Pretty Pet

So today as I was walking to the library I see a crowd of people gathered around a tree, shouting and hollering up at it. I thought someone had climbed the tree, or someone's menial cat had gotten stuck on a branch chasing a song bird. It was actually an hawk playing lunch tag with a squirrel! I was really elated to see nature in action as the hawk stalked the whimsical rodent. There was no bloodshed sadly, the hawk lost interest after a bit and flew off. In the conversations I overheard from the fellow gawkers, most seemed pretty surprised that there was a hawk in the city. In fact it seemed the consensus was that I was the only one who had seen hawks in Richmond, much less had even seen a hawk shadowing prey! Have hawks in Richmond been apart of my personal mythology until today? I swear, just last weekend,  I saw two raptors fueding over a lament rat on top of Harris Hall. I see them perched on Johnson all the time! Ah well, it was interesting to say the least.

Apples II: APPLES HARDER

Dis is a first sketch of an apple I drew. Happy? The computer camera makes the paper look whiter and the black very dull, also backwards. 

Improvements: the top part of the apple, see that line? Thats a sketch line, and that shouldn't be there. I'll use a lighter pencil for sketching the next fruit. What da fux is wrong with that shadow?? Its charcoal that I didn't spend enough time on. Lastly: find an apple with a stem so I don't have to make one up. The shadow on it is backwards!

Apples

I had a picture of a couple apples I drew earlier in the year and three I drew yesterday but I couldn't get it from the scanner to my computer, so I'll get it next time. I spent most of the day trying to write the conclusion to the first draft of my paper, but everything that comes out about the event in question doesn't quite say what I want.

Oh well heres a video of a furby experiencing a Microwave                                   

The Desert Takes Back what Belongs to It.

Some personal projects I've been working on:

Improving my drawing (I'll share some if I can find one that I like enough)

Learning the Piano (the Commons has an awesome Baby Grand Piano, its easy to go and jam out a little ditty but I don't know how to play any songs)

Learning more about mixing and mastering music with sound editing software.

Thats all I have to say for now. Oh the name of my blog comes from this video of a Nambian desert reclaiming a deserted (no pun intended) town.  

Down is the New Up

Alright, look at this. We finally have a kid with dreams and goals, and then the man has to go and stomp all over them.

Okay, maybe his goals of suicide by crashing a plane into a Hannah Montana concert are a little bit outlandish. But look at the finesse this kid has! He planned to overtake the entire plane with three things: Handcuffs, Duct Tape and a ball of Yarn. This kid must have watched all 7 seasons of McGuyver! Al Queda needs to get in touch with this kid, they're a joke compared to this kid. I can see this kid standing up in the cabin, grabbing some steward's arm and yelling "NOBODY MOVE OR ILL DUCT TAPE THIS BITCHES FACE AND WHIP SOME MOTHERFUCKER WITH THIS YARN" or kicking down the pilot's door and saying something like "I'M KNITTING YOU A SWEATER AND IF YOU WANT SLEEVES YOU BETTER GIVE ME THE FUCKING CONTROLS".

Okay maybe his plan was a little half baked.

Someday

Life on Mars confirmed! Er, sort of. Some sharp eyed individual with a light case of pareidolia spotted what looks strikingly like a mysterious and familiar Earth creature taking a stroll on Mars in this Nasa photo.

Comfort Eagle

Somewhere around last week I read the article about Barack Obama's push to cut NASA's funding of manned space flights (Link) in favor of funding for education. Now, I can justify this on the grounds that the American education system is in need of improvement and does outweigh most all other programs. But that did raise a question for me.

Why should mankind send a man to mars?

My main opinion was always that space flight is an advancement of human knowledge. But then again, the International Space Station already conducts low-gravity tests in many ways. And unmanned crafts keep discovering more and more about deep space, does that mean manned flights are pointless? Is going to mars just an act of hubris? Is there any applicable reasons to have a space station on mars other than it being really cool and leading to movies depicting its awesomeness?

Discovery of whether life exists, or existed at some point on Mars can only be done by manned exploration. Trying to find fossils with remote probes would be like dropping a robot into the Himalaya and expecting it to dig up a dinosaur.


Finding out whether life developed on Mars will instantly redefine our views on abiogenesis and the formation of life. This alone has massive scientific and philosophical ramifications that would justify the mission.


Humans can do in a day what it takes robots a year to do. When we want to learn anything serious about Mars, we'll be sending a manned team to do it. We should already have, but the combination of the NASA beauracracy bloat and the lack of economic/political will has held us back.


edit: And as I said in the other thread, Japan, India and China all aim to put people on the moon by 2020 in separate programs. Just because the pioneers of space are getting lazy and have lost the political will doesn't mean that the up and comers have. America has a huge headstart, but if they don't re-prioritize a little we will have been left behind in fifty years.

From a New Wave Fan to Another Kind

Cloverfield. Good movie. Very good. I suggest if you can go see it in theaters, its a movie that really deserves to be seen on the big screen. I won't say any details about the plot or about the monster but if you do see it, heres a tip: during the second to last scene when the shore line of Coney Island is shown, pay attention to the horizon, you'll see something interesting.

Last thing, if you stay after the credits you'll hear a really cryptic sound bite as the screen is turning black. It doesn't sound like much in theaters, but if its played backwards it comes out like this: http://boomp3.com/m/bd034dfca370

Thats all I have to say about the movie.

Surf Rock Bands

Here's an Idea for a short story I had earlier this week that. It will probably never become anything more than an idea but I thought it was interesting.

Remember the plot of Independence Day? (Spoiler alert for Independence Day in 3,2,1...) The aliens came to Earth to take all of Earth's resources for their own good. This resulted in the alien attack at the beginning of the movie and blah blah, you know what happened. So, back to the idea I have, aliens have run short of their own resources, and have come to Earth to take ours. They don't, like most of the alien/space monsters of hollywood movies, have a giant army to destroy and enslave us. Despite this shortcoming they still want to invade Earth, so instead of trying to out gun us they take hostage an entire city in order to bargain for Earth's resources. However thanks to terrible planning, a lack of prior intelligence, and miscalculation they end up invading and capturing a small town in the midwest in a clumsy space blitzkrieg. The reason for their blunder is all their information of Earth comes from our own radio transmissions, but because our planet and theirs are separated by billions of miles of space the radio transmissions have become completely inaccurate. What the aliens thought was a bustling trading post is now a desolate town with a small population and even small prospects for the future. 

This is about as far as I've thought it out, maybe they'd take more cities, bigger areas of land, or even smaller towns. I don't know yet. If you have ever read anything my Douglas Adams expect that it would sound like his writing style.

In Buenos Aires

A couple eery ads with the WTC as a subject. The first is from 1979 and the last two are from the early 80's.

 This ad is for a Pakistani Airline advertising their flights at NYC. The plane seems a little low.

Here are a couple more that seem even more anachronistic: WTC invoking heaven? Asbestos prevents fires? why didn't we know about this sooner??

First Entry.

Welcome to my blog! This is the first post of my blog, which by May should have several dozen if I stay vigilant. Anyone thats reading this probably can guess that I'm a Freshman at VCU, but since this is my blog I should include a little more info about myself. I'm 18 years old and my hobbies are drawing, video games and computers, reading and finding new music to listen to. I'll be updating this blog 5 times a week hopefully so check back often.