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I’m starting a new series of I-don’t-know-how-many posts talking about creativity from the minds of the mainstream. I’ll be talking about videos or articles about popular artists, musicians, directors, and the like and how they talk about some of their best work. I’m sharing the things that I find inspiration in, and maybe they’ll inspire you, too. Who gives a shit?

The first article in this series is about Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails talking about an instrument he used in the soundtrack for The Social Network — a whiptastic movie that if you haven’t seen I’d come through your monitor and smack you right now and tell you to go _____ it. (pick your viewing poison)

In the video, Reznor talks specifically about an instrument called the Swarmatron — a collection of wires and electrical mess hand-built by a couple of doods from Brooklyn. The way that Reznor describes the sound created by this machine is almost poetic. This instrument is so prevalent throughout the movie (and I’ve heard the soundtrack so many times) I can almost hear every note and abstract sound played in the movie’s score coming from the small sample of notes he produced for the video, and to see the guy play with the machine with patience and little-no-remorse in how it sounded or felt is ridiculously inspiring.

Alright, SEGA. Sit down.

I’ve just discovered your intent to release a HD remake of your wildly popular Saturn game, NiGHTS Into Dreams. This was one of the best selling titles on the console, and NiGHTS even introduced analog controls to the world of 3D gaming! And now you plan to port it onto modern consoles following an announcement on its 16th anniversary of the Japanese release.

Over the holiday I stayed up til about 3am with my dad on Christmas Eve to finish a puzzle that was lying around about 25% done. We knocked the rest of it out in 4 or 5 hours. That might sound like a lot, but considering some of the piece shapes literally ranged from human hearts to moose heads, and the fact that it was the first puzzle I’d touched in over a decade, I’d say that’s pretty good.

Exhibit A
A hungry-hungry-Humphrey stares at the ass of James Dean, devilishly holding the cord of a phone from Miss Monroe, being shameless checked out by Elvis.

The week following I started working on a puzzle my sister gave me in, like, 1999. It’s a glow-in-the-dark San Francisco skyline with an Earthrise in the back. Needless to say, it looks pretty badass when you cut the lights.

Fox News published an article by some tool named John Brandon claiming Epic Games’ new release, Bulletstorm, is “the worst video game in the world.” The article begins as an exploitation of sorts to some of the more “distasteful” aspects of the game, soon thereafter spiraling into a fantastic whirlwind of suck luring the reader’s attention toward some of the harsher challenges of the entire gaming industry.

An article spun up over at IGN about Nintendo needing to up their game for the second generation Wii or Wii successor.

One question: Why?

Let’s get something straight real quick-like: The Xbox360 and PS3 are not direct competitors of the Wii. Nintendo is not in this game to compete, they’re here for entertainment. It just so happens that Nintendo’s knack for entertainment is making video games, and they do a pretty damned good job doing it. But to compete with something that’s not competing is like doing burnouts — the only one you’re impressing is you and your ego. Guarantee you, whether you like it or not, Nintendo will be the last game company standing. Let’s take a look at some numbers here…

Hmm.. let’s see…there’s the PS3 with 41.6 million consoles moved worldwide not far behind the 360 with 45.6 million units, and… what’s this? Oh! That’s the Wii stomping the absolute shit out of the numbers of the next-in-line. So, Nintendo, you need to step it up! Your sales are SUC-KING!

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert, some famed and worshiped movie critic, recently rebutted a previous rebuttal he’d made years ago about video games, originally rebutting that they “could not be art.” So then this other wildly unknown dood by the name of Clive Barker had something to say about that statement, rebutting that Ebert “thinks you can’t have art if there is that amount of malleability in the narrative.”

Ebert was quick to revise and extend his remarks on his flawed video game statement, most likely to reduce the amount of hatemail he’s probably getting from angry video game nerds all over the universe and YouTube. “What I should have said is that games could not be high art, as I understand it.” Great Job(!) clearing up that statement, guy! You’ve now left your haters with something to scratch their heads about before blasting you with spiteful emails; I mean, of course, pondering on what exactly Ebert’s version of “high” might be.

Happy New Year you silly reader, you! My gift to everyone this year is my new website design (YAY!!!) – gander at it’s 16-Bit’d awesomeness as every plasma cell of fire burns itself into the retinas of your eyes while you watch a glorious 16-Bit D.C. sunset!!!1

Unfortunately, the blog’s received no love until now 🙁 . I’ve been gone for a long time, and I’ve been quite busy. Work, play, the holidays, expansions of consciousness, Mario Kart Wii, Forza 3; they’ve all taken up quite a good portion of the last three months of the latest 365-day cycle that we all willingly, but always questionably, partake in. So in celebration I’ve prepared a small list of treats for you – a late stocking-stuffer if you will – full of cool things I’ve been finding on the internets!

OMG I have wanted to write about this for so long!

OK, So… I’ve been taking antidepressants for the last 2½ years, and I must say that I’ve been much happier in the last 5 days of not taking them than I was for that entire length of time being a zombie in this play called Life. I keep a journal, notebook, whatever-the-hell you wanna call it; and in that notebook are countless pages of me yelling at myself to get off the drugs. I finally took my own words of advice.

This article started as a comment on a friend’s blog, but I ended up typing what would appear in a tiny comment box as an entire article in and of itself. We all know what sensitive subjects these are, and this article, along with those linked herein, are sure to somewhat upset someone, somewhere, at sometime.

So the original article can be found here (The Binary Biker: Pseudo-Science and Religion). The article (in case you’re too lazy to read it) is basically about the birth of a skeptic through misleading information provided by the now-skeptic’s church-comic containing information attempting to prove falsity in the moon-landing. It’s a pretty good read except for the last paragraph, to which I retort with the following retortion and have thus retorted.