Last Saturday I went to the Special Delivery exhibition in Berkeley. I really didn’t expect so many people there; I hadn’t waited in a line like that for an art show since Banksy’s Barely Legal show back in 2006!

It was worth the wait though. I took a few quick pictures, and had a good time. Shoutouts to Fernando for the awesome b-day destination.

Make sure to check it out when it reopens again later this month!

Genetically Co-evolved: The Elephant & The Ghetto Blaster

[pic via Brock Davis]

Progressive Rock.

King Crimson, Rush, Genesis.

These are the bands with pictures over the definition of “Pretense“, one of the worst offenses of Douchebags everywhere. I mean, I can take some proggy songs, some of the time, but when some frat boy plunks $5 into the jukebox, I pray that we aren’t in store for 80 minutes of rock opera crooning and over the top drum solos. [[1]]Although I gotta admit, you get your band for your buck with the 10 min+ songs.[[1]]

Prog Rock is one thing, but I am not ashamed to admit: Pink Floyd… is a great band. Ever since I was first enthralled by “Time”, and the rest of Dark Side of the Moon (the pinnacle of stoner rock){{1}}, The Wall (We Don’t Need No Education), both super selling mega classic rock blockbusters. [[1]]Anyone remember chillin’ out after the party, sleepin’ in the back of the truck, buzzed and cold, but happy to be among friends, underneath the starry, starry night?[[1]] Although DSotM will always be my first and favorite, my really close second is not “The Wall”, but “Animals”.

Pink Floyd’s tribute to George Orwell’s story, “Animal Farm”, this album has a short, but sweet tracklist:

1. Pigs on the Wing, Pt. 1 (1:25)
2. Dogs (17:08)
3. Pigs (Three Different Ones) (11:28)
4. Sheep (10:20)
5. Pigs on the Wing, Pt. 2 (1:25)

Songs there are few, but each of the 4 animals get over 10 minutes of haunting singing and guitar solos. Sung from the perspective of the animals, songwriters Roger Waters and David Gilmour imbue each animal with a negative trait. Waters—the mastermind behind the spiral of despair that is The Wall—wrote all of the songs except one.

My favorite member of Pink Floyd{{2}}[[2]]Barring Syd Barrett, band headmaster during Pink’s early, psychadelic days[[2]], David Gilmour—the acoustic genius behind Dark Side I might add—is the writer and guitar player on one of my favorite songs of all time, “Dogs”.

Who was born in a house full of pain.
Who was trained not to spit in the fan.
Who was told what to do by the man.
Who was broken by trained personnel.

Who was fitted with collar and chain.
Who was given a seat in the stand.
Who was breaking away from the pack.
Who was only a stranger at home.

Who was ground down in the end.
Who was found dead on the phone.
Who was dragged down by the stone.

Fairey did a nice job on the new cover

Fact being that I still can’t give a solid answer on the difference between Communism & Socialism (can you?) though, admittedly a lot of the meaning behind Orwell’s story went straight over my 10 25 year old brain. If anything though, it planted the seed of my extreme distaste for greed, materialism and politricks.

While Animal Farm’s message resonated with my young soul, 1984 also hit me hard like a ton of bricks. Unlike the communist oriented Farm, ’84 was a story whose message was directed toward the lovely type of capitalistic western empire that I call home{{3}}, AND was named after the year of my birth. But nonetheless, Animal Farm wins out. I’m not stupid enough to miss the reason why though: Instead of oppressive Big Brothers and boring Ministries, you have Talking Animals™. Anthropomorphism wins again (See above elephant).

[[3]] Industrial England, Corporatist America whatever. Semantics.[[3]]

I reread it every other year or so, and like any good book, I always find new meanings & messages every time. Squealer is my most despised character though. True to his name, this greedy pig had a mastery of the enemy’s cruelest, yet most least recognizable tactic of oppression, one that is in both 1984 and Animal Farm: the corruption and controlling of the very language we speak, think and and record history with. Squealer’s sly manipulation of the clueless sheep and the hardworking and loyal—but dimwitted—Boxer, the powerhouse of Animal Farm, has gotta be some of the worst examples of the perversion of power. Yuk. I’m glad I’m no pig.

But what about you? Are you a dog, pig or sheep?

[via BB]

But what’s really of interest— to the artist in me at least—the geek in me is afk, shitting himself over the wonderful possibilities as well as the horrible implications for internet monopoly—is Scott McCloud’s beautiful & super informative comicbook describing what Chrome is & how it functions. McCloud captures the images of various coders and designers, and use them to explain Chrome’s features to users and dispense tech-talk to the developers. And man… If you’ve read McCloud’s other books, you know that McCloud has a wonderful grasp on the medium of comics, and can explain just about anything through a few, lines & a word bubble.

The part below perfectly illustrated what I perceive to be one of the most frequented and most frustrating part of a browser: the URL bar.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAA indeed!

In the new version of firefox, the “awesome bar” tries to give suggestions when you type into the box. But a lot of the times, these results just end up cluttering the short box and makes things even more difficult. In fact, while creating this post, I typed “hagure” into the URL bar and instead of taking me to hagure-metaru.net, I got a link for http://hagure-metaru.net/wordpress/wp-admin/press-this.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fblogoscoped.com%2Fgoogle-chrome%2F&t=Google%20on%20Google%20Chrome%20-%20comic%20book&s=&v=2

That is not helpful at all. I look at the first part of the URL, then my eyes glaze over at the trailing gobbledygook, and I feel like the programmer in the last panel. Here’s hopin’ Google comes through.

*sigh*

Here’s to the Google Monopoly… a reluctant cheer. May you guard my (and the rest of the world’s) data/life with wisdom, courage and justice.

Don’t laugh.

A testament to the medium’s inherent wackiness, you find the most interesting things searching for anime on google.

Go Rubberman.

gotta finish the other one now, ttyl

Beach boys – caroline no

http://hagure.revise.org/extra/extra.html

pictures don’t do the work justice, especially motion blurry ones.

EDIT: link fixed

I’ve had a pretty busy weekend… on Friday, me Mel and Tidiane went to the Sigma Nu toga party over at Justine’s house. It took us soooooo long to figure out how to put the togas on (and still look good) and since we didn’t have pins or anything, they would keep falling off. After a few hours, we got Arash to pose and take pictures of us, and we were on our way.
Tidiane, Calvin & Johnny made it there first and got inside. After I parked, me and Mel went out only to see the cops going inside.

After about 20 minutes of “shhhhhh”ing and “shut the fuck up!”s, the po’s finally left the building, along with half of the party (the place was PACKED, so there were still a good amount of people left). We went in to find confused people without alky (and therefore w/o a reason to stay), as well as a passed out friend/dragon. After waking sleeping beauty, we went back home… an interesting Friday evening.

P.S.

I know the site looks like shit now. I’m in the process of more redesign. Expect to see a real site up now. One with sections, subsites, etc. etc.

But don’t despair! I now have interenet @ home so I’ll be able to put shit into gear.

by the by, I’m going back home to Vacaville this weekend, Sunday morning specifically.

I’ll see ya there.

P.P.S.: I fucking hate code…

ShinChiaPet:^______^: bloop! AGAIN…

Yeah Yeah… Next up is…Here.

Clockw0rk (05:56 PM): also i didnt have any space to take pictures of/with random girlrs walking around
Clockw0rk (05:56 PM): SKOOLGURLS
UltraRelax (05:56 PM): but 101 & 102 look like jetset stuff huh
UltraRelax (05:56 PM): haha
UltraRelax (05:56 PM): kogaal
Clockw0rk (05:56 PM): tough toenails
UltraRelax (05:56 PM): yushiro
Clockw0rk (05:56 PM): yea thats
Clockw0rk (05:56 PM): shibuya
Clockw0rk (05:56 PM): shibuya cho
Clockw0rk (05:56 PM): wait is it
Clockw0rk (05:57 PM): lemem check
Clockw0rk (05:57 PM): oh
Clockw0rk (05:57 PM): thats not shibuya
UltraRelax (05:57 PM): heh
Clockw0rk (05:57 PM): those ones are in kitakurihama
Clockw0rk (05:57 PM): where i was staying at
UltraRelax (05:57 PM): ah
UltraRelax (05:57 PM): oh

There’s more… but its just as ridiculously boring… Kamakura, etc.