Kid, you'll move mountains.

This is my final last call, the directors cut, the end of the line, the.. oh you get the point.

Although, it was a lot of hard work, and a lot of sweat and tears looking back on actually creating this blog. I had a lot of fun.

I enjoyed how open it was to us creating and presenting our own ideas. The guidelines for the projects were specific, and the basic idea of the blog was clear (eventually ha ha), but the process of writing it was left wide open. The first half of my blog, I didn't analyze and relate the readings and works to my own ideas as much as I should have. My mind hadn't been open to research - I just wanted to analyze and get down as much as I could about what I had been shown, and what I had been told directly. I thought I was on the right track, but when I had my mid-meeting with Ian he had told me although I had some really creative ideas (he gave me mad props for my Understanding Comics bit) I should expand my thinking and incorporate new ideas and relate them to the text, not just summarize the text because the two of you already know it, and it can become repetitive. He said "We enjoy learning from our students"

I'm not going to lie. I was terribly disappointed and felt like I had let them down. I called my mom and talked to her and she told me not to give up. That I was the most brilliant girl and I shouldn't let criticism get to me the way it does- I should embrace what my professors tell me because after all they are not being paid to teach me. They are being paid to open my mind into finding my own ideas.

Regardless of what Mark and Ian think of this blog, I am so proud of it. It may not have 40 blogs, and the layout may not scream LOOK AT ME! But my ideas where my own. I learnt so much about myself and what I can do, and I believe you can actually see that as you read through my blog.

As a farewell, I was going to end this blog with a quote by Dr Seuss that read 'Don't cry because it is over, smile because it happened.' But, I felt more inspired by my favourite book to this day, and I think it would be a beautiful ending... to a beautiful farewell. (That, and it relates perfectly to what I was talking about before. ha ha)

Oh, the Places You'll Go!
Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You're off to Great Places!
You're off and away!
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.
You'll look up and down streets. Look 'em over with care.
About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there."
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street.
And you may not find any
you'll want to go down.
In that case, of course,
you'll head straight out of town.
It's opener there
in the wide open air.
Out there things can happen
and frequently do
to people as brainy
and footsy as you.
And when things start to happen,
don't worry. Don't stew.
Just go right along.
You'll start happening too.
OH!
THE PLACES YOU'LL GO!
You'll be on your way up!
You'll be seeing great sights!
You'll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.
You won't lag behind, because you'll have the speed.
You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you'll be the best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.
Except when you don' t
Because, sometimes, you won't.
I'm sorry to say so
but, sadly, it's true
and Hang-ups
can happen to you.
You can get all hung up
in a prickle-ly perch.
And your gang will fly on.
You'll be left in a Lurch.
You'll come down from the Lurch
with an unpleasant bump.
And the chances are, then,
that you'll be in a Slump.
And when you're in a Slump,
you're not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they're darked.
A place you could sprain both you elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?
And IF you go in, should you turn left or right...
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.
You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place...
...for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a sting of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.
NO!
That's not for you!
Somehow you'll escape
all that waiting and staying.
You'll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.
With banner flip-flapping,
once more you'll ride high!
Ready for anything under the sky.
Ready because you're that kind of a guy!
Oh, the places you'll go! There is fun to be done!
There are points to be scored. there are games to be won.
And the magical things you can do with that ball
will make you the winning-est winner of all.
Fame! You'll be famous as famous can be,
with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.
Except when they don't.
Because, sometimes, they won't.
I'm afraid that some times
you'll play lonely games too.
Games you can't win
'cause you'll play against you.
All Alone!
Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something
you'll be quite a lot.
And when you're alone, there's a very good chance
you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.
There are some, down the road between hither and yon,
that can scare you so much you won't want to go on.
But on you will go
though the weather be foul
On you will go
though your enemies prowl
On you will go
though the Hakken-Kraks howl
Onward up many
a frightening creek,
though your arms may get sore
and your sneakers may leak.
On and on you will hike
and I know you'll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.
You'll get mixed up, of course,
as you already know.
You'll get mixed up
with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life's
a Great Balancing Act.
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.
And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3 / 4 percent guaranteed.)
KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!
So...
be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea,
you're off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So...get on your way!
---Dr. Seuss

Holy Knapsacks Batman!

I can't even believe it! I woke up early Sunday morning and turned on my computer. Every morning I look at the side Google Gadgets to see all the latest news updates (updates by the minute!). I always just scan through to find the most interesting titles and this one caught my eye "New Type of Prehistoric Man". I clicked on it, thinking 'Anything to do with a new type of man has got to be good! Because let me tell you, the ones we have kicking around right now are doing nothing for me.' I was shocked to read that earlier Saturday morning Dr. Hewson (not to be confused with the Dr. Hewson that worked with William Hunter) a paleontologist who has been digging in the Namib Desert in South Africa and discovered proof of a prehistoric Batman.

The bones that were found were the size of an average 10 year old (about 4'2). The 'Batman' appeared to be in a standing position however, the back was arched, the arms not fully extended and little wing bones were protruding from the back of it's spine. The bones had been dug out and sent to the Paleontology Research Institute in Ithaca, New York. In their research they concluded that the batman dwelled the earth in the Lower Paleolithic Era.. aka the early stone age two million years ago – 100,000 B.C.

It is assumed that he fed on insects and the blood of small animals, but that is not of certain yet. No further research has been done, but there will be constant updates made at this website:

PLEASE CHECK IT OUT!

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/22007/

What hurts more my brain, eyes, fingers, or back?

I am stressing out. I am not going to lie. I have been trying to get all these blogs done, and I did not necessarily procrastinated too much, but a little. At least I am honest. I hate that I know my writing is weak, yet, I haven’t done anything about it. I know I can do so much better than I am. Ugh. Next semester I will do better, and that if I have learned anything from Lipton’s class it is that procrastination is going to be what makes or breaks you.

I also think I am going to take full advantage of the writing center from now on. It's not like I am failing my classes, but I can't stand to settle for an average, if not below average, mark. It just isn't me. Being average, is not what gets you remembered by teachers and classmates,
Being outstanding does.

Where was this epiphany 4 weeks ago? (HEY! I just had an epiphany! I can scratch that off my list of things to do!)

Running out of time... line. (It's lame, but so early in the morning)

The Timeline

The last and final of all the projects. I hated doing this project. When the group we put together at the beginning of the year discussed our goals and aspirations for all of our group projects everything we had thought of looked promising. Slowly as the semester progressed only the selected few in our group progressed along - I am not immature enough to name names, but I feel almost used by a couple of the procrastinating group members who put thier time into their own projects and completely dodging out on helping out at all...

For the Timeline we all had a group meeting and discussed few topics, and quickly decided on one we all thought was interesting. We came up with the theme of technologies for audio recorded media. We began with Cavemen, how they started with just cave drawings that eventually became universal- but were shortly lost to the grunts and moans now known as an English Language- and ending with Cd's.

The way this project was supposed to work was alot like the way we did the podcast. We chose that style because the organization of our podcast went smoothly and everyone did thier parts. I was initially just assigned Cavemen, but ended up doing that as well as the phonograph. Adam worked on the vynel records, and Cara did her part on the Cassette tapes.

To do the timeline Cara, Adam and I searched photo's together and later in the day when Cara went to work at the mall she picked up some paper and string and finished up the project. I love the colour scheme CARA! :D

This is what we have for our information; it is incomplete without the CD as we were told last minute that the member of the group was not going to be completing it. *cough* Jerk *cough* but the information we have is interesting anyways.

Cave men carved or scratched pictures with the stone sharpened-stone tools onto walls of the cave. These drawings were representations of events that happened in thier daily life ex. Hunting victories. Record keepers developed systematic symbols that represented words and sentences that were faster to draw, and universally recognized.
In early trading Cavemen used clay (portable records) with pictographs to record the quantities of materials traded or shipped. These pictographs evolved and slowly lost their picture detail and became abstract-figures that represented sounds in the spoken language.

"Cave Drawing." National Wildlife Federation. 2007. National Wildlife Federation. 19 Nov. 2007 .
Combs, S. "Letter to Mom and Dad." 2007. 19 Nov. 2007 .
"Inventors; a Brief History of Writing Instruments." About.Com. 2007. About Inc. 19 Nov. 2007 http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa100197.htm.

It is hard to imagine going for my morning jogs without having “I am a winner” by The Aquabats blaring into my ears and setting the pace, or listening to my favourite Avenge Sevenfold song when I need some cheering up. With the help of Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph created on December 4th, 1877 it wouldn’t be possible. The phonograph was really invented while Edison was working on the telephone. Initially the telephone was invented as a faster way to send telegraphs for the Western Union – “But the problem was that the telephone could transmit information much more quickly than a telegraph. It was not economical to slow the transmission down to the rate at which someone could transcribe it. What was needed was a way to record the message so it could be played back later at a slower speed. This problem provided the motivation for the invention of the phonograph.” (Turn of the Century 1)
The making of the phonograph was done with a needle known as a stylus. The stylus was then held up against a rapidly moving cylinder with tin foil wrapped around it. It had two separate diaphragm / needle units. One was used for recording the voice or sound, and the other was used to play it back. When a noise was picked up by the recording needle the sound vibrations would get indented onto the cylinder and would later be able to be played back.
In the North American Review written in June 1878 Edison had made a list of the things he had thought the phonograph would be used for in future times;

Letter writing and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a stenographer.
Phonographic books, which will speak to blind people without effort on their part.
The teaching of elocution.
Reproduction of music.
The "Family Record"--a registry of sayings, reminiscences, etc., by members of a family in their own voices, and of the last words of dying persons.
Music-boxes and toys.
Clocks that should announce in articulate speech the time for going home, going to meals, etc.
The preservation of languages by exact reproduction of the manner of pronouncing.
Educational purposes; such as preserving the explanations made by a teacher, so that the pupil can refer to them at any moment, and spelling or other lessons placed upon the phonograph for convenience in committing to memory.
Connection with the telephone, so as to make that instrument an auxiliary in the transmission of permanent and invaluable records, instead of being the recipient of momentary and fleeting communication.
(The Library of Congress 2)
So it was no surprise when Edison Phonograph Works also produced musical cylinders for coin-slot phonographs – aka early jukeboxes, which pointed the future of the phonograph as an entertainment machine.
You could see how much this invention had an impact on society and media as a whole. The creation of records was later created and the completion of the telephone which is still used today. A negative effect was created (and any invention would create, even today) as the starting of elitism grew larger. Elitism is just the belief that certain people or certain classes deserve special treatment by virtue of their perceived. When new forms of technology are released the pricing is ridiculously high making it so “only the rich” can afford to purchase or use it.
1. Donna Yankowitz , The Turn Of The Century, The Phonograph. 2007 <http://www.ushistory.net/phono.html>Dr. James H. Billington,The Library of Congress, Inventing Entertainment: The History of the Edison Cylinder Phonograph, 2007 < http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edcyldr.html

(taken from Adam's Blog - for his part)

Our project was focused on forms of projecting music or information. Music is considered a form of social opposition when it is used in that way, so the way music gets around is a big factor. Its creation had to do with making a better quality in music, as technology progressed people’s demand for better forms of it rose. I picked to research vinyl, which was an important form of recording music from the 1930’s up until now even. It was most involved in the hippie movement of the 60s, when psychedelic music and rock ‘n’ roll were a huge part of society.

(taken from Cara's Blog- for her part)

The cassette tape was responsible for many social phenomena since its creation in 1963 by Philips Electronics. But there is one main connection that the cassette tape has to culture of the 1970s-90s, and it is that of the hip-hop culture. Small and compact, the cassette tape was the first portable piece of audio equipment with recording on the piece. With the help of the Sony Walkman in 1979, this was made possible for individuals to mobility with audio recordings. This is where one can see the start of hip-hop culture becoming more popular, because MCs and Breakdancers were provided with the mobility to spread the idea of hip-hop culture. This culture would be blown away with what would come next. The highly anticipated, large-and-loud style boombox, or ghetto blaster, was created in 1981, further advancing the Breakdancing scene, because now, breakers could make an entire style out of carrying around this huge music playing device. Relating back to the cassette tape, these two aspects of hip hop culture were a result of the cassette tape, and essentially, pushed the hip hop movement to a great start.

Bibliography

Bellis, Mary. “The History of Sound Recording.” About.com. 2007. New York Times Company. November 25, 2007.

Bellis, Mary. “The History of The Cassette Tape.” About.com. 2007. New York Times Company. November 25, 2007.

“Boombox Birth.” Pocket Calculator Show. 2007. Boombox Museum. November 25, 2007.

I'm On Fire, And Now I Think I'm Ready To Bust A Move

The Film Project



This Project was BY FAR the funnest project of all of them to work on. I am not certain if it was because the idea we had for our film was to make a music video and it just so happened to be one of my favourite songs. Or, if I am just so in love with myself that I love watching myself over and over and over while I dance around making the wildest faces imaginable.
Its definitely option two.
Regardless, The group worked really well with this one. We basically put Cara's iPod on random and the song came up and the ideas just started rolling. The song we chose can not be described as anything but perfection, "The Future Freaks Me Out" by Motion City Soundtrack.

MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK LYRICS
"The Future Freaks Me Out"

I’m on fire and now I think I’m ready to bust a move
Check it out I’m rocking steady Go!
Betty won’t stop listening to modern rock
How she hates to be alone
I try to compensate her lack of love with coffee cake
Ice cream and a bottle of ten dollar wine she says hey
I rock the Haro sport
I rock the cow girl blues
I rock too fast for love
I’m footloose in my Velcro shoes
What’s up with Will and Grace?
I don’t get drum and bass
The future freaks me out
I’m on fire and now I think I'm ready to bust a move
Check it out I’m rocking steady
To the beat in my head
It goes oh, oh-oh-oh
I know that she’s the only one
I’d rather waste our time together
Yeah, ‘cause we can get down
Betty can’t quit carving question marks in my wrist
How come we’re so alone
We waste away the days with nicotine and television samples
From an era we hate to admit we embrace
We fail to represent
We fail to be content
We fail at everything we ever even try to attempt
And so the story goes
As only Betty knows
It’s time to take control(Get Down)
I’m on fire and now I think I'm ready to bust a move
Check it out I’m rocking steady
To the beat in my head
It goes oh, oh-oh-oh
I know that she’s the only one
I’d rather waste my time with her
Betty, I need you
I miss you
I’m so alone without you
To call up on the weekends with my cellular phone
Betty it's so hard to relate
To the whole human race
I don’t know where to begin
I don’t know where to begin
If we can both find a way
To do the things that we say
We might not sit in our rooms
And drink our daydreams away
Betty, I’m a dreamer
I’m not a vicious schemer
Oh Betty won’t you.. ah fuck it
I’m on fire and now I think
I'm ready to bust a move
Check it out I’m rocking steady
To the beat in my head
It goes oh, oh-oh-oh
I know that she’s the only one
I’d rather waste our time together
Yeah, ‘cause we can get down.

Katherine, Cara, and I wrote the script out on paper. I felt that our idea of taking people who are terrified and don't understand modern technology was humorous. It showed a real life depiction of how older people must feel about all the newest gadgets we young kids are into today.





This reminded me of one family Christmas my entire family was sitting around the table after dinner and I had pulled out my camera and started making a video. When it was finished recording my grandparent's were both in complete amazement. And my grandfather, being the cutest old man alive, pulled out his hearing aid and pointed it at me. He told me to smile and then said "You don't realize it, but I just took a picture of you, and all I have to do to view it is place it back in my ear". In comparison to my father's parents who grew up poor and raised seven children my mother's parents were very accepting of modern technology. My ma mere and pa pere ( Daddy's Parents) were a lot more techno-challenged and culture shocked. I never pulled the video camera phone out for them because they would never understand it. I remember pulling out one of my new camera's (when digital film just came out) , when I was trying to make a video of them dancing they wouldn't stop posing for it regardless of how many times I told them it was a video. In our film, the two main characters whom started out being terrified of the new technology sucked it up, and progressed and grew with modern technology (which I feel everyone has to do to survive, especially with companies as I proved previously with Music World shutting down, but HMV surviving).
Back to the film. Once we had finished writing Cara and I grabbed Adam and he helped video tape the entire thing. It didn't take very long because we felt we didn't need it to be overly professional. Acting it out was quite possibly the most exciting thing to do EVER! ha ha I had so much fun! We only had to do a couple retakes but for the most part we got the shots on our first try ( or maybe, we just aren't picky enough). Once we got all the footage Cara and I (but mainly Cara, I was there for moral support and I am actually really interested in learning how to edit) went to her room and edited the film cutting and pasting making sure everything fit with the music.

This is our video;



As a side note, I would just like to point out, that in the scene where Cara and I are standing there and she shows me the iPod and puts the headphones on my head, we are using an iPod extension pack that has an iPod plugged into the top of it sitting straight up. However, we covered that with a water bottle. This reminds me of that modonna video- nothing is done by accident.

Thank you Mark Lipton for this assignment! :D I LOVE YOU! ha ha!

Mind Control and Tin Foil Caps

Culture Jamming

"Mass media monopolies control people by their control of information." - John F Kennedy

Maybe it is because I just did an entire essay on facebook, and myspace, and how huge corporations are looking into buying the information off of those sites for researching their market that this first line of Mark Dery's Culture Jamming popped out like a fish out of water. The Internet is a very scary thing to think about. Just the fact that you can Google a persons name and have old articles written about them come up, or pages that they have created themselves, if not websites that just mentioned them. The mass amount of information out there now a days is ridiculously intimidating.

I remember about two years ago my brother was pulled over for drinking and driving and the police report was on the Internet. I was researching drunk drivers for one of my school assignments, because on top of my brother being caught, a few months prior one of our best friends died in an accident. Anyways, I was researching the topic and not only did the report of my dead friend come up, but my brothers report came up as well. Right there, clear as day, for everyone to read. I was slightly embarrassed.

After running into that I googled my own name, and my boyfriends name at the time. He ran a small record company named Oi Man Records and so there were indie bands that had done interviews with small London local magazines and his name had been brought up several times. When I googled my name, I was extremely disappointed to see that a woman named Lisa Goulet runs her own Real Estate project, and appppppaaaaraaannntly that is way more important than anything I have done. I specified my search and old articles of my band came up, as well as my facebook page, my old myspace page, and an old online journal I had started to keep- but fell away from for the classic pen and paper.

"We believe we live in the 'age of information,' that there has been an information 'explosion,' an information 'revolution.' " (Dery 1)

This quote I believe touches on more than the Internet. As people become more technologically advanced the amount of information and the means to acquire it expands also. We have the Internet, Television, Newspapers, Magazines, Novels, Friends, Schools and Teachers, Radios etc. All spieling out loads of information daily. Journalists flock to giant scenes, and terrifying murders - and for the most part in celebrities lives- the paparazzi is the reason for car accidents and life changing drama.

"The objective was not simply to tame the press but to transform it into an unwitting mouthpiece of the government. " (Dery 1)

"More recent is the notion that the public mind is being colonized by corporate phantasms -- wraith like images of power and desire that haunt our dreams. Consider the observations of Neal Gabler:
Everywhere the fabricated, the inauthentic and the theatrical have gradually driven out the natural, the genuine and the spontaneous until there is no distinction between real life and stagecraft. In fact, one could argue that the theatricalization of American life is the major cultural transformation of this century."

"And Marshall Blonsky:
We can no longer do anything without wanting to see it immediately on video...There is never any longer an event or a person who acts for himself, in himself. The direction of events and of people is to be reproduced into image, to be doubled in the image of television. Today the referent disappears. In circulation are images. Only images."

These quotes I believe mean more now than ever before. I can say that with confidence as I sit and watch The Hills with some of my closest girlfriends. 'Reality' television has taken over our television sets and bombarded our minds. People have become obsessed with it, possibly because it is real life drama. A friend of mine was chosen to be on Canada's Next Top Model (Cori MacKinnon) and this past week-end I got to speak with her about it. She told me as excited as she was to be on television (what with all the glory that came along with it being from such a small town) she felt that they had taken certain parts of her character and only accentuated them revealing a false depiction of her. She felt as though she was 'media raped', and that the producers of the show wildly misinterpreted a lot of the things she had said, cutting out parts of conversations to make it look like whatever it is they thought would sell. I felt absolutely disgusted. This just goes to show, you really never know what it is you are watching, the 'truth' could just be a cut and paste of the producers point of view.

"The image is the reflection of a basic reality; it masks and perverts a basic reality; it masks the absence of a basic reality; it bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum" (Dery 1)

"The receiver of the message seems to have a residual freedom: the freedom to read it in a different way...I am proposing an action to urge the audience to control the message and its multiple possibilities of interpretation. One medium can be employed to communicate a series of opinions on another medium...The universe of Technological Communication would then be patrolled by groups of communications guerrillas, who would restore a critical dimension to passive reception." (Dery 1)

Oh SNAP!

In addition to my last post, I had been thinking about other technology advances that would put certain markets out of business had they not changed with their rapidly changing markets.

I thought of the accelerating drop in old-fashioned film due to the invention of the digital camera. It has only been recent that digital camera's have been made more affordable resulting in a bigger market.
Although I own a digital camera I would like to note that I do miss the element of surprise when you go to pick up your recently developed film. You don't get very many bad , or poor quality photographs anymore because they can be instantly deleted. I can't even remember the last time I looked through a photo album that wasn't displayed on a computer screen.
It makes me sad.