The Cricut Expression. The expression is sleep

Mornings are hard enough without being bombared by mega-relaxing shopping channel features with the Deluxe Cricut.

Ok, for those who don't know me, infomercials and the shopping channel account for at least 25% of all my TV viewing, This is for two reasons. The first reason being, that I am too busy to ever actually watch TV, when I am "watching TV" I am actually working my fingers around in one of the many pies I have my fingers in.  (Side note, don't put a paper cut finger in a lemon pie). (Side side note, due to the high volume of assignments, CreComm has pretty much tripled my paper cut injuries sustained in the line of duty.

The second reason is that I actually like sleeping much better than I like TV, and any form of TV that is closer to sleeping than TV is bound to be a favorite.

Take the Cricut for example, how am I supposed to take a shower with all that decal choosing/title adjusting/ card printing relaxation going on.

Pause to explain what the hell I'm talking about: The Cricut is the ultimate crafting wizard. Are you constantly getting a slew of immaculate homemade cards from a crazy old lady friend or a meticulously organized friend? Do you walk into elementary school classrooms to find your mind boggled by ridiculously unnecessary personalized calenders, name tags and days of the week charts? This is where they're coming from.

Basically its like making your aunt a birthday card but with a graphic designer sitting on your knee- AND IT EVEN CUTS THOSE DAMNABLE BLEEDS FOR YOU! 

For someone that doesn't Scrap book, and whose idea of crafting is making platypus's out of stuffed balloons and felt (shout out to first-year Fine Art), I'm basically willing to invest the $500 for the printer, the jillion cartridges of pilfered art, and stacks of sticky paper, to throw it all away and watch the instructional DVD until my heart's content.

 Forget that wide eyed Cricut as a logo, they should just put a picture of me sleeping.

This is just about the most stark contrast humanly possible to my ultimate favorite Shopping Channel segment: Joan Rivers Tries to Sell Stuff!

During the last holiday themed segment I saw, A cackling Joan Rivers flashed her brown painted nails to an international audience while nearly breaking a faberge egg, a piece of jewelry and an entire display of Russian ornaments.

Oh Joan. :)

Anyway here's a little clip of what to expect once you purchase your $500 Cricut (Expression addition)

Who could craft with so much relaxation going on. It's like a cloud of morphine and spa music.

Kitchen Nightmares and Blogging Daydreams

I was watching Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares again as I often do, and I find that the more bad Gordon Ramsay shows that float to the surface of the Food Network stock pot, the more fresh this show seems. After watching him chase his kids around for an hour on The F Word, I'm more than delighted to listen to his rants.

However, almost every time I sit down to watch Kitchen Nightmares some faceless drone wanders onto the scene and feels the need to tell me that he's just a hyperbolic asshole tailoring himself for ratings, to which they undoubtably suspected I would answer: "I like screaming", "mayhem is mayhem no matter how fabricated", or perhaps even "NO...NO HE'S NOT...CHEF RAMSAY IS REAAAAALL!!!".

Here's what I really think: cooking is Chef Ramsay's life's work, and he has gone to incredible lengths to be called the best at what he does. When people serve rotted microwave food and expect legions of fans, it's a personal insult. It's like saying that what he does is easy and he has wasted his life.

Is he actually able to renew this passion to swear at each and every haggard restauranteur? Who knows, that's the mystery of Kitchen Nightmares and it is only this and the chronicling of forehead wrinkle magnitude for scientific purposes that keeps people watching. Better yet, I don't really care. I watch informercials for fun so that should be a pretty fair indicator of what I consider to be passable non-animated TV. (Cartoons should know better than to be crappy, they've had to fight years of oppression).

Check out those crazy wrinkles, even without a filter.
Image extracted from: http://www.remotepatrolled.com/2010/04/reality-bites-2/

For all those who aren't quite so invested in the Food Network as I am: The F in The F Word stands for Food. :(

But the story isn't over imaginary readers. Ramsay isn't just back, he's back with a fUtUrIsTiC TwIsT. (For all those who don't know how I speak, every lowercase letter is pronounced on a low tone and every capitalized letter on a high tone for maximum indication of whimsy).

This last episode, Ramsay spies a group of nerdy bloggers at a table that had been waiting about 40 minutes for service. GASP. He darted over and looked at the main offender's phone, and hightailed it back to the manager to say. "She just blogged. "I'm Hungry". (Cue the desperation music)

I think its later discovered that she's a semi well known food blogger, but still.
I've decided that this blog is about 50% Animation 40% Food Network and 10% school assignments, therefore I am the successful writer of a part time Food Blog.
If you see me on the street, please remind me to proceed with the following plan:
Step 1: show up at my next dining experience with my laptop, forget the whole iPod crap. I want there to be no question about what I'm there for.
Step 2: completely ignore everyone at my table in favor of typing random crap into Twitter and angling my laptop screen awkwardly to take pictures of all the food with my built in webcam.
Step 3: Marvel as Chef Ramsay materializes out of the ether to bring me incredible food and dazzling service.

Here's a clip from one of my favorite episodes where he actually shuts down a Mexican restaurant due to health concerns. He straight up walks into the dining room and sends home everyone who are unknowingly eating rotten food.



But wait, there's more, you lucky people.  I'm even going to post a link to the exact episode I was watching the other day. (in full)
I would cross out a payment too instead of just doubling the offer, but unfortunately nobody is paying me.

Full Episode of Kitchen Nightmares- DownCity

Celebrities for Children- Gross

As I am blogging, iCarly is playing in the background, and I can't help but thinking how said it is that this show is successful. No I am not going to bore and confuse people with terrible references to the show, because that would be a waste of everyones time, and would involve me looking in the direction of the screen.

What I am going to talk about is Family Channel and Disney's purposeful cultivation of a celebrity culture for children. Would children any interest in reading about these actors in their Tiger Beat and BOP magazines if the seed hadn't been planted, overwatered and stamped into the ground with steel-toed boots by Disney? No way. When I was a kid, I had no interest in meeting the people who played the Power Rangers.
Not to mention that the marketing doesn't even add up. You can create perfectly sellable merchandise without creating cults around 12 year olds. And marketing them as role models. No 12 year old is a role model, they're only half baked peoplet. If you've already screwed your life beyond repair at twelve- watching iCarly sure as hell isn't going to get you back on your feet.

Then, the child who has been thrust into fame gets to be 16, does one thing that everyone else in the world did, like flipped off the paparazzi or smoked salvia, and suddenly it's like the world caved in. People would have never known what they were up to before but because they're forced to be in the public eye, Disney has to drop them from the label else tarnish their image and the young hopeful falls backward into an abyss of hasbeen-ery and drug abuse. They're losing success stories faster than they can make them.

Superman, Hope, Parody, Archetypes, Wolverine- this post has it all. Disclaimer: This post is sure to disappoint

Ok disclaimer time: Be advised comic book likers: Calm down, I'm on your side. I'm just writing down some of my loose interpretations from a subject I know little about. I'm sure there's a lot I'm leaving out and if you think there is anything critical I have excluded from my poorly contrived argument, please post it in a comment.

Ok, it's cringe time.

Superman has really never interested me. He's indestructable to the point of boredom- every episode has to involve some insanely elaborate situation that renders his powers useless- reminiscent of how in Pokemon, Ash insisted on using Pikachu as the sole choice in each and every gym regardless of the type. Once he fails, which he inevitably does each and every time to his great and inexplicable confusion he formulates a plan. Instead of using the tried and true method of catching new pokemon and training them evenly, he finds some hideously unnatural way to jack up Pikachu.

For instance I saw this one episode of the classic live action TV show, where a guy marches up to Superman wearing a lead mask and threatening that he reveal his identity or something of the like. He's like: Superman, your powers don't work on me as long as I wear this lead mask, and he's like, uh why don't I just take the mask off? to which he promptly responded: YOU CAN'T! IT'S LOCKED ON! And that was the end of that discussion. Did Superman challenge his authority? No, they just went on with the episode.

Anyway the point is, I wouldn't say that culture has been influenced by Superman. Yes Superman's reach is immense and the cultural references are many. But from what I can see, there is one major theme at play, and it doesn't mirror humanity. Superman is so effective because it is above humanity.
Ask people what they like about Superman and they'll say its about transforming themselves into something Superhuman. And if that helps people draw strength and purpose to their lives than thats great. That's why the symbol is so effective, because it's directly equivalent to hope and power.

Ok, I'm going to backtrack for a minute, and say that I find the inverse of this theme VERY impressive.
The best part about the Kill Bill series, aside from eyeball squishing, scalping and confusing people with anime was the Superman reference at the very end. Bill likens Uma Thurman to Superman in the sense that she is not mild mannered Clark Kent transforming himself into Superman, but Superman disguising himself as the whole of humanity. Weird idea, Clark Kent is a parody, The skewed representation of how a godly figure would perceive humans.
Seriously though, this blew my mind *cranial wind*

Now this is messed up. Globally, the Superman symbol is directly equivalent to hope and power, therefore, Superman is a godly parody- yes Tim- the Jesus archetype (much to everyone's dissatisfaction). Yet Clark Kent is a humanly parody. Woah- no happy medium. Nobody is being real here. I feel like I have to take the averages and do math to find something that I can relate to.

You may argue, what about Lois Lane- well by that point I had already lost interest.
Plus, I'm a little disturbed at the idea of Superman as a love interest.
Frankly his classic good looks and kiss curl disgust me.

This is why I like X-Men, plus even in a hideous yellow abomination of a suit, Wolverine is way hotter.

Ladies, would you rather have this

Dang, is that arm hair or shadowing? Who cares!

Or this

I feel a little less fortune after reading this.

Image extracted from: http://www.the-isb.com/?m=200712&paged=2

Redisclaimer: If you're still pissed off, maybe you didn't read the whole article. Go back and look for the part where I said Superman was awesome.

Twitter: What Alfred Hitchcock really meant

I admit that I'm a little afraid to use Twitter.
On Facebook, I'll post anything from song lyrics, to angry rants, to hitting up my friends for extra forged documents for mafia exploits.
But every time I go to post something on Twitter. I with my mouse poised on the button with my meager piece of news and I hear Steve Vogelsang whispering in my ear "Why are you telling me this now?" I'm a pushover when it comes to the Vogelsang's in my head- and I fold to the idea that there's probably somebody better informed and more qualified to tweet my tweet, and probably in less characters, and probably with a more legible homepage and a more attractive profile picture.

Being in Creative Communications has given me a haunting awareness that the Internet (especially Twitter) as my presence of the world's stage. For a student like me who isn't physically published, it's really the only way I exist in my chosen field.
As someone with little resources it's the cheapest way I can promote myself, and every lofty lamentation seems like a strike against my professionalism.

Who's on my Twitter right now? Aside from my chief Twitter joy in life: following Cobra Commander, the first day I got it, I added only CreComm students, Comedians and every Food Network Chef (That's almost a Facebook profile in itself).
After adding my Food Network heros I was promptly followed by local foodies chefs and restaurant owners galore, thinking. "Damn, this girl must really know her stuff. We better keep our eye on this culinary bombshell." And now I feel like I'm disappointing them with tweets signaling my blog posts.Al

I feel a little better using Facebook, where I know if somebody has added me, they inexplicably want to creep through pictures of me as a South Park character and which disney princess I'm most similar to- Belle by the way-  at least I know I'm not disappointing them.