memories.

we all have them, and this is mine.  habits of the every day are often forgotten, we go into auto pilot and forget to oberve our surroundings.  this morning, i broke that habit.

give yourself a chance

we can all dream.

Twitbubble, find love in 140 characters or less.

140 characters (the maximum amount allotted by Twitter in a single tweet) may seem like a tiny amount of information, but it can reveal a lot more than you think.  Making an impact with very few words is a difficult task, but can be a good challenge, just like the dating world. If you think you can get your E.E. Cummings on, take a trip inside BUBBLE, Twitter’s online dating application.

Twitbubble’s bio makes some high claims, “New Ways to Meet Potential Dates! Revolution in Match making. Hottest destination for Social dating.”  This may seem odd, lame, or even bizarre to some (I know it did to me, at first), but we have to think about this is as an advancement.  There were many skeptics about sites like eharmony and chemistry, but these sites have yielded outstanding results and have matched people who may have never had the chance had it not been for service sites like these.  Twitbubble is just another version of these dating sites, but slimmed down to 140 characters.  This diet on conversation is by no means a restriction.  Just like we have used hashtags and j.mp links in our own accounts, those using Twitbubble can share these same features with one another to reveal even more about themselves to their tweeting lover.

Twitter’s application, Twitbubble, may be onto something here.  With anything, it is up to the users to make it happen.  The site, or application alone, will not get the songbirds singing.  By the looks of all the user generated applications and input on twitter, I am sure the Twitbubble application will become more popular and may even match some soulmates.  Tweet, Tweet.

-Good afternoon, Vitamin D

lowt

the protest.

Here is my final edit for this week’s digital photo project: Protest.

Taken in Moorestown, NJ.

Where The Wild Things Are!

Spike Jonze is a genius, in the film making world as well as the photography world, here is his latest work: Where The Wild Things Are, set to release on October 16.  I think I have waited all of my childhood to see this movie.

behind the Protest.

Each week in Digital Photo there is a one word topic idea assigned for our class’s weekly project.  This week’s topic was protest,  tried some ideas out at my local skatepark.  Here is some footage of Ryan Miller ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/39932761@N08/ ) and I rolling around on a rainy Saturday afternoon…

agitation.

Don’t hold what I am about to say against me, please.  It may shock you, it make piss you off, it may mean nothing at all to you, but just hear me out.  I have fallen in love.  I repeat: I HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE.  My judgement clouded, blood rushing, clammy palms, dry mouth; this thing is straight up punch-drunk love.

Now, my woman possesses no curves.  In fact, she’s composed of ninety degree angles.  She doesn’t have that poppin’ lip gloss, or the fliest Juicy bag.  She doesn’t even have UGG(the last sound these sheep make) boots wrapping her feet in mid July.  I don’t go to the mall, movies, zoo, dinner, family outings, or any other cute couple activities with my lover.  We hold hands down alleyways, underneath society in the subways, in bare fields during  hours the sun would not even dare blink an eye; we are adventurers.  She is a confusing one, this broad.  Squinting her eyes in shadows and opening wide in the rays of the sun, fogging my vision as well as my conscience.  Sometimes I have to tape her mouth shut [this is not, by any means, a form of foreplay], or she’ll fall to the floor.

Now, I know what you are thinking at the present time: this story is beautiful, made of pure magic, that we in fact must live in a castle in the hills of Scotland, well, rest assured: this story turns tragic.  Unrequited love is the culprit to my pathetic form.  This broad takes me for granted.  Every cent spent on her, even moment thinking about her, plans moved to accommodate her unpredictable mood swings.  The worst part is, I’m not her only lover.  I am one of many.  A fly on the wall in this auditorium of affair.  Even worse than the worst part is, I can’t give her up.  She’s been embedded into my core.  Trapped between muscles and tendons and bones and skin and sorrow and joy and magic.  I can’t shake this curse, I can’t focus.

My heart has been torn and lies scattered on the darkroom floor.  Exposed to the light, but not developed.

If you have seen her, please contact me:

lowt@thisisnotanemailaddress.gov

this call is urgent, i must put the pieces back.

Goodnight and Love Long,

many thanks.

-lowt

TwitStalk: The Latest Twitter Application

The definition of stalking is as follows from dictionary.com. “The act or course of stalking quarry, prey or the like”.

Now typically when a definition includes the word it is attempting to define in its definition I don’t like to use it but I made an exception in this case. Today my professor decided to give us a blog prompt that includes looking at a person on twitter that we are following and taking a look at who they follow to see how that reflects on who the original person we’re twittering (i hope I used that correctly) as a person. Confused? So was I until I made a very simple connection. This assignment, in its most basic form, is stalking. So Ive made a new twitter application: TwitStalk.

This is how it begins. I chose Eugine Eugine “Mirman to follow on Twitter. A short background on Eugine Mirman is that he plays a building manager in the show “Flight of the Concords” on HBO (Which by the way is FANTASTIC and I highly recommend you to see). Anyway, so I chose Eugine Mirman as my first TwitStalk victim.

To start I went to his home page and studied all the people he followed. Here are some of those people: Danny DeVito, SubPop Records, Comedy Exchange, Al Gore, Al Yankovic, Barrie Mirman, Ilya Mirman and so on. So what have I deduced from the 80 or so people that he follows? Well here’s an impression of who Eugene Mirman is thanks to the stalker techniques I picked up from TwitStalk.

Eugene Mirman is a guy who really loves his career so he follows a lot of stuff that correlates with that like the comedy exchange where he performs at a lot and SubPop Records that helps produces his comedy CD’s (to know this kind of information you must religiously follow a person’s tweets…this is quite easy for stalkers with TwitStalk). Also, Mirman is big on following people he finds to not only be entertaining but people he looks up to as well like Danny DeVito and Al Gore. Finally I was surprised to see how many people he was following were family members. Not only was he following them but he also was communicating with them and they seem really close. What I gathered through my stalking process was that Eugene Mirman is big on family, comedy and life. He loves what he does and you can tell that because he follows the things that make him the most happy in life. Comedians, friends and family.

So the next time you’re looking to learn all you can about a person you know nothing about or have never met and don’t want to be an actual creeper or actual stalker. Use TwitStalk. It gives you the same results as normal stalking except without the restraining orders, long nights, jail cells and dark clothing. A win win situation in my book.

Oh and for your enjoyment: This is Eugene Mirman. Enjoy!

You Can’t Go Full Retard

Movies have made us laugh, scream and jump while making us cry tears of joy and sorrow. We’ve felt a character’s pain, joy, jealousy and rage but most importantly, at least for some of us, we’ve felt completely and utterly offended by movies.

Movies, and especially movie scripts, have always reflected the changing times of our culture. Whether that change be good or bad screenwriters work at pushing boundaries, pushing lines and speaking out. Now everyone finds different things to be offensive and in recent years with the media becoming bolder with the statements they make, more people are finding more things wrong.

A perfect example: TROPIC THUNDER

Tropic Thunder was attacked by different groups across the border finding it to be completely offensive. A hilarious interpretation of stereotypes and racial biases were depicted in this movie and while most people enjoyed the light heartedness of these serious issues, groups like the Disability Right’s Coalition and different racial rights groups found that protesting this movie was a better reaction.

The movie pokes fun at people with disabilities, drug problems, those who are self conscious. It made fun of gays, blacks, white’s, Australians, actors, directors, movie producers, nerds, geeks, dorks, kids, rappers, the army, suck-ups, war movies, action movies, drama’s, Toby Maguire…the list goes on.

You see the problem is that different groups believed that the movie was attacking them as people. What they didn’t see was that this movie, Tropic Thunder, made fun of everybody and everything. They weren’t attacking a group they were mocking all groups. However, I can see why The Disability Right’s Coalition would really some scenes to be offensive. Take a look at a snip bit of a scene between Robert Downey Jr.’s character (Kirk Lazarus) and Ben Stiller (Tugg Speedman).

Kirk Lazarus:

Everybody knows you never go full retard.

Tugg Speedman:

What do you mean?

Kirk Lazarus:

Check it out. Dustin Hoffman, ‘Rain Man,’ look retarded, act retarded, not retarded. Counted toothpicks, cheated cards. Autistic, sho’. Not retarded. You know Tom Hanks, ‘Forrest Gump.’ Slow, yes. Retarded, maybe. Braces on his legs. But he charmed the pants off Nixon and won a ping-pong competition. That ain’t retarded. Peter Sellers, “Being There.” Infantile, yes. Retarded, no. You went full retard, man. Never go full retard. You don’t buy that? Ask Sean Penn, 2001, “I Am Sam.” Remember? Went full retard, went home empty handed…

 

So I guess it’s up to your opinion. Were you offended by that? Do you have someone who is mentally disabled or mentally challenged in your family? Everyone sees things in different ways. You may not find a thing offensive, like how I don’t find this scene offensive but I know others do. What people need to understand, especially in this movie, is that they weren’t attacking one group in particular. Everyone was up for mockery.

So there’s a difference. Screenwriters, director’s, producers, usually are not looking to call out a particular race, gender, disability, disorder or ethnicity for pure bantering. But instead, they’re looking to call attention to different problems and serious topics in our culture, whether they try to make a serious film about it, like movies such as Forrest Gump or in a light hearted manner as Tropic Thunder took it.

Lighten up people. We need to learn how to laugh at ourselves. If we can’t laugh at ourselves, then there’s something totally and seriously completely wrong with us.

 

Ps. Here are some more of my favorite “questionable” lines from the movie

Example 1:

Kirk Lazarus: [to Tugg Speedman] What do you mean, “you people?”

Alpa Chino: [stares at Lazarus, and then gets angry] What do *you* mean, “you people?”

Kirk Lazarus: Huh?

Example 2:

Les Grossman: [turns off the music] Or… you can grow a conscience in the next five minutes and see where that takes you.

Rick Peck: Now let me get this straight. You want me to let my client of 15 years, one of my best friends, die in the jungle alone, for some money and a G5?

Example 3:

Tugg Speedman: [as Simple Jack] You m-m-m-mmm-m-make me happy.

Example 4:

Tugg Speedman: Now, let’s go get those Viet Congs.

Alpa Chino: “Viet Cong!”

Tugg Speedman: What?

Alpa Chino: It’s “viet cong.” There’s no “s,” it’s already plural. You wouldn’t say “Chineses…”

Example 5:

Alpa Chino: And why am I in this movie? Maybe it’s because I just knew I had to represent, because they had one good part in here for a black man and they gave it to Crocodile Dundee!

Kirk Lazarus: Pump your brakes, kid. That man’s a national treasure.

Alpa Chino: I just wanted to thrown another shrimp on your barbie!

Kirk Lazarus: That shit ain’t funny.

I feel, you feel, we all FEEL. (for Ice Cream)

Colors, movement, human emotion, blogs, feelings, organized chaos, art, creeping around.  These words have nothing to do with one another, that is until Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar created the website “We Feel Fine” (wefeelfine.org).  We Feel Fine is the brainchild of these two fine gentlemen who care about our feelings.  Some may think this site is a waste of time, some think it is intrusive, and others just downright creepy.

We Feel Fine is a tool and community at the very same time.  This community is not the same in a YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook fashion, but in a way that helps us to relate to our own species as a whole.  There is always that one day that just SUCKS beyond belief.  That day where you wake up, late for whatever you had planned, there is no clean underwear and you didn’t shower off the filth from last night’s workout; running out the door in a rush you hit a wall of rain (in your favorite sweater no less) because you didn’t think to check the weather.  You sprint to class, even though the re-run of Myth Busters said you will get wetter running in the rain, only to find out class was canceled.

I’ve had many a day like this.   Only to walk back defeated by Mother Nature, to my apartment to wallow in my soaking clothes.  Of course I have never cried: that would deviate from the macho persona I attempt to broadcast to the masses.

Thanks to the good folks at We Feel Fine, instead of wallowing in one’s sorrow, have enabled people to go on their site: look up a feeling, pick your gender, pick your age, the weather, and the country you are currently in, and the site will search for other people who have felt the exact same way in the past few hours.  To me, this unites us.  We can realize that we are not all as ‘alone’ as we feel.  Someone is always in the same boat, going through the same ups and downs.  While we may not know these other people, we are still able to know that someone somewhere is feeling the same as us.

I can welcome the creepy comfort every now and then.

Goodnight, Feel Well,

-lowt