My new comic shop:
Giant Silver Surfer. I don't really care about the rest of the movie, but this is cool.

I canceled my pull file at the shop I've used for years here in Fort Wayne. I can't say I'm sorry, really, even though I was pretty much only keeping it for the sake of supporting the shop that got me started as a comic geek lo those many years ago. They had a habit of leaving books out of my file that I had requested, and I ended up going to Discount Comics for a couple of titles they never had in stock in the first place. As the name implies, Discount Comics sells comics at a deep discount. It's a locally owned brick and mortar shop that does mail orders to my new area, and the discount is about equal to the shipping charge. I would still pay full price at Alter Ego if I lived close enough, but I'm not driving to Muncie every Wednesday.

You believe it was... Muur-der?!

(edit- click to play the video)

The new design is a result of Blogger telling me about lots of cool new features, then telling me my old template wouldn't work with the new stuff. They added the ability to add RSS feeds to the sidebar, something I've been eager to do with my Netflix queue. Technically, this works. The problem is that the feed doesn't update right. Netflix updates the feed automatically and the list stays current, but near as I can tell it's Blogger not checking the feed and updating properly. If the movie list disapears now and then it's because I'm frustrated with it. The other new addition is the countdown clock to Warren Ellis's first novel. A countdown to a book is pretty geeky already, but I'm looking forward to it that much.

I'm getting ready to move now. My stuff is scattered between the basement here and a storage facility near here. The new place has a dishwasher and a second room that I can use as and office. I get a balcony, a storage closet, new carpet and kitchen floor, and the laundry facility is right next to me. All this for only about $50 more than I was paying for the freezing cold gulag I used to live in.

The following is true:

I got a job at DePauw* University as a multimedia guru for alumni relations. Moving shall commence in the coming weeks. New clothing has been purchased to make me presentable. More on this as it develops.

I will probably still graduate, to answer the many who have asked about this. I don't know when or even how exactly, but the consensus seems to be that I should finish what I started out of boredom and desperation, even now that I am neither. If there were a way to pinpoint and remove certain classes from my memory upon completion of the degree, I would have made more of an effort to be done by now.

As my life gets more interesting than it has been recently, I'll blog more. They must have internet access where I'm going, right? It's between Indy and Rose Hullman- there must be an intarweb tube we can all siphon from.

* DePauw with the "w" is the one in Indiana. DePaul with the "l" is north of Chicago. I'm at the former.

It's about time. The new album comes out July 7, hopefully followed by a US tour. They're playing a few dates in Europe in June, so hopefully someone will record the concerts.

I took a few notes while watching Armed and Famous tonight. What insight about Muncie can be gained from reality TV? Here's what I learned:

They came in the back way through the arse-end of town

Wee-Man is serious. Seriously.

Latoya has the Jackson family nose.

Eric Estrada looks good for his age.

Jack Osbourne has not seen the Mythbusters episode that shows how cars are not bulletproof.

Wee-Man can disarm a man. Seriously.

Jack Osbourne can take a taser standing up. Like father like son.

"Ponch Just farted." Seroiusly.

I used to live right by that laundromat.

Nothing less than a killshot will take down a south-side junkie, and should it come to that, my money is on Jack Osbourne.

Muncie will show up and cheer for anything. (ie: BSU football)

Wee-Man found the most amicable crackhead on Earth. Seriously.

Even the crack dealers are sweet old ladies in Middletown, USA.

Crab-hands just wants to go home.

Wee-Man is rollin' the Muncie streets protecting the Muncie women. Seriously.

The start of my "me" semester has been, essentially, two additional days of finals week. I worked for about twelve hours total yesterday finishing my animation for the Terri Dreams, currently rendering behind this window. I also went to the IDMAA meeting to get feedback on a grant proposal I wrote last month for their double-secret project. The forthcoming revision should look great, and if the project gets off the ground I'll post a link.

I crashed on Gerry's couch last night and ate breakfast in the new cafe in the library. It's pretty nice- food, coffee, and huge sunlit windows. The rest of the day has been constant running around and working. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to visit most of the people I'd like to (the old office, Scott, and others), but I'm anxious to get home because my brother goes back to school next week.

The long, arduous process of sorting through my stuff, packing boxes, and driving back and forth between cities is finally complete. I'm no longer a Muncie resident, so it's back to Fort Wayne to finish my projects and my degree. No more Heorot, Fickle Peach, Moe's, Motini's, Scotty's, Pita Pit, or Greek's. I suppose I'm alright without these establishments, but what really hurt was closing my pull file at Alter Ego Comics. I think the shop in Fort Wayne has the same service, but it won't be the same.

On the plus side, I'm able to use the Allen County Public Library again.

John Battelle has some interesting insight on "conversational media." This is a better term than "user-created content." The simple explanation is that conversational media is any sort of media published on the internet that isn't expressly for commercial purposes. My current favorite example:
Singing skeleton marionette


Hee hee, he dances and so does the pair of legs behind him. This sort of video has been around for a long time- the dancing baby, the Star Wars kid, and innumerable videos of cats are all examples. The dancing baby was originally intended as a demo for some prefab animation software, but nobody knew it. Conversational media is different from viral marketing in that the content is purely for enjoyment. If you clicked on the link above (then you're a geek like me), you saw the rundown of big media companies and their attempts to get in on web 2.0 content distribution. Newscorp bought Myspace, much to the chagrin of Viacom, for a hefty sum of money. Google bought Youtube with a built-in bugged for the wave of infringement lawsuits from big media copyright holders.
It seems to me that the short-term value of these assets is the ad revenue that comes from multiple users navigating through several pages of content, seeing new ads with each new page. Meanwhile, consumers are blocking and skipping advertising more and more. In light of this apparently growing trend, the web advertising model starts to look short sighted, if not willfully ignorant of the user base. However, I see these conversational media outlets as a great investment for trend watching. When a company owns the media servers, they can search and compile all kinds of data on what's popular while it's still popular.
Movie sites are popping up on Myspace now in order to connect with the target audience for the majority of studio films, and networks are using Youtube to market programming to an audience that has largely tuned out in the hope of getting their attention again.
And I just realized that I don't really know where I'm going with this. It's been on my mind for a while, since I did a project on the subject last year.

It got cold here in a hurry this year, after a pleasantly warm Thanksgiving week. I think we're fighting nature's population cap by living here at this time of year, but until we get satellite powered ubiquitous wireless internet, we're not leaving our northern population centers for warmer weather. I have the heater in my apartment blowing full-blast whenever I'm there and awake, though the effective radius is the size of an Ewok's strike zone. Sometimes when I'm cold and impatient I sit on the vent to warm my mostly uninsulated bones. Oddly enough, though it was turned off, I thought I heard it this morning. I assumed it was the neighbors, but then I found it running despite the switch being off. Apparently, there's a thermometer failsafe so I don't freeze to death in my sleep, which was rather considerate of the designer. If the thing didn't run on a pencil sharpener motor I'd call it good design.

Some people I know don't read (old joke), but those of you who do may be interested in this site: Unsuggester. Enter a book you've read, and the site will give you a list of books that you are statistically unlikely to read, based on site members' reading lists. It seems to be heavily weighted by people with lists of nothing but Christian/inspirational books, or perhaps I'm just a heathen for reading John Steinbeck, Neil Gaiman, and Douglas Adams.

Tom Waits was on Letterman last night. If you're interested in turkey vultures, watch the first video. Otherwise, the song is in the second video.
Tom Waits on David Letterman - Pt1


Tom Waits on David Letterman - Pt2

I'm getting back to normal now, not missing the bus and getting used to the food here again. I never noticed how used to the food I was, that everything tasted the same to me after two years of eating the same four meal combinations in rotation. The Terri Dreams project is coming along nicely. My segment director made a rough mockup video with the storyboards timed to the music for reference. I worked a little more on the models and messed around with blend shapes to get the right motion. If nothing else, it fills my time with something fun and constructive.

After work on Friday I drove home to Fort Wayne to greet my brother and a dozen other students known collectively as the Cornerstones, a vocal group from Kenyon College. I say "vocal group," because (a.) I don't think I've ever heard Michael refer to them as a "choir;" and (b.) their arrival could be described as "vocal." Semantic issues were quickly forgotten as two minivans and a station wagon all bearing the Kenyon crest filled our driveway and a flock of students began to emerge. A series of them greeted me with a hearty handshake and a name- a nice gesture even in the dark where I couldn't see their faces very clearly. An indoor reintroduction and a group 180° allowed Mom to read their group shirts with nicknames emblazoned on the back, each an inside joke born of camaraderie and caffeine. Cornerstone custom is to perform unannounced in a public area the night before the scheduled performance. Fort Wayne is almost completely shut down at 10:00 PM, save for an area in the Jefferson Pointe mall by the theater that served as a performance space. Even in the cold they managed to attract spectators. Most people paused to listen for a few minutes before moving on to someplace warmer, but a few guys sat on the steps nearby and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the show. I found that this unscheduled performance fit with my research from my immersion in Chicago: more than one person walking to or from the theater wondered aloud if these were carollers for the holiday, despite a lack of seasonal music. In a near sphere of commercialism and carefully metered culture, the Cornerstones were something unscheduled and genuinely independent. This garnered some predictably strange looks from older movie patrons, while the highschoolers seemed more accepting of a deviation from the norm. The concert the next day was great as well. I recorded the show on my Dad's laptop with a cheapo microphone from Radio Shack. They didn't have the one I wanted, but the recording might still be okay. I'll do what I can over break.

I'm pretty tired tonight, as I couldn't get to sleep last night on account of a still-huge stack of comic books saved up over the last month while I was away. I just feel the need to update this blog before it gets to be a month between posts.

It's been strange being back this past week. I wasn't gone to Chicago for that long, not a semester, certainly, but I've had to readjust to life here. The bus comes twice an hour, not every eight minutes. With the exception of Thai Smile, the Asian food isn't as good. I'm not in constant line-of-sight range with a Borders, Barnes and Noble, or other bookstore. If I was at all employable I wouldn't still be in Muncie. I'm quite sure I could live in a big city now.

I watched On the Waterfront the other night. It's entertaining and intelligent, despite a heavy-handed tendency to beat the audience over the head with every possible symbolic reference the writer could think of. It works, though. I also devoted two nights to working through Gears of War with Scott on his Xbox. Despite the immaculate level of detail afforded by next-gen graphics processing, the game still operates under the same principles of the eight and sixteen bit games of the past two decades: run around, blow stuff up, wait for the talking heads to run through their script to give some semblance of plot, repeat. Beyond the graphics, there really isn't much to the game. Plot and narrative issues are hard for designers to work out, but they're also the cheapest problems to solve early in the production process. It's why the Halo series takes so long between games- the designers care deeply about creating a world for the player to work in. This is also why the first Halo was still on the best seller list when Halo 2 came out.

Well, I'm here in Chicago now, so all my blogging for the next three weeks will be over here.

Sepultura Refuse resist
Nobody has ever rocked this hard in a pokemon shirt. If there was ever proof that music is good for kids, this would be it.

Every now and then an opportunity comes along here at BSU that allows me to do what I came here for- production and interdisciplinary learning. I'm working on an animated short for a giant project here called The Terri Dreams. The site explains it, but it's basically a series of five dreams. My part in this is the beginning of the second dream, with two pairs of lips and the universe. Or something. The segment director has it all planned out and storyboarded, and it doesn't look too complicated. (DN article)

I'm getting close to my cultural immersion. The brain trust that designed the DS program way back when decided to require a big expensive trip to a foreign culture. Sharper minds have since refined this to mean any culture that can be justified through rhetorical study (or somesuch). I'll be going to Chicago to study the art and music culture, and blogging the whole deal on a separate blog from this one. While I still can't shake the notion that this is essentially buying a grade, I am looking forward to the trip, as it is something I've always wanted to do somehow. Chicago is revered in almost hushed tones in Fort Wayne- if someone garners enough local acclaim for their creative endeavors, the buzz starts that they're going to Chicago to make it big. It's how 18th-century immigrants used to talk about America. I'll post a link to the immersion blog in the next week or so, once I find a good template.

Why? Because nature hates me. It's not enough to fill the outdoor air with pollen anymore. I woke up last week to find this on my toothbrush. Thanks to my morning disposition and indoor plumbing, it won't happen again. Now I need a little "Keep Off" sign for my new toothbrush. This is what I get for living next to ever-encroaching nature.

Barring postal holiday delay, Wednesday is new comic day. The day when all misanthropic sons of Krypton fully and gladly expect to shell out between three and thirty dollars for the latest dead-tree serialized entertainments. Today, though, as Gerry and I pulled in to the lot at Alter Ego Comics and approached the door, we were halted by a sign on the door stating that the shop was closed on account of the owner's daughter being born. We stood there for a minute, staring blankly into the dark window of a shop known for being well-lit. Even the neon Superman logo was turned off. We just stood there for a good two minutes, like Jay and Silent Bob, waiting for someone to come let us in to buy our comics, eventually leaving to go eat dinner. I called later to see if the shop was open after 6:00, but no answer. (Yes, "Alter Ego" is the first name in the alphabetical list in my phone, meaning I can call to inquire about the next issue of, say, Ex Machina, easier than I can call my parents or any hypothetical woman my age.) While I'm happy for Jason, the owner and proud father, I do wonder what kind of strange fate finds the culmination of human gestation on the same Wednesday Joss Whedon's "Astonishing X-men" comes out. I was even going to buy the new Brian K. Vaughn graphic novel- the sort of higher-end purchase a newly christened father of two would appreciate. Divinity forbid I should have to wait until 11:00 tomorrow morning to get my comics.

I watched a documentary last night called "The Commedians of Comedy," about the tour of the same name. I got it because I like Patton Oswalt's stand up, and I wanted to see who else was on the tour. During some road footage, he talks to the camera in a group interview about starting out, and he said that in order to get really good at something, you have to immerse yourself in it for two years. This is encouraging, as my academic career is now in extra innings.

The Black Keys have a new CD out. It's really good. Pick it up if you like their stuff.

"Overweight people now outnumber the undernourished." Link
Should I be nervous?

Last night, under the fog of a head cold and in lieu of doing anything constructive, I watched the movie Brick. I haven't been this enthusiastic about a movie since Primer. It's a film noir set in a California high school, but it really isn't a teen movie. The dialogue is all based on the prose style of Dashiell Hammett, so the lines are all in short clipped sentences. It's tough to describe, but I'll probably buy this one, so hit me up some night if you're bored and want to see it.

I'm really out of it after taking some medicine last night. It's a good thing I don't drive to school.