering the revisions were on quotes from an interview as well as a few other things. Hastily running through the changes to the newsletter and sending out yet another standardize e-mail letting him know that he is now committing plagiarism and that he will take full responsibility for any issues that arise with that in the future, The newsletter is back in his side of the court.

Today, (2 days before the scheduled publication date) he has issued a third, even longer, list of corrections which i now have to fix, author and send back to him within 8 hours so he has plenty of time to get his act in gear, review it and send it back before it's too late. I'm tempted to send him a message informing him that the corrections are denied due to the lateness of their submission. That's the way it goes. That's the way it's written in the 6 month contract that he signed. What do you think i should do? Fuck em all? or Give in and be the good neighbor salesman?

Hollywood Abuse

I went to see John Carter a second time about a week ago, being one of the few people who didn't think it was a terrible movie i guess. I wasn't intending to see it again but I got the movie times mixed up with another local theater and ended up missing the movie I had originally intended to see. I hadn't originally seen the movie in 3D and quite frankly didn't intend on watching it in 3D because i find the whole concept a scam.

It didn't come as a shock to me when i realized that the movie, with the exception of one scene, wasn't filmed for 3D. However it did get me thinking on the concept of the different constructs that Hollywood uses like they're going out of style. 3D being the shining piece of fecal matter atop the pile.

It's a well known and well satired fact that Hollywood loves to make cliches. They catch a line in a certain movie that works really well, or a certain story point and it becomes an industry standard for the ages. One of the most recent one's i've seen was the cliche of a man who shows a picture of his sweetheart back home to anyone during war will most certainly die before the end of the film. I'm almost positive that this Cliche originated in the long stream of World War 2 movies that came out during and after the fact. It added drama back in, but now it almost becomes comical.

My friends and I went to see Red Tails a month ago and not only did it scream cliches from the start, it delivered on them. By the time we were 10 minutes into the movie we were placing bets on which cliches were going to happen and when. There is a man in the movie who falls in love with an Italian girl who is apparently oblivious to the war going on around them, and he begins bragging about her to all of his squad mates. Sure enough *spoiler alert* he dies by the end of the movie. He's one of the half dozen or so people to die from the allied fighter squadron.

Another clearly abused item is a writing style. The world famous author Homer, who wrote the Illiad, The Odyssey, and Perseus: The Hero of Ithaca, created a story structure called the hero's call. It begins as the hero minding his own business, going about his daily life, then he gets a call to action of some form, the story builds up to the climax, then settles back down into the ending. Recognizing this story arc is crucial for my next point: IT IS THE STORY ARC STRUCTURE FOR EVERY MOVIE EVER PRODUCED BY HOLLYWOOD. with the exception of a handful of films who dared to be different and failed, that's how movies play out. If you don't believe me, watch your top 5 favorite movies, then your top 10 if you need more convincing. You'll be enamored by how consistent it is.

Let's take some random movies i can think of off the top of my head for example.

1. Dumb and Dumber: two friends who are rooming together can't hold a job to save their lives. Call to action is to leave the state and go somewhere else for a job. Climax: They end up thwarting a drug syndicate.
2. Lord of the Rings: Hobbit child is born to the bearer of the 1 ring to rule them all. Call to action: the ring must be destroyed and task is placed upon Hobbit, his fat hobbit friend, his two idiot hobbit friends, and an entourage of professional killers. Climax: book 1: Frodo gets stabbed by the nazghoul. Book 2: helms deep. Book 3: the return of Aragorn.
3. Unbreakable: average joe goes to work day in day out has a family to go home to every day. For some reason he can lift super-human amounts of weight and never gets sick. Call to action: get's harassed and eventually forced into his call to action by his arch nemesis. Climax: average joe finally buckles when his son tries to shoot him (vat a twist!)

Without beating the horse to death, i think i've made my point clear. Hollywood hashes, bashes and rehashes the same story arc dozens of times every year and it never phases anyone.

Finally there's the topic of 3D movies. Does anyone else remember when the only good quality 3d was IMAX? or when the only thing IMAX showed were educational videos about sperm whales that costed hundreds of thousands of dollars? I sure do. I also remember when Real3D was first released and the movies for it were actually recorded in 3D. But now companies record movies traditionally because it's cheaper, then adapt them to 3D to milk more money out of the gravy train.

I know the most immediate opposition would be that it's not true, the extra money that goes into every ticket is to counter the cost of the glasses. I'll play the devils advocate for a minute and give you that point. Even so, with the mass production of those standardized, ABS Plastic, polarized 3D glasses, each pair probably only costs companies about buck in total. They tack on 2-3 bucks to RENT the glasses which you're expected to return after the movie so they can sterilize them, and repackage them for a quarter then hand them out again. Tell me those figures add up and i'll show you to someone with a 4th grade math education.

No matter how you slice the pie, there's still a wad of cash that doesn't go towards recycling these glasses. With the pathetic wages movie theater employees get paid, it certainly isn't going towards them. Besides, their wages are covered in standard ticket fees. It's not like they get bonuses for selling 3D tickets, or i promise you they'd be strong arming you into the 3d showings as much as possible. So where does the extra $1.80 per recycled pair of glasses go? You tell me because i've already got my ideas of where but i'm always open to suggestions.

Perspective on Reality

Much like my disposition to with hold from purchasing new video games until the hype surrounding them has diminished and the true reviews begin to surface, i am extremely skeptical about new campaigns that surface every so often. The most recent and most controversial of them all is the Kony 2012 campaign.

There's been a lot of negativity and sheep herding going on when it comes to this specific campaign, but not a whole lot of unbiased retrospect in my humble opinion. Within 12 hours of the time the video was released to the public, a group of people was already hunting for proverbial closet full of skeletons for IC. What they found was a long list of minor flaws that they twisted and mutilated to suit their own agenda, which was to discourage people from donate to the cause of invisible children.

Without pulling out financial records for the company and trying to take sides, i would like to underline a few of the arguments from both sides and see if i can't throw my two cents into the bar brawl that Kony 2012 has turned into.

The biggest argument i would like to bring up was one that i had seen on multiple youtube videos, forums and blogs just like mine which stated that only 31% of the company's earnings were being passed along to Uganda. Even though that's well over 2.5 million dollars, people are throwing massive fits saying that these guys aren't a proper NPO because they're not sending every cent over to uganda.

The three key things for an NPO to function is to have a base of operations, have a means of spreading their word, and have people to spread that word with those means. People have cried out stating that the two founders of the IC are making $90,000/year salaries. If we were to put this up in comparison to say, the CEO and COO of any for profit corporation in the world, that's really actually quite minescule. Combine that with the fact that average salaries for the four major California cities are all over $40,000 a year, which includes San Diego where their base of operations is located, that seems like a relatively modest pay for the CEO and COO of a global initiative.

Moving forward from that i do not believe that the plan to take down Kony in 2012 is either effective or smart. They even state in their videos that Kony has been aware of the US Military's attempt to catch him and has changed his tactics accordingly. However their suggestion is to train the corrupt Ugandan military with our soldiers to hunt Kony down themselves.

I would like to deviate for the present and go into a little side topic which remains valid to my point. Say you print out a document off your computer. That print out looks pristine, just the way you wanted it to look. Now let's go to kinko's and make a copy of that document. you might not notice it at first but there is a very small loss of quality in the copy. If you were to make another copy of that copy, there would be twice as much loss of quality. The loss of quality would continue exponentially everytime you made a copy of the latest generation's copy. The same applies to the Ugandan army.

You can have our soldiers train the Ugandan army in our tactics but they will never be as good as our troops back home, trained by people who have trained for years and know what they're doing without a doubt. Ground Zero so to speak. So this begs the question of "If we can't find Kony, how in gods name is the Ugandan army going to find them?" Aside from all of this there have been several professionals who have stated that Military action is not the correct course of action for this situation, and might only cause more backlash.

Of course i'm saying that Kony needs to be stopped, he is one of the most corrupt individuals in the world right now. But he's been doing this for 20+ years, he's got roots that go deeper than we could imagine. Besides that, killing kony or even so much as ex-filtrating him from Africa for trial would do no good. His brainwashed second in command would take his place and the terror and onslaught of Africa would continue as if nothing ever happened.

So, make an example out of Kony? Yes. Do it through military action? Maybe, but certainly not the way the Kony 2012 campaign proposes. If we're going to take military action it's going to require highly trained special forces to go in clandestine and wipe out Kony's top 5 officials then exfil him and release the children. Unfortunately though, some of these children may already be too far gone. Too brainwashed into loyalty to Kony to be safe to release. This is without a doubt, one of the most incredibly touchy subjects of the year. What are your thoughts?

The Money-Hungry Games

So i just got back from watching the midnight release of the movie adaptation to the New York Times Best Seller "The Hunger Games". I read the trilogy immediately after the third book was released as i don't really like the prospect of twiddling my thumbs for a year before i can pick up the series again. And i certainly don't like paying full price for anything at all (call me frugal).

Basically i'm going to break this down as plainly and unbiased as possible for anyone who is just picking this up without having read the books or watched the movie. So bear with me as i wade through gory details. And if you're not a fan of spoiler alerts, now would be a good time to go elsewhere because i can't be held accountable for what i say from here out.

Let me start off by saying that the movie was mediocre. Approaching it from the standpoint of someone who hadn't read the books, you wouldn't have the slightest clue of what things were happening and why they were happening and how they came to be. The reason for this is because Suzanne Collins, the author of the hunger games, went into great detail surrounding the universe and what happened leading up to where the book really starts as well as putting a definite bold, underline surrounding the hardships of the districts.

I went to see the movie with my two siblings, both who had only read the first book and i bring this up because i want to outline the extreme differences between my understanding of the events in the movie (having read all 3 books) and their understanding. Both of my younger siblings were constantly leaning over and inquiring as to what was going on, why things were happening during the early events of the first book i had to explain things to them vaguely using my knowledge of the second and third books to get them to understand without ruining the excitement for them to read the last two books themselves.

Coming at the movie from the perspective of a person who read all three books, there were several minor subtleties inside the film that made me smile inside. Subtle foreshadowing during Katniss's trackerjacker trip which she envisions District 12's ultimate destruction, the emphasis of Haymitch's reactions to what Katniss is experiencing and showing brief snip-its of his hard work behind the scenes to get her the items, the scenes inside the control center for the arena and showing how the workers alter the atmosphere, time of day, and employ the traps to liven things up. Also, with the scenes from inside the control room there is brief foreshadowing as to the fact that there is an outer rim to the arenas. This comes too early in the movies if you ask me. It sets up dramatic irony, which is often far too over-used in hollywood, in exchange for the feeling of endlessness that Katniss feels when entering the arena and trying to find water.

Moving on from there, unfortunately the rest is all downhill. With the artistic liberties taken with the movie, came the chop shop. chopping the original text so that it's pheasable within a 3 hour time span is understandable but they cut it into an irreparable mess that will make the last 3 movies very difficult to sell. The cuts include but are not limited to:

1. All information regarding Tesserae which would have sufficiently explained why gales name was placed in the drawing 42 times.
2. Madge does not exist at all. The largest point to wrap my head around as Madge and her family play a crucial role later in the series.
3. Almost all of the violence was avoided to make it acceptable for a younger crowd.
4. All of the heartless kissing was removed (i could care less about this one really. It added no motion to the plot at all)
5. they abbreviated everything inside the games to a whopping 4 or 5 days whereas in the books it was a matter of weeks.

Wrapping this up so i don't bore people to death. There were a few artistic liberties taken which enhanced the story, however they just were not enough to offset all of the plot moving points and story critical characters that they've removed completely from the story.

No mention of the Avox even though she becomes Katniss's silent counselor in some ways, No mention of the head peacekeeper which plays a crucial role in the second book. No mention of Madge or Peeta's Father, the tension between Katniss and her mother is non-existent, and as far as i can tell the Seneca Crane gets killed? That pretty much stops the other 3 movies dead in the water as his role is sitting very close to the core of the story.

 Either way, don't waste your time with the movie. Waste of my money even though it will probably break the bank, it's really not worth it's 2 cents.

The Hype Complex

We've all been victims of the excitement and hype that surrounds something that is highly anticipated. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing. I went and saw John Carter the other day, i was rather looking forward to it being a Edgar Rice Burroughs fan myself. I had spent a great deal of time reading the Barsoome Chronicles before the movies had come out so i was prepared for the movie when it did. I thought the writing style of Burroughs was fantastic, i deeply enjoyed his works and i'll undoubtedly be reading the rest of his works with the exception of the Tarzan series as i was never really a fan of Tarzan.

However i found that the movie was somewhat of a disappointment. I understand that they're trying to make a movie series to bring them steady income over the next couple years, however the issue with making a modern movie out of a hundred year old short story is that you need to take a lot of artistic liberties, and i do mean a lot. All of the hype surrounding the movie and it ended up being a surprising let down to critic.

Another shining instance of hype making a product so much more than it is, is the highly acclaimed Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. There is no doubt about the fact that it is indeed a fantastic game filled with hours upon hours of adventures for you to explore with it's two square kilometer world. However, is it really the god send that the public has made it out to be? Probably not. Underneath the sheen of new, shiney and over-hyped, there are the same old bugs and glitches that have been notorious in every Bethesda game since they opened their doors. Most of the bugs get passed of as over-beaten meme's (the much abused "arrow to the knee" jokes) however this oversight is a little disappointing. Bethesda is now on it's fifth iteration of the Elder Scrolls series and they've still yet to fix a few core problems with the video games.

However, all bugs aside all me to posit my theory as to why these bugs were easily overlooked by the majority of the community.

When Skyrim was announced the first people to find out about it was the press of course. The second people were the die-hard TES fans and then the time between discovery was proportionate to how much you knew about the series and how much you enjoyed it's previous installments. However, the community for his video game is so large and so passionate about the video game that the news spread like wildfire as soon as the core community found out. A combination of mystery surrounding the game and everyone screaming with excitement made the game catch a lot of attention. This attracted video gamers from ALL video gaming facets, not just your run of the mill RPG players.

This caused an influx of FPS players from various run-and-gun type FPS games such as COD and Halo. These players are used to massively buggy video games as the same issues hold true with their developers. COD's notorious quick scope bug was accidentally added in COD2 and people have been complaining about it since then. They still haven't fixed it after 6 or 7 iterations (lost the care to count after COD4). As these players are pretty much used to bugs to the extent where they have no issues with exploiting them or playing until they're red in the face from frustration, they tended to look over the bugs.

This combined with the fact that a hefty percentage of the Skyrim players have never even so much as looked at another installment of TES which means they're oblivious to the fact that these bugs have been around since installment one. Thus, their tolerance levels for these errors are significantly larger than the players from day one, installment one.

Never the less, Hype can be beneficial or deadly depending on how it's utilized and whether it's actually deserved. Frankly i would much rather do without the entire advertizing strategy, which is why i wait several months for video games after they're released so i can read reviews after the hype has worn off. What do you think about how developers of all medias use hype to their advantage? Whether it's deserved or not.