Welcome To Crazy Town

How many of you use the internet? Now a days that may seem like a stupid question. We do everything online, from emailing a professor your late homework to buying groceries. Most colleges even prefer you to apply online, instead of printing out tons of paper and mailing it off to them. Ok so that’s how we use the internet here in the United States, but what about countries like China? Imagine yourself a student there and you wanted to do a report on western culture. So you go onto Google and you do a search. Chances are, little to no information will come up in the results. This is because the Chinese government blocks a lot of websites to prevent it’s citizens from obtaining much information about the world outside of the country. According to a recent study done by two students at Harvard Law School showed that out of 200,000 websites, about 20,000 were blocked. Most of these sites contained information about politics, news, entertainment, health, and commerce.1 The government wants to be selective about what it’s people can or cannot see. You’re probably thinking, well China is communist. That kind of stuff only happens in places like that. In actuality you’d be very very wrong. In fact, you yourself may not be seeing the full picture. In May of 2008 when the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5252, a telecommunications law that did not provide adequate protective measures net neutrality. I believe in net neutrality. What is net neutrality? Net neutrality is the belief that, “ Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet.”2
The culprits behind limiting what we can or can’t do online are the very ones providing us the service. Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, all these companies have been accused of and caught blocking the trafficking of certain digital media. An article by Adam Liptak of the New York Times, showed that Verizon had not allowed Naral Pro-Choice America a pro-choice group a five-digit “short code.” Such codes allow people interested in hearing from businesses, politicians and advocacy groups to sign up to receive text messages.3 In August of 2007, AT&T censored a live webcast of a Pearl Jam concert because the lead singer criticized President Bush. In May 2008, both Comcast and Cox Communications were caught blocking users from connecting to bit-torrents such as LimeWire. People who shop online could be forced to only buy from an online market place that has ties to the ISP. For example, AT&T could slow down how fast you can access the iTunes store, even making it so slow that it doesn’t load. They could do that to all music services except one that they own. If you bank online, they could push you toward a bank they favor, and if you want to brush up on some politics they could choose to only display information of whichever candidate they approve of. As it stands now, the ones who provide gateways to the net have too much control over what gets accessed and what doesn’t. Net neutrality would prevent these companies from illegally filtering information. They would have to allow open access to all websites regardless of whether or not the company agrees with the site’s views.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Verizon’s Ivan Seidenberg said, “We have to make sure they don’t sit on our network and chew up our capacity. We need to pay for the pipe.”4 Seidenberg’s statement is echoed among the other internet service providers or ISPs. What may just seem like a slippery slope argument, could become reality. If net neutrality does not pass, ISP’s could start charging based on what websites you access, in a payment plan very similar to how you only pay for certain TV channels. If you wanted to use sites like Youtube or Google, you’d have to pay for access to those sites, and for the package that would let you load them. Many small businesses who use the internet to advertise and sell around the world would not be able to keep up with other businesses that can pay to have their site load faster and to have it pop up at the top of every search engine. Bloggers and social networking sites would die due to the cost of reporting news and uploading pictures and music. This would destroy sites like myspace, facebook, livejournal, and today. There would be little to no citizen journalists and people will be left with only the large corporate-owned media outlets like Fox news.
With the filtration of content, comes the infringement of Constitutional rights. The first amendment protects the right of free speech. That covers written and spoken word, but it does not necessarily digital expressions, this is the argument taken up by the Bell companies on the issue. However since the Constitution is an ever evolving document, it is implied that all form of speech are protected. By restricting what information people can find, and by silencing anything that opposes their agenda, the ISP’s are actually violating the 1st Amendment. By blocking those pro-choice text messages, Verizon effectively prevented widespread distribution of information that was not a threat to anyone. Yes, there are those who will say that abortion is murder and that is fine, but sending out information about abortion is not the same as shouting “fire” in a crowded theater. By only displaying certain political candidates, ISP’s could effectively control who runs, gets nominated, and elected to positions of power in government. I don’t know about you, but I would rather not have that decision made up for me.
Before my speech I bet none to very little of you knew about the net neutrality hearings going on in Congress right now. Or that our very own President Obama supports it and made it one of his issues during his campaign. We should not end up like China where what we can access and do is controlled by a small group of people.
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, states, “The neutral communications medium is essential to our society. It is the basis of a fair competitive market economy. It is the basis of democracy, by which a community should decide what to do. It is the basis of science, by which humankind should decide what is true. Let us protect the neutrality of the net.”5 Please, don’t let choices be made for you. Support net neutrality and leave the control in your hands.

I do not count this as a post,

I simply needed a place to store an idea. I doubt it will ever be seen by the ones I want it to be seen by. But I post it not as an attempt to reach them, but rather a general utterance. So if you happen to see this, I’m sorry I did not wish to offend. It is an explaination of multiple things. They aren’t explicitly stated here but to those who know what to look for everything will be revealed……

Pauline is probably the sweetest person I’ve ever met in my entire life. She always knew when to be goofy and when to be serious and she could always make me smile no matter how bad things got. She is spontaneous and we could talk about anything for hours at a time about nothing. She never took anything too seriously and was very laid back.
We shared running. We used to go out together on runs that would go for several miles, exploring every place we could.
I met her randomly one day, I always liked telling that story. At the beginning of my junior year before school had started, we were having summer cross country practice.
The person running our practice (Lisa, who lives in SF and goes here and I have known her for forever) had to go off somewhere that day so I was in charge. I decided we needed a vacation and we should all go to great america. That day we were all ready to go when a green car pulls up and out jumps a red headed girl wearing a blue hat, white shirt, and black shorts. She comes out to me over on the track (I was making sure nothing was taken out) and asks if this was Cross Country. I told her this exactly, “Um yeah it is, but you picked a really bad day cause we are all leaving to great america right now. Soooo bye……”
And I just kinda left.
That was the first time I had actually spoken to her and that’s the story we would always tell about how we met. How I ditched her for and amusement park and we would laugh about it. In reality we had met several months earlier. In my sophomore year I missed school one day because I was waiting for the cable guy. I decided to go to the britton middle school track practice and play tag with them. She remembered me as the crazy high school that made them play games and I remember her as the crazy little red head who was a pain in the butt to catch.

Being with her, made me feel like I had no troubles or worries. The world felt perfect somehow. I was so in love with her.

Being the weirdo’s that we are Albert, Sam, and I purchased a “Mystery Box” off a website for $50. What happened then I can only describe as a retarded Christmas. We opened the box to find it full of the most random and useless things imaginable. Erasers-check, rubber ducks-check, air freshener-check. Seriously none of it made any sense, after we opened everything we looked at each other and started ROFL-ing. We were literally rolling around laughing our asses off that we bought something this stupid. Luckily, after some strange notes, we decided it was all ok and we would never buy anything like that ever again. Today however made up for yesterday’s strange box, we were given 5 computers to help in our persuit to build a media server. Lots of screwing and un-screwing and an almost accidental fire, we finally got the thing running. We trashed most of the other computers and put the pieces in one of the cases. The server has 512mb ram (the most we could get to put in there), 4 80gb hard drives, a Pentium 4 at 2.87 ghtz, and we added a few more fans and heat sinks in there to run things more cooly. Now all that’s left is to dump all the data into it, wish us luck.

So here we go kids it’s time for College round 2, this Sunday I head back up to San Francisco to start spring semester as a sophomore. It’s a mix of excitement, stress, and fees! Sounds like a recipe for some good fun. Today was my last day with the Live Oak Track team, left those crazy kids with a good luck and see you next May. I might go out with the SFSU team, but only Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. That brings me to my next point: I have given myself a crazy schedule starting with a 9-7 Monday! Boy that will be fun. I cant wait to see all my friends, bug Albert, and be a college kid again. Things should start to pick up in the blog once I get back, seeing as it’s been slower than molasses when I’m in Morgan Hill. So who knows what the next 4 months will bring. Mystery, romance, comedy, drama, yep it’ll all be there folks! So stay tuned and we’ll see you all in the funny papers.

With computer generated images (CGI) rampant in most movies today and some movies being made entirely in CGI, it’s important when thinking of a new movie if it will be shot using this technique. Although CGI can be useful in shooting scenes that normally wouldn’t be possible it is important to use these types of shots in moderation. Too much CGI and your viewers may not feel the amount of immersion you want them too. If I were to make a film, I would only use the amount of CGI the film called for.
The film I hope to one day create is a superhero movie titled “Wireman©.” The film would not be based on any existing comic book, and would not be set in any established comic universe either. I realize that this has been done in films like “Unbreakable” and “Hancock,” but I have never seen them done in a way that they could exist as an ongoing story. They are either one shot films in which the story ends after the bad guy is caught, or they are not done well enough to continue with a sequel.
“Wireman” takes place in a city, much like other superhero movies, in a possible near decade. The government, bankrupt from both problems abroad and from it’s crumbling infrastructure, has become extremely weak and relies heavily on massive corporations to run things. Public institutions such as schools, hospitals, waste management, and even law enforcement are all privatized. People are heavily monitored and their movement is regulated. Each corporation has it’s own major city, where it’s workers live, with the higher paid employees living away from the wage slaves. The corporations make everything that the people in the city need and ration it out to the poorer masses, while the wealthy can have as much as they desire (for the right price of course). The movie begins with an alarm in the dark, we hear shuffling and a loud thud and the alarm is silenced. The scene would cut to a man in a shower with his back turned to the camera, then cut again to him leaving his building and opening a newspaper. On the front cover of the paper, it shows the faces of the latest people to go missing that week. All the while, the man’s back is always facing the camera. The man lives in the poor district of the city, and the camera pans out to show the slums where he lives. This scene would require heavy CGI to create a city in ruin, and a barren wasteland around it with a fade to black. The CGI in this scene, as with the rest of the movie has to look as realistic and believable as possible.
The next scene would have our person walking down a smoke filled alley at night, presumably on his way home. He is still with his back facing the camera as he disappears into the smoke. The camera does not follow and hear the sounds of a scuffle followed by a loud thud. Through out this entire opening, I envisioned a violin performing the score with the final note being right after the thud is heard. The screen would turn black again (not a fade, but rather instantly), and the title would be shown in white letters. Before this, no credits were being shown in the opening.
The following shot would be done with CGI, with us hearing muffled voices talking rapidly and becoming startled. The camera would go first person, with the man waking up and his eyes adjusting to the bright white light in his face. A loud beeping would be heard as he realizes he is in a metal tube and begins to panic. He is strapped down, but as he struggles his body begins to fall apart. He notices that he is a strange green color and his skin is metallic and hardly held together. His body completely falls to pieces, and gathers at the bottom of the tank as a puddle. The camera pulls out of first person and we see a man in a lab coat enter, look at the puddle of shimmering green metal, and declaring the experiment a failure. He orders the workers to incinerate the experiment and prepare the next subject, when the puddle starts to twitch. It slams against the glass, breaking it. It starts to attempt to rebuild itself into a humanoid form, but can only form a basic skeleton. Security is called in and as they fire upon the thing, it runs out of the room, and into the hall. There it sees more guards and slides into a pipe through a nozzle. We next see all the pipes leading outside and draining into a levee surrounding the poor district. The thing then falls into the levee and is seen swimming away like a snake. The animation of the thing would of course have to be in CGI, but the glass tube shattering would be done with other special effects, as would the first person view.
The rest of the film would be the standard, hero discovers his powers and has to cope with them and use them to defeat the enemy. The “thing” mentioned earlier will come to be known as Wireman, since he has found that the best way to keep his body together is through a mesh of wires. The character himself will take a lot of specialized graphical artists to make him and his movements realistic. With the advancement in digital effects this should be accomplished fairly easily in the near future. Unfortunately with all the special effects this film requires, I doubt I will be able to make it without a big Hollywood budget backing me up.

This paper is Copyright © Wireman Films Used With Permission

Side note: I own Wireman Films so don’t get any ideas!

No the post isn’t about zombies, sorry if I misled you with the title. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on here but since I have a bit of free time I thought I’d post a small update as to how things are going school wise. I couldn’t get into the class I needed because I was not currently a sophomore (even if I was going to be one next semester), so now I have a pretty big gap in my schedule. This is bad because in order to remain a full time student and be able to pay for all my stuff I need to be registered for at least 4 classes or 12 units minimum. So at this point I have a few alternatives set up but I’ll have to wait until later to see what I end up with. I finished up my Cinema class last Tuesday and we ended up watching the movie Persepolis, which I thought looked good but felt whiny to me overall. But then again I wasn’t too into the movie and was more excited to just be out of there. I still have a legal brief to write for my ethnic studies class that I want to finish by Friday afternoon. Also Friday is my psychology final, which I am severely dreading as it is a cumulative exam. Tonight I have my Astronomy final at about 7pm, but I haven’t studied and don’t feel too prepared for it overall. With all this stress, my sleep schedule is completely destroyed. I can’t sleep at night and just am a zombie throughout the day until I pass out and start the cycle over again the next day. I’m not the only one suffering like this, my roommate Albert has been going to sleep later than normal too. I bet our bodies’ equilibrium is being devastated as I type this. On a random note, my neighbor Travis got his first check from Today.com, so I guess it does work after all (I was a bit skeptical). I guess I better get posting to make it to the $50 mark by next month. For now, I have finals to work on.

I have to apologize for the recent randomness in my blog posts. With finals coming up soon I’ve had very little time to properly write anything. I hope all my readers (all ten of you haha), will be understanding in the matter. After finals pass I shall start posting a lot more interesting things than plain old text blogs.

Sorry again and help spread the word please!

Shuffling into the theater Tuesday morning every week is a joy. Not because we are going to see a movie, that could have been easily achieved by just staying home from class. No, it’s because we are all about to view a genuinely good movie. Although every film has a few flaws, its’ other elements boost it beyond anything mainstream American cinema has to offer today. In short, the movies in class portray something thing severely lacking in movie theaters today, they portray true emotion and soul.
“The Wooden Camera” , a film from South Africa by director Wa Luruli Ntshavheni, presents us with the story of two boys who come upon power. The older boy, Sipho, chooses to wield a gun he finds on a dead man. The younger boy, Madiba,  chooses to take the man’s camera. Sipho accordingly gains the power to destroy, whilst Madiba gains the power to create. I especially enjoyed the parallels between the two characters. The dualism reminded me greatly of an animated film called “Tekkonkinkreet” by Michael Arias. In that film, much like in “The Wooden Camera”, two brothers face a schism as one goes off to wreak havoc on town while the other wallows in his own imaginative reality.
I felt the film was powerful and quite clear in some places in exhibiting South African culture since the end of apartheid. The long panning shot in the beginning showing where Madiba lived was a good way to show the rampant poverty plaguing the region. The way the children reacted when Sipho pointed the gun at them, to me, seemed to convey that they had had this happen to them before. Estelle’s character represents the new way of thinking, while her father plays the counter in that he is the old mindset of the area. Another scene I felt really well done was the staircase scene between Estelle and her father. The positioning of the two characters foreshadowed the rest of the movie quite nicely, with the father falling and Estelle passing him on his way down.
Another aspect I felt was done right was the introduction with Madiba’s sister. It set up his character so that you expect him to be different, he is a creative soul in a bleak setting. He embraces film making as an outlet and finds a kindred spirit in Estelle, who is also an artist in a restricted environment. Their relationship is best displayed in the montage at the beach. Sipho’s  voice over introduction being done at the same time as Madiba’s was a brilliant move. It pairs the two and makes the changes that occur to the characters much more noticeable.
The movie overall was very well done. Honestly there is nothing I can pick out that I felt didn’t work. The actors, although they were mostly younger children, played their roles superbly. The rough and grungy camera work was perfect for the scenes depicting Madiba’s home because you could actually feel the state of poverty these kids had to deal with day to day. The social commentary based on the depiction of South African life from the point of view of a black South African, and the use of many different symbolisms added a refreshing amount of depth to a story that was already deep to begin with .
The other film that really stood out from the group that we saw was Joon-ho Bong’s “The Host”. This movie does very little to hide it’s political commentary, with the monster representing the chaos America threw Korea into. This film was the most popular of the others, which was strange for a foreign film. This was most likely due to the fact that it resembled greatly a Hollywood movie. To me I feel that the movie “Cloverfield”, by director Matt Reeves, borrowed a lot of it’s elements from “The Host”. However the premise was better executed in “The Host”.
The overall tone of the movie constantly threw me off. Even in the most serious of scenes you couldn’t help but laugh. For instance, when everyone is running for their lives, a moment of hilarity occurs when Gang-du, the main protagonist attempts to save his daughter but instead grabs the wrong girl’s hand. Or when the family is mourning the loss of Hyun-seo it is pitiful, but quickly turns into a wacky, over the top dramatic show. I can’t however say that the constant and rapid changing of moods hurt anything, I just found it a bit odd.
Personally I love monster movies. Godzilla was my childhood hero, even if he was a giant dinosaur that for some reason was fascinated with terrorizing Japanese citizens. Usually the monster is either not seen very clearly, or it does not have as big an impact as it did on the Park family. This change up was very well received by me. In my mind’s eye that is how I always pictured monster movies to be (with the exception that the monster always wins in my head), Bong did a monster movie, and he did it right.
Surprisingly I expected a lot more of the Park family to die. I did not expect Hyun-seo to die at all. I suppose this was to help Gang-du become a better father to the young boy. The twists, like there being no virus, keep you constantly glued to the screen. The uncertainty of it all makes the story fascinating since no one is really sure what is happening, not the Park family, not the government, not even the audience. It is quite possible that the only one that knows what is really going on is the monster.
“The Host” was just a likable movie. Even though the entire family was presented as bungling, you had to love them a root for them constantly against the monster from the sewer. Their struggles against a world that is hunting them, and amongst themselves is cliche but just adds on to the likability. And the final sequence with them all coming together at the end was very Hollywood, but a great end to a great movie.
Both “The Wooden Camera” and “The Host” are movies well done. By my standard, a well done movie is one that can draw you in, and keep you there until the very end, and sometimes even after that. These movies accomplished just that. They are constantly enticing us to watch more and more, while informing on a symbolic and subconscious level. Both films represent what movies can offer, as long as you are willing to try something different. I loved them both and will very soon be adding them permanently to my DVD collection among other favorites.

I have a psych test tomorrow, yet I keep putting off studying. It’s not a smart thing to do since my grade is a shaky C+. But I keep on wasting time watching movies and making faces at Albert while he has his back turned to me, so I guess I’ll have to deal with the consequences when they come. Anyways I think I’m done being a hermit in my room, I realized as much as I miss where I cam from (not necessarily home, but the place itself), it’s all just nostalgia of times long passed. I guess I should have learned this after the time I went home back in October, but I’ve just been feeling so low lately that I just stay in my room all day. That combined with my insomnia equals I get about 3 hours of sleep a night which leaves me feeling even worse. Starting this week, I’m going to not be in my room so much during the day. I mean yeah I’ll be there like after 6 or so, but for the rest of the day I’ll be out and about, maybe around the Student Center more or even the Track (since it’s almost track season in my head). I don’t know I think something about this whole thing has to be done differently.

Halloween this year has probably been my most interesting one. So many things were different this time around. I was finally out with friends (or well Albert’s), I went to a Halloween party where there was drinking, and I was a girl. I was a girl for the first time ever this Halloween and the results were….interesting. Guys kept hitting on me thinking I was the real deal. Zack and Katie (Albert’s best friend and girlfriend) came down and together with some of our neighbors from the 4th floor we headed out to a party nearby. By the time we left, everyone had been pre-gaming and Zack was pretty drunk. When we got to the party, the place was packed and begun to stink after a while because someone puked. While there I also had my first taste of alcohol which I will say was alright, but I don’t see what the big deal is really. People started to leave and we met a guy named Tim Jones who said we could go to his house for shots. We got there and stayed for a while, but were kicked out because his roommates wanted to pass out in peace. I suggested we get back to school since everyone of them were pretty much gone, and I didn’t want anything to happen to them, especially Kendall who was falling over quite a bit. Once back at school we all went our separate ways and eventually all found our way back to our respective rooms.

So yeah like I said, Halloween was odd this year but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be.

Anyways, later days!