Yeah, People Are Awesome

Sorry to invoke Judge Judy but the "star" of this clip is just to good to pass up regardless of the pop culture setting...

I came across this remarkable bit of daytime television justice because I was reading about how useless Ebay has become and how overrun it is with scammers. The article told a story about a man that had listed his laptop 5 times. The first time it didn't sell because he didn't pay the $20 extra dollars to get a "featured" listing and it was always so deeply buried that it was never higher than 6 pages deep in searches for identical items.

After that he posted it 3 more times and had people bid outrageous sums for it but insist he ship it to Nigeria, he would get spoofed emails from "PayPal" saying that due to Nigerian law he had to send them a shipping receipt before they could release the funds.

On the 5th atempt to sell the laptop he stated in his listing that he would not ship to Nigeria and this caused his account to be shut down presumably by an automated system looking for keywords.

This entire time he tried several time to contact Ebay and only got automated email responses that had nothing to do with the problems he was having. Even after his account was shut down he could not talk to a person on the phone or by email. The online "Live chat" proved to be a bot.

So the asylum is unmanned and the inmates are running amok... use Ebay at your own peril.

The Light Coming From The Window

I can see this light, shining through this glass bowl sitting on my countertop. The light is coming into the window, streaming down the hall, shining through the glass bowl and eventually finding its way to my eye.

That’s what light does. It shines through, it penetrates. We don’t always see the light penetrating the things around us, they seem opaque, they seem to obscure the light. But that’s only because the light is so slow and methodical and operating on different scale of time, it’s always shining always penetrating always flowing through even the darkest and most heavy of objects. Given enough time light would erode through everything like an explosion, an instant flash of destruction that takes forever. Light is an eruption, a ripping corruption of the solid.

The light coming through the window, streaming down the hall, shining through the glass bowl and eventually finding its way to my eye is killing me.

Silly Light, you are too slow... 

I'm Not All Doom And Gloom...

I know my posts can sometimes focus on the downside of existence and how to avoid some of the traps I see in the world. Also a lot of the art I post about as well as create tends to be somewhat melancholy to put it lightly.

So just to remind everyone that I am not a completely dark person, here is something to cleanse the palette...

More Amazing Short Film

This one comes from a  man named Shane Acker. He and his cohorts have created a very dark and twisted dystopia... in miniature! 

Many of you who know me understand I have a fascination with the minuscule. Mr. Acker builds a strange place from the broken, rusted, discarded gimcrack of the world we know, and somehow in that landscape of heaped refuse, something resembling life has taken hold using that same junk as raw material for itself. Of course, wherever there is life, there is struggle...

Behold "9"

*Warning* turn down your volume if you are at work.... its out of context, but the creator started the film with some "distant badly recorded sex cries" I think its supposed to  set a mood of discomfort... It's only faint at the beginning but I didn't want anyone to get in trouble.

Beautiful enough in its own right... A feature length film based on this short is in the works. I hope they don't loose what is good about it in extending it, but I am sure they will get my money regardless.

Why Maurice Sendak Puts Kid Characters in Danger

I am so glad I was not off base with the thinking of this wonderful creative man. He pretty much is every bit as cool as I have always imagined him to be.

Get to know him through his own words.

Why Maurice Sendak Puts Kid Characters in Danger : NPR

A Conversation with Maurice Sendak : NPR

I few things I found interesting...

He says that he doesn't write for children. 

He called the "current" Mickey Mouse a fat whore.

He works at night... like me. : )

Child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim warned that parents should not allow children to read Where the Wild Things Are because it would frighten them too much.

"Childhood is a tricky business," Sendak says. "Usually, something goes wrong."That theme got him into trouble with adult critics in the past, but he’s not worried about how his younger readers will react."Kids," he explains, "are so shrewd."

My already massive respect for this him just grew even more.

Where the Wild Things Is As Dark As You Are... or were.

On message boards around the globe the battle rages on about a mature minded movie involving what its like to be a child, made from a children's book containing adult concepts like the balance of love against anger and being in control of ones own destiny.

Many people seem to want this to be an all around "happy" film with no challenging content or themes. The way I read their comments, I think they would be happy if it was along the lines of Garfield or Spongebob Squaqrepants. They clearly don't see the book the same way I always have. I have even read many people complain that the Wild Things in the leaked test (now gone from the internet) were not smiling like they are in the book!

Holy crap! They think the beasts in the book are smiling! Grinning would be more like it large toothy grins, but mostly they are barring their teeth. Sometimes cracking what might be called a smirk. I mean, they threaten to eat him because they love him so much. : P

Some others in these threads try to point out that the actual words found in the book are not exactly "nice". But people seem to insist that the Wild Things are the 1960's equivalent of Mike and Skully from Monsters Inc. (I love Monsters Inc. btw but Its a different "beast") They call them "cute" and "cuddly". Good God are they missing the mark. I hope they didn't ruin those great characters for their kids by reading the book to them in a "baby talk voice"

I Imagine the parental censorship going something like this...
"They woared their terrwible woars, wolled their terrwible eyes, mooshed their terrwible teeffhies, and showed their terrwible softy-wofty paws."

"They cried, Oh please don't go, we love you so! We'll eat...er kiss you on your belly welly!"

Ugh.

Anyone really looking at the art and reading the content should see that it is not a "cute" story. Its supposed to be a bit on the edge, without crossing the line. Max is an angry boy. He is frustrated, a bit out of control, and he is trying to deal with his anger at being punished. When he "runs away" what he is doing is working through his problems with his imagination. The wild things ARE his dark side! At least that is my take on it... It seems so clear to me and It's quite brilliant really.

In addition to its simple and elegant story, Maurice Sendak's art in the book is stunning and I can say with no hesitation that it was one of the things that influenced me to pursue my creative abilities. I am a bit subversive, dark, and spooky myself... coincidence? Only somewhat, I am sure I was drawn to the book because of those budding aesthetics in me, but all kids NEED influences that cover a full spectrum of tone. Spooky, joyful, wondrous, dire, playful. Just giving them one "flavor" of life is cheating them and not giving them the tools to deal with the dark uncomfortable feelings they may already have. Children can understand a lot, we just don't give them credit for it. Maybe the fact that I got my hands on a dark and creepy little book about a bad little boy that imagined being the king of the Wild Things helped me work through some of my problems.

Maybe some kids out there need a equally powerful film about that same boy to help them with their problems.

So I guess what I am saying is if you had a happy go lucky childhood, or choose to deny yourself access to those dark feelings you had as a child, then the monsters were smiling... for the rest of us, they were "gnashing their terrible teeth" in an attempt to keep the rage under control. If you grew up like I did, constantly feeling under attack and in danger, you may be more interested in the Spike Jones version... in the same way that the original work by Maurice Sendak was more than just a cute little book to me when I was a kid.

Mr. Sendak gave me a tremendous gift back then... he showed me how to escape.

I like Katie

This is my second favorite clip of her antics but I cant find a good example of the other one were she is even more "eccentric". I relate to her in some strange way.

Enjoy...