This just makes me want to dance.
News & Tunes: Episode 1
Every now & then I come across an article that just has me saying “this can’t be real life”. Sure enough, Australian started blog Your Friend’s House delivered beyond my wildest expectations. YFH is phenomenal from the get-go. They have sweet tunes & stories of everything: drugs, sex, rock ‘n’ roll & so much more. A recent article that really caught my attention was My Girlfriend Fucked the Bouncer by Hugo Andrej. Trust me, the end of this piece will blow your mind. It’s too damn good.
Now to accompany this absolute piece of gold, I’m going to recommend my current love Zimmer & his Desert Drive | April Mixtape. If you can’t be at Coachella, just listen to this & be transported. I got caught in the rain earlier jogging to this track & you know what? it was alright. Yep, he’s that good.
Until next time…
Where I’d rather be
LOVE
I came across this video tonight & it’s one of the coolest projects I’ve seen in a long time. Essentially, this chick Madeline documented her life in one second clips… all 365 days of 2011. Incredible.
(Source: madelineschichtel)
A general breakdown of SOPA
To this day, the only prophet I will ever believe in is George Orwell. As in his masterpiece (personal opinion) 1984, he writes about a world overtaken by censorship. This world is managed by Big Brother. Unlike another of his novels Animal Farm, which can plainly be seen at work throughout history, the world never expected 1984 to actually eventuate.
Well, if SOPA is passed there’s a good chance that a world like Orwell’s will exist. Instead of Big Brother, we’ll be dealing with the ‘Attorney-General’… to (badly) quote Shakespeare: “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose; By any other name would smell as sweet”…
Much of the information I’ve summarised has come from a wonderful article that featured on Mashable today talking about the dangers of SOPA - domestically in the USA & internationally. Here are a few key points:
- In Section 102(a)(2) it states that if a site facilitates the commission of Copyright infringement, that the Attorney General of the USA has the authority to take action against them… even if they are of foreign origins. The way punishment for such an infringement is the blocking of all services to the website, including: access to the site, search engine visibility, ad providers & payment providers.
- As entailed in Section 103, any site that is ‘Dedicated to theft of U.S Property’ comes under the jurisdiction of the USA as it is in direct violation of their own intellectual property laws. However, let’s elaborate on what a site like this might look like:
“An ‘internet site is dedicated to theft of U.S property’ if [a portion of the site is US-directed] & is used by users within the United States & is primarily designed or operated for the purpose of offering services in a manner that enables or facilitates [copyright violation or circumvention of copyright protection measures].”
Wow… so essentially any ‘facilitator’ now think about this carefully… As the article points out, any site with the ability for readers to post comments has the ability to commit copyright infringement. Therefore, “the act of not actively screening every piece of content makes you a criminal under SOPA”. As if the prisons were full enough…
- There’s plenty more awful components of this bill, however, one that particularly strikes me as insane is the fact that criminal infringement would include the following:
“…[if] at least 10 copies of phonorecords, or of at least 10 public performances by means of digital transmission, of 1 or more copyrighted works, during any 180-day period, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500”
Mashable summed it up best: “This means, for example, if you upload a video to YouTube of you singing a popular song, & that song might sell for $1, & your video gets 2,500 views, you are guilty of felony copyright infringement… may subject you to up to three years in prison for singing a song. You don’t have to receive any money…”
Wow. So let’s just summarise all this craziness - remember this is a general summary.
- The Attorney-General will have the ability to stop the use internet-based services to a website if it in anyway commits Copyright Infringement. The site does not need to be a domestic one. We forget that Google, PayPal & YouTube are all American-owned companies. Further, many of the users of general sites are Americans. Therefore, by cutting services, the ability to censor the internet on a global scale to some extent is possible (worst case scenario).
- If the bill were passed in its current form, almost every website everywhere would be in some violation of Copyright law. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Google ALL would be in violation. I’m not joking. Unless every comment were to be approved by website administrators prior to posting it, all these sites would be required by law to be blocked.
So Big Brother - I’m sorry Attorney-General - let’s see what you’re made of.
There are so many fruits in the world; we can’t remember exactly who introduced us to what. But we never forget who showed us that there were, indeed, more fruits to discover than we’d ever realized.
— A Free Spirit Who Couldn’t Be Tethered by Lisa Ruth Brunner. New York Times
July 29th 2010.
I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader’s mind. No matter how many times we reopen ‘King Lear,’ never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters & their lapdogs. Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert’s timely tear. Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, & similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical & conventional pattern we have fixed for them… We have it all arranged in our minds, & the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbour, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen
Lolita, Valdimir Nabokov
I feel like everyone should tell what they know in the world that they know”.
Sofia Coppola
“There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” — Jawaharlal Nehru
(Photo: Emma Fenton-Wells, 2012)
Age-appropriate relationships in the time of botox
Last night I finally saw the ever-so-seasonable New Years Eve. Like Valentines Days (a little bit TOO much like Valentines Day really…), it closely followed the stories of a number of different characters while they experienced NYE in New York City. I’ll be the first to admit that I enjoy a good mindless film every now & then. However, the concept of a mindless romantic comedy generally implies that one should not be thinking about said film once exiting the cinema - much less, the following day. What bothered me so much about New Years Eve?
Since the mainstream introduction of elective plastic surgery actors & actresses everywhere have failed to age. Therefore, the concept of an age-appropriate relationship (within the confines of the law) has ceased to exist.
Seriously. Katherine Heigl is 33, her love interest Jon Bon Jovi is almost 50. Okay maybe that’s passable, but still lets look at another example. Even though they are not romantic love interests, the story line between 24 year old Zach Efron & 53 year old Michelle Pfeiffer is pushing it.
Look, a lot of people will argue with me that these matches are perfectly reasonable. My point is simply that as actors push to extend their Hollywood shelf-life, the relationships that they attempt to portray on-screen are becoming less likely. Yes, some are realistic as they depict an array of diverse relationships, but at the same time, we go to rom-coms to not think about the likeliness of character hook-ups.
Therefore, one might question: are ageless talent doing a disservice to audiences?
