Fame Day: Socialism Conference

Posted on May 2, 2013 by | Leave a comment

I’m writing these words in the last hours of what has been a quiet May Day.

For me, at least.

Elsewhere in the world, red and black flags are being proudly waved as people march through the streets, chanting and singing. In Greece, a nation-wide strike is being carried out in defiance of massive lay-offs enacted by the government. In Bangladesh, thousands are protesting after the collapse of a sweatshop resulted in the death and injury of hundreds of workers. Similar protests have broken out in the Philippines as nearly 10,000 workers march in Manila. Youth in Spain are raging against the nearly 30% unemployment rate. Korea, Cambodia, Turkey, Indonesia- just to name a handful- are witnessing similar turnouts.

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Posted in America, Economy, education, environmentalism, Fame Day, internet, news, politics, Youth

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Evan and Gordon Talk: Indie Games [And Minecraft]

Posted on May 1, 2013 by | 5 comments

EVAN: Two weeks ago our good friend Stew said:

You should write about indie game development and how it’s changing the industry.

And so, after avoiding the topic for a little while, here we are.

GORDON: For the sake of any readers who might not be familiar with what an “indie game” is, while definitions vary, the general consensus is that an “indie game” is any video game developed outside of the major/mainstream video game industry (sometimes called “Triple A”).

EVAN: A pretty good example of this would be Braid. A more well-known example that you’ve probably at least heard about [and that both Gordon and I have played a decent amount of] is Minecraft.

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Posted in video games

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2 Broke Girls, S2E22 “And the Extra Work”: A TV Review

Posted on April 30, 2013 by | 2 comments

extraworkkk

Fair warning, I attended a screening of Iron Man 3 tonight in order to write a review for a children’s magazine. I enjoyed it a lot. I am not sure how my enjoyment of that movie will affect my opinions of this episode.

We start things off with a cake literally out of carrots, so colour me interested from the outset. Then Max jokes about how she and Chestnut [their horse] should one day get the same rights as gay couples, and Caroline admits to subway molestation as being an acceptable poor man’s version of an actual massage. Oof. Maybe I should have waited a day before writing this. Continue reading →

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Posted in Comedy, race, review, television

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Shame Day: DC Comics

Posted on April 30, 2013 by | 4 comments

shamedcThe fact that I got home and remembered the title of this post, but not what exactly DC got wrong is not a good sign. Sorry, let me rephrase that. It was difficult for me to remember which PR catastrophe DC pulled off to warrant me finally dedicating a Shame Day to them.

Today [I am writing this on Monday night] is a dark day in comic book news because one of my all time favourite sites, ComicsAlliance, is no more. That doesn’t have anything to do with this post, but I needed to take the time to mention those writers and the years they dedicate to that site. It was nominated for an Eisner; come on, AOL.

That horrific news was followed up by the announcement by fellow comic book site The Outhouse that they had been blacklisted by DC. Continue reading →

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Posted in art, bizarreness, business, comics, internet, media, news, Shame Day

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The Very Real Threat of Islamophobia

Posted on April 29, 2013 by | 2 comments

Today, I’d like to do something I’ve been wanting to for a while. We’re going to go through a list of recent quotes on Arabs and Islam and replace them with the words “Jew,” “Jews,” and “Jewish.”

Most quickly springing to mind is the latest line of tripe from Anne Coulter. While you are (unfortunately) probably already familiar with some of Coulter’s statements (see: “It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact.” or “[Canada] better hope the United States doesn’t roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent.”), you may not have heard Coulter’s recent assertion that the wife of one of the Boston Bombers should ““Be jailed for wearing a hijab” (right after saying “I don’t care if she knew about this [bombing]”- just so you know it’s about religion, not justice).

Continue reading →

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Posted in America, Canada, internet, Islam, language, media, morality, news, politics, religion

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A Few More Thoughts on Fan Fiction

Posted on April 26, 2013 by | 2 comments

Gordon and I only just talked about fan fiction two days ago, but in debating its merits managed to avoid much conversation about its place in our world today. To begin with, the topic was first brought up by Marilyn in her comment on our reactions to easy-money shows, and she specifically mentioned Anne Rice.

For those of you who don’t know, Anne Rice became famous for writing vampire novels decades before the Twilight books came out [and a few centuries after Bram Stoker’s most well-known work]. She also had a very particular stance on fan fiction, which I have pulled from an old archived version of her site:

“I do not allow fan fiction.

The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters.

It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.” Continue reading →

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Posted in internet, literature, media, writing

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