Writing and Stuff by Anthony Chatfield

I’m a bit of computer nerd; I’ll admit it. It’s been a few years since I last got obsessed with or had the temarity to throw away my energy on so many hours of gaming, but Starcraft is one of those games that took up so much of my time that I can only think fondly on it in retrospect. Along with Diablo and Warcraft, Starcraft is one of the Blizzard big three. Yesterday, they announced the long….looooong awaited sequel in Starcraft 2. Their quasi-sequel shooter was finally cancelled last year, but the new release looks pretty damn good. I’m sure it’s still at least a year or two away from release, knowing the quality of Blizzard release schedules, but I’m still looking forward to it. PC and Mac only, it appears.

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By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Nintendo Wii and the potency of its get up and go, moving about gaming style. It’s a different kind of game console. Over at Wii Weight Loss Plan, one man’s quest to lose weight with nothing more than less calories and the Nintendo Wii, with special focus on Wii Sports. Strapping on some wrist weights and playing Wii Tennis against yourself sounds like quite possibly the funniest, most entertaining way to lose weight since Atkins said to eat the burger without a bun. I love the idea that when I get up from here and play a little Wii Bowling, I’m burning calories…ah sweet Nintendo.

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For anyone that didn’t see it, Stephen Colbert did a riveting Korean Music Video on tonight’s show. Thanks to the Viacom embargo on their shows being on You Tube, I cannot share it with you, but if you can catch a Colbert rerun tomorrow night, check it out. If you’ve ever seen anything from Korean RnB singers, this is absolutely hilarious. Otherwise, it’s still damn funny with Stephen Colbert, singing in Korean.

Cool Stuff, Media Reviews

With Spiderman just around the corner, I thought it a good idea to throw in some Spidey related links and whatnot to celebrate. I’m not quite the monumental Spiderman guru that some of my friends are and were (the first film was a four day countdown for some of my then 18 year old friends, complete with skipped classes and late night mountain dew runs). But, I’m all about the series though, and in the final days before it’s release, why not watch some sweet sweet Japanese Spiderman action.

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Pop culture has been around for a few decades. It couldn’t truly exist until the technology was developed that would make possible the dissemination of so many different forms of media in such a short period of time to so many people. Radio and film kicked the whole thing off and now here we are, a hundred years later watching as the industry grows ever larger and beyond the scope of sympathetic definition.

It’s a beast, a monstrous, mechanical beast. But, like any beast that humanity doesn’t understand, it will likely soon be taken down. This isn’t so much idle prognostication though. It’s already happening. Pop culture is evolving quickly and it’s because, once again, of technology.

Over the years, things change in the world. Pop culture adapts to the mindset of the culture it targets and while it may seem like the industries are setting the agenda, more often than not, major companies scramble to and fro trying to put together the next big craze based on what the people want.

What happens, is one company will take a calculated risk, releasing something that no one thought would be successful; something like comic books in the 30s or video games in the 90s. Today, it’s hard to think of comic books as ever having not been a major force in pop media. But, in the 1930s, when the kids behind Superman were first publishing their bravado and explosions of pop story telling, a lot of people were skeptical. It didn’t matter though. The kids loved comic books and soon the industry was booming and dozens of books were released every week.

You can look at reality television in today’s market. The first network reality TV show was Survivor. With monumental ratings, every other station followed suit. It’s how the industry works. One company takes a gamble and the rest wait to see what happens. When that gamble pays off, they all jump in head first. If it fails, they point and laugh as though they wouldn’t have followed suit.

Which makes today’s developments in pop culture all the more intriguing. Not only is it much more rare for the industry to properly read the consumers these days, anomalies of popularity arise all the time. And it’s because companies can no longer market their goods to the entire population and hope for good numbers. Today’s pop culture is no longer truly “pop culture” in the sense that everything is broken down.

Beyond the presence of a dozen different demographics that no one truly understands, there is the internet, and this is the crux of my point. The internet has redefined how pop culture exists and what is defined as truly popular and important in today’s media. There are no companies online telling people what to like and what not to like. Instead, it is the people online, sorting through millions of videos, songs, books, and movie trailers to decide what they want to watch or listen to.

Websites like Youtube have become so prevalent in the spread of the next big thing and the 15 seconds of fame (or less these days) that certain video creators have actually found honest celebrity offline as well. The internet is no longer a giant encyclopedia to which school age children turn for homework advice and middle age men turn to for pornography. It’s the world’s largest forum for the free spread of ideas and new media and that power has started to make the internet a bigger force than television or radio. Already, you see more “next big thing” bands come from the bowls of Myspace and Facebook buzz instead of MTV. MTV rarely bothers to play music anymore, let alone participate in the dialogue over what is good and what is bad.

So, the people are in control of their media then, yes? If only that were the case, the power these companies wield over us could finally start to diminish. Rather, the companies are finding themselves forced to rethink their entire approach to marketing. Because of the sheer volume of new ideas presented on Youtube and the like, the ones that sink in have to be truly original and exciting. No one wants to see the same old schlock online that they see on TV. They don’t have to. There are thousands of genius videos that go beyond the schlock.

So, it is that everyone from car companies to political figures are taking their messages to the internet and trying new and exciting things to stimulate the quarter second attention spans of so many of today’s youth. The end result is a society that relies on brilliant new ideas that can be produced en masse, hundreds at a time, to keep everyone happy. The move to force creativity and intelligent thought out of today’s artists and media executives is amazing, but the problem with that creativity is that it quickly turns to gimmickry. Everything is now a gimmick instead of a progression, and gimmicks are easily mimed, which only leads us down the same path we’ve been down a thousand times before; that of waiting to see what the next big thing will be.

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My friend librocrat put together this awesome little music video the other day and I thought I’d share it with my meager following of readers. It’s a good song and an awesome video. Here’s hoping 1/20/09 gets here a little faster.

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You know I can’t pass up a good opportunity to share in the wonders of interesting new takes on art. And this one combines not only my love of innovative artistic expression, but how awesome and yummy tortillas art. Enjoy more of his floury wrap based artwork here

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If you’ve ever had the urge (and if so, you probably had a McJob) to look up the denigrating term “McJob” in the dictionary, that big fat OED or Merriam Webster at the Library that comes in every year, or google “define:” it, you’ll know that, yes, McJob is actually in the dictionary, and that it is a noun meaning, “a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement”.

For anyone who in the past has had a McJob, and reports say that about 1 in 8 of us have, you know this to be the absolute truth. So, why is McDonald’s trying to have the word stricken from the dictionary. I’ve used it. So did my parents. So, it’s a word. I will in fact make sure to use the word at least 10 times in the next 24 hours, merely out of spite.

Here’s the thing. Those 7 of the 8 who have not worked for McDonald’s or any of the other jobs that “provide little opportunity for advancement” know that the definition is dead on. It’s a crap job. Trust me, I had one.

Those people might find the argument that the term is degridating to the company, borderline lible. However, I would argue that if the term is incredibly true, and it is more painful to work for the Arches than have a molar tugged by an 800 pound gorilla, why should they feel it necessary to rescind the warning. I think our nation’s youth, those unskilled, untrained masses to know what they’re getting into. It’s not like they have much of a choice anyways.

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Over at John Scalzi’s (a science fiction author that I have a rare level of respect for – mainly for his blogging devotion, but his books are good too) blog, affectionately titled Whatever, I saw this posted, a new collaborative fiction site, Ficlets. While I generally don’t approve of such sites as they tend to devolve into fart jokes and whatnot, I think this looks fairly interesting. I’ll probably donate some of my interesting thoughts and wasteful bits and pieces to the project.

So, in addition to the books and magazine articles and blogging and corporate writing and fighting crime I do, I have another project I want to tell you about, because it’s a hell of a lot of fun, and it’s something you can play with too. It’s called Ficlets, and it made its debut over the weekend at the South by Southwest Interactive show. It’s a collaborative short fiction site.

What does “collaborative short fiction” mean in this case? Simple: You, as a writer, post a very short (not more than 1,024 characters) piece of fiction or a fiction fragment on the Ficlets site. People come to Ficlets to read what you’ve written, and to comment on your piece. If they want to, they can also write a “sequel” to your story or story fragment, carrying the story forward from where you left it. Or, alternately, they can write a “prequel,” explaining how you got to where you are in the story. All sorts of people can write all sorts of sequels and prequels — and of course, other people can write sequels and prequels to those. What you end up with is a story with multiple authors and multiple branchings — lots of possibilities and surprises.

Cool Stuff, Freelance Lifestyle

I can’t remember where I found this but I saw it again in my bookmarks today and had to share it. Dylan Hears a Who is a SPOOF Bob Dylan tribute to Dr. Seuss, and with this year being the 50th Anniversary of The Cat in the Hat, I can’t think of a more fitting soundtrack.

Cool Stuff, Writers and Authors