Give up Reddit for Lent or Discover Chavez is Dead?

So I guess I gave up reddit for lent. It wasn't like a conscious effort or anything I just stopped going on it the day after Pancake Tuesday and haven't been on since today... Much to my surprise I discovered Venezuelan "long-term" President, Hugo Chavez has died at the age of 58 today.

Rest In Peace Big Guy

I also tried giving up coffee this week. I cracked at 6:30 and had a cup of Nescafe Rich Hazelnut Instant Coffee. That's like the equivalent of a smoker giving up cigarettes and finding some left over pipe tobacco in their father's sock drawer and just shoving it up their nose and lighting up. Gross...

Seriously, Gross

But seriously I love coffee, I'm not afraid to admit I'm addicted to it either. The taste, the smell, the mouthfeel, the buzz, the brewing ritual, it's all mine to love and adore.


Anyway, this blog is supposed to be about the media I consume so here we go!

I discovered today via the OSAP website that I am too late to apply for the 770 dollar college certificate rebate. That sucks, but at least I know when the government is crying for money in 15 years it won't be because I took that student rebate from them. This gives me full right to complain about all the taxes I have to pay, right?

I have been reading about random stuff in Hollywood on Cracked.com. Including this one.

And of course I've been working my way through The Dictator starring Sacha Baron Cohen as a witless dictator of an ambiguous Middle Eastern country.




So what else has been going on in media land with me? Well, I made a demo reel, but mine sucks so here's a better one. 

Cabot McNenly DP Demo Reel (Updated January 2012) from Cabot McNenly on Vimeo.

Headphones, Egalitarianism, MacTrackPads, and still playing Borderlands 2.

With all the media (read: books, music,  internet, movies, tv) that I find my consuming on a daily basis I have decided to start keeping record of how my mind is interacting with all of these inputs. So now you the reader will be subjected to my run-on sentences and mindless mumblings in completely rough form.

Essentially I am now going to attempt to create a sorts of Input/Output documentation through this blog and let the public eye examine, destruct, construct, and consume my thoughts.

Let's start off by saying for the longest time I thought my trackpad was broken... Yeah, I was about one day away from utilizing my mac protection plan and heading in to claim a funked up trackpad. Well, as a last ditch effort I googled my issue for the third time in a week. Thanks to the guys at macrumors I was able to read a little bit closer and finally understand all the options I clicked "yes" for on my preferences. Apparently 'three finger drag' was activated. Crisis averted. 

Lesson learned... Understand what you say yes to. At least it wasn't a virus.

I know some youtube personalities and other bloggers have been accused/looked down upon for utilizing reddit as an easy content grabbing platform. Luckily I'm not trying to be fresh with my content.  The goal of this blog is to simply interact with the daily media I consume. It's a journal of sorts. Of stuff that I see on a daily basis that makes me think and entertains me.

Today on reddit I was mostly intrigued by the r/MensRights community as well as the r/egalitarianism community. Working within church environments has given me some great opportunities to see first hand people's opinions. I've grown up on one side of the coin where the belief was that women do not belong in leadership roles as well as the side that everyone should have the opportunity. So there's a couple articles I read like the interestingly titled "The Scarlet Manifesto: The Rise of the Adulterous Woman" which covered some interesting trends between men and women within marriage infidelity. I also read half an article which covers what seems to me almost every popular opinion/counter-opinion on men's issues. It's good, but it is long and fairly basic. (more of an outline than anything). 

I also helped a guy out on reddit on how to consume his music media best via headphones. By giving him a small opinion of my Shure SH240. My opinion? They sound amazing and are great for reference audio in video and sound editing. They get uncomfortable after a couple hours of use and have to be modded. If you are in the market for a decently priced (<$150) pair of cans I recommend 'em. Just make sure you add some padding to the headband. 

Speaking of music, I was recommended to check Wye Oak out...

her vocals are mildly reminiscent of Dave Matthews to me. Should that be considered an insult?
According to the comments they were heard on the Walking Dead.

I also played a crap-tonne of Borderlands 2 today.... Something I'm not entirely sure that I should be proud of. I'm not in high school anymore so it definitely can't be considered an accomplishment. I made it to level 20 and attempted to rescue my ally Mordecai's pet bird from the stories antagonist (Handsome Jack) but Handsome Jack killed the bird and then Mordecai got mad but since Handsome Jack was on what is essentially an untouchable moon base Mordecai could only shoot a whole bunch of Handsome Jack's robots. Yeah... cool huh... Anyway that's like 3% of the story and I have to say that I'm really getting into this one. So far we've had our robot guide "Angel" double cross us, the bird incident and the rescue of the rebel forces captain. I'm also fairly certain I had one of those Avatar moments where Sully rides the crazy hawk-beast after I killed Handsome Jack's personal bodyguard robot "Wilhelm". The whole time I was fighting it I had my rebel allies on the radio saying, "He's too powerful for any of us! There's no way you can do it!"

I'd give you a screenshot but I'm running it through a mac... (hint: it's not designed to be run through a mac) So just trust me when I say I have a really awesome pistol that shoot exploding bullets.

So what have I learned today? What is the common theme? I dunno... I guess I see women a lot. Wye Oaks has a woman singer, women are being talked about a lot, well that's two points but whatever I wasted too much time on Borderlands 2 to make myself think a lot. I think the general idea today is to just continuously research and ingest new ideas into my head. I'm trying to open myself up to new areas of exploratory practice and I'm really truly trying to avoid the nonsensical posting of reddit (r/aww r/funny r/WTF) y'know the stuff that puts me on the same level as a mindless infomercial watcher (which I totally did as a child)

Anyway to finish things off tonight I recommend checking out some more Wye Oak

Reading Reddit, Viewing Vice, Loving Learning, Borderlands 2

With all the media (read: books, music,  internet, movies, tv) that I find my consuming on a daily basis I have decided to start keeping record of how my mind is interacting with all of these inputs. So now you the reader will be subjected to my run-on sentences and mindless mumblings in completely rough form.

Essentially I am now going to attempt to create a sorts of Input/Output documentation through this blog and let the public eye examine, destruct, construct, and consume my thoughts.

I first off gotta say... I love reddit... I'm not talking about the loads of pictures and hilarious memes it produces (although they are pretty cool) I'm talking about the ability to customize the certain subreddits... Yeah, if you haven't yet make an account, unsubscribe from r/aww and r/atheism, and you will find your internet world opening up with 'knowledge'.

So just from reddit I learned about 11 misunderstood pop songs, Romney is offensive, thepiratebay will have even less downtime, and Lance Armstrong is tired of facing doping allegations...

Romney also said the only way for illegal immigrant kids to gain the right of citizenship is to join the army.... 

Oddly enough I found myself not on reddit as much today simply because I didn't want to process the information! My behaviour in media consumption has already changed over the course of one day.

In the afternoon I swung on over to Vice.com to check out their latest articles... Apart from their various fashion articles, really strange how-to guides, and ecletic taste in music I find a lot of their journalism to be covering articles that matter to me (a white guy in his 20s who's life is mostly exposed to suburban culture)... They had this great video series that started on Monday entitled Fresh Off the Beat with Eddie Huang... The first episode was great. We're introduced to chef Eddie Huang who goes out to a ranch with a biker to hunt some rabbits. Through the video chef Eddie Huang learns about the disconnect of eating meat and slaughtering the animals and we get to observe hipsters shooting guns... Seriously check this video out... Please...

Did you watch this yet? 

In netflix-topia I watched the first 20 minutes of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1976) starring Clint 'Dirty Harry' Eastwood as Thunderbolt and Jeff Bridges as Lightfoot. It's the tale of a car thief Lightfoot picking up 'target for assassination' Reverend Thunderbolt along the side of a country road. As Thunderbolt and Lightfoot arrive into town and began to pick up women for sex I promptly fell asleep....

I'll have to watch it some other time... 

Nevertheless I found Jeff Bridges hilarious as a young, overzealous, and egotistical man being and being paired up with Eastwood's no-nonsense Reverend with a sordid past coming to light, the two had some great moments within the introduction to the movie. I recommend watching it if your into movies from the 70s as I am (Dirty Harry and The Godfather are from this decade) then I recommend giving it a view.


I'm also working my way through the second season of Arrested Development. I don't what I can say that hasn't already been said but I believe Tobias "I just blue myself" Funke seems to be getting better and better every single episode! Although I'm kinda missing the interactions between Michael Jr. and Maybe...

Anyway last but not least I got Borderlands 2 running on my Mac without bootcamp. The story starts out with you on a space planet "Pandora" and your trying to find the magical 'Vault' which has loads of treasure but as your riding on your way to gain employment for a mercenary named 'Handsome Jack' he blows up your train. After just surviving the explosion you are rescued by a 'claptrap' (think talking R2D2) and now you are required to kill monsters, bandits, and other mercenaries while accepting fetch quests from unlikely allies. You can better understand what I'm talking about via this dubstep soundtracked trailer for the game.





I play it because of the obsessive collecting of guns and shields. There are literally 400,000 shield combinations. I have this weird thing with games that feature collecting various items... Yep, MapleStory, Torchlight, Diablo, Borderlands, Fallout, Elder Scrolls... the list goes on. I like collecting things and maximizing my in game character's combat potential... If you give me a game with stats I'm happy as a duck in a pond.

Why finish the post with a duck? It's my blog... I do what I want.

Adventureland, Youtube, Slavoj Žižek, Sufjan Stevens

With all the media (read: books, music,  internet, movies, tv) that I find my consuming on a daily basis I have decided to start keeping record of how my mind is interacting with all of these inputs. So now you the reader will be subjected to my run-on sentences and mindless mumblings in completely rough form.

Essentially I am now going to attempt to create a sorts of Input/Output documentation through this blog and let the public eye examine, destruct, construct, and consume my thoughts.

I just finished watching Adventureland... It's a movie starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, and Bill Hader. A movie set in '87 and introduces us to James (Eisenberg) a virgin who wants to travel across Europe with his buds before his first year of college studying journalism at Columbia University (Ivy League). However he finds out his dad got demoted and now his parents can't afford to help him cover the cost of the trip OR his university costs. James gets a job at the local amusement park Adventureland and meets Em (Stewart) a girl who has a penchant for the married maintenance guy (Reynolds) who's claim to fine and opening line is "I jammed with Lou Reed once" to every girl he meets.

Essentially a love story these two go through the wonders of teenage angst, love, boredom and cheating hearts I found myself oddly attracted to the relationships on screen. James' and Em's relationship on screen at first glance was pretty mellow with the occasional small conversation, love for music, and makeout sessions. It was a pretty muted relationship I have to admit, but hey, Stewart plays her character perfect (a stoic girl who's dealing with the loss of a mother, a clueless dad, a weird stepmom, and in a relationship with a guy that is no good). Eisenberg on the other hand is a little uncomfortable in his role with Stewart (as every guy in high school is with relationships) and has much better chemistry with the other guys on screen.

That's all I wanted to say about Adventureland... Watch the movie it's on Netflix
.


There's this other documentary I came across on Netflix entitle Examined Life. It aired on TVO a few years ago and is basically a collection of 8 segments of 10 minute clips with modern philosophers talking about various modern issues and such. I watched it a few weeks ago and there's a clip with Slavoj Žižek. He discusses what will we do with the things we want to ignore (he talks about the subject matter in a dump). His basic argument starts with not confronting the nature of our world we live in moves to his theory of ecology being the moralistic and religious opium of the masses (like reilgion was to Marx) and ends with the general premise of love, if/when we marry/love another human being we do not attempt to change them and their shortcoming but rather embrace them as the failed human that they are so should we embrace nature and the development of the world.

Yeah, cool stuff.

Finally I've been listening to Sufjan Stevens the past two days and his new Christams stuff is out including his "Christmas Unicorn" Song.

And to finish off the day I've also been on Reddit looking at stupid pictures of cats, that dude that parachuted with RedBull sponsoring him, and various Romney criticisms. I'd link to the stuff but anyone reading this probably has already seen it....

This is the first animal picture (3rd from the top) on the front page... Yay Upvoting....

If anyone that reads this could point any obvious errors in my writing skills it'd be great.

- Korbyn the Smart(er) Media Consumer