TIIA 21 (The Internet is Awesome)

In case you are wondering, yes I did just put one of these out, but I kind of have a backlog of these video posts, I went through my saved videos last week, and put together like 6 of these posts, so I would like to publish them a lot sooner than once a month, otherwise I'd be posting them until next year. And I'm already collecting new favorite videos, so I need to catch up before I get overrun again. On to the videos!

We'll start this post out with one of my favorite Peter Hollens videos he's ever done, a collaboration with both Devin Graham and Evynne Hollens. For like a month after this song came out I had it on a continuous loop on every drive to work. I've never even played the game that this song came from, I just love it. :p



Speaking of robots, this is one of my all time favorite songs by Tessa Violet. I only wish she'd release a full music video of the fully produced version. This is just the acoustic version, which is beautiful on its own, but I do love the more electronic-y version. :)



Nataly Dawn + Kurt Hugo Schneider + Taylor Swift = This amazingness.



As I've said before, I love it when different artists put their own spin on the same song, and Evynne Hollens definitely put her own spin on it. :)



The Gregory Brothers have been making Sad Happy songs and Happy Sad songs for awhile, but this one is one of the best ones they have ever done.



I'm not sure where I came across this next video. All I know is that it went viral awhile back, and it was hauntingly beautiful. The only problem is this video is WAY too short. The good news is that she actually has a YouTube channel where she does this every once in awhile, but this is definitely the best version.



Normally when Pogo does his Disney/movies remixes, he makes the music video using the actual clips from the movies that he cobbled together to make the music, but for some reason, as odd as it is, I kind of love this weird little lip sync video he made instead.



We'll end this with another Lindsey Stirling video, this time a music video for the song she did for the new Disney movie Pete's Dragon! I was stoked to hear she'd been invited to not just do a song, but to actually be the featured violinist for the entire film! I can't wait to hear the soundtrack!

Cartoons!

I love cartoons. People who tell you that cartoons are only for children have obviously lost all sense of fun in their lives. Try going back now and watching the cartoons you grew up with as a kid. I can almost guarantee you that you'll get so much more out of it than when you were a kid. (Unless you only watched weird 70's/80's cartoons. Then you'll just start asking yourself, "What was I thinking?!")

I remember a quote from someone who wrote the original Looney Tunes shorts who said they did not even think about making the cartoons for kids. Their goal in making the shorts was to make each other laugh. It just so happened that children liked them too. That's how you know you're doing it right, when you've got something that anyone of any age can watch together and everyone enjoys it.

When I was little, I just liked the bright colors and funny characters in cartoons, but as I got older I began to see that there was so much more to them than just falling anvils and "Bad ol' Puddy Tats." Animation is an art form. It can be used for any genre, not just comedy. The programs and movies that I watch now cover a wide variety of themes, and not all of them make you laugh.

For me one of the biggest joys of watching an animated film, provided that I don't get so swept up in the story that I forget it's an animated movie at all, is just watching purely for the artistry of it all. Whether the film is hand animated, or done using a computer, if it's done well, it is a thing of beauty to watch. I have recently started watching Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki's films, and they are nothing shot of gorgeous. The films that he and the staff at Studio Ghibli make, put many American studios to shame in how detailed and rich the artwork is. They are like watching living paintings. I may have to write some reviews of some of my favorites here.

But this post is not about movies, it's about TV shows. As I said in my Disney Channel Reviews post, I watch a lot of animated programs. I've already done a very thorough review of my favorite, Gravity Falls. It continues to get better and better. Since I wrote my review, I have an even higher opinion of it than I did before, if that's possible. The quality of the writing just keeps getting better. I wish it were scheduled more often though. There haven't been any new episodes in almost three months! If it were a drug I'd probably be going into withdrawal. :p

In addition to Gravity Falls, the Disney Channel has two other series that are almost as funny. First up is Fish Hooks. Fish Hooks is a crazy, random, riot. It is so full of random humor that sometimes it can barely hold its plot together. The characters are completely off the wall crazy, and the animation style is very unique. It sort of a mix of flash animation with photographic collages. It's pretty different than most shows I've seen, but it works. The show is about a school of fish. A "High School" of fish. It has all your basic high school stereotypes in fish form. The show takes place in a pet shop where all the fish tanks are connected. The fish themselves are all animated regularly, but the backgrounds, and any other animal or person is a collage. There is not much to say about the plot. It's about the crazy adventures that three fish, Oscar, Milo, and Bea, have as they attend high school. If you don't like random humor, you probably won't like Fish Hooks, but if you do, you'll love it.

Phineas and Ferb is the the other show on Disney. 6 months ago if I were asked my favorite cartoon, I definitely would have said Phineas and Ferb. But then Gravity Falls came along and... Well, Phineas and Ferb is now second. But just because I now love Gravity Falls more, doesn't mean I love Phineas and Ferb any less. It is still one of my absolute favorite shows. The characters are all excellent, the writing is hilarious, it is very random, but always maintains a coherent plot, it also uses music in a way that most shows do not, and it does it well.

On its face, Phineas and Ferb is a show about two step brothers who build giant complicated inventions, and their older sister, Candice, who always tries to "Bust" them, by tattling to their mother. That's only half the show though. The boys own a pet platypus named Perry who is, unbeknownst to them, a secret agent, who sneaks off every day to fight his arch nemesis, an evil "Genius" named Dr. Doofenshmirtz. It's one of those shows where you just need to watch it to understand why it is so funny. I can't explain it well enough on my own, you just need to see it for itself.

There is also an animated show on Disney XD that I watch, but it is very different from the shows on Disney. The show is called Tron Uprising. It is not at all a "Funny" series. It's a spin off from the Tron movies, and I watch it mainly for the artwork. It has some of the most stunning animation I've ever seen. Half the time I'm not watching for the plot, I'm just watching for the visuals. It's basically eye candy. :)

The plot is about a world inside a computer where the "Programs" all look like people in shiny light suits, and they drive light cycles. They are all under the rule of an evil program named Clu, and there is a program who is working with Tron (The main character from the movies) to overthrow him. I hate to say it, but sometimes I get bored by the writing. The visuals are what makes up for it for me. It is a very cool looking show. If you liked the Tron movies, you will like this show. I don't really recommend it for just a casual watcher though. It's good, but there are better shows out there.

On Cartoon Network, there are a bunch of series' that I watch, all of which are completely different from these. First up is Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It takes place between Star Wars Episodes 2 & 3, and while mainly following Anakin Skywalker's apprentice, Asoka Tano, it also can go off and have an episode starring pretty much any Star Wars Character they've created. It has pretty unlimited possibilities storytelling-wise. This show has gotten flack for "Looking like a video game," but I don't care about that at all. It may not look "Real" but it's computer animated. They weren't trying to duplicate reality. I think the design is very good. The writing is better than that of some of the Star Wars films, and the characters are great too. If you like action/adventure you should love this show.

Also based on a movie, is the series Dragons: Riders of Berk. It is based on the movie How to Train Your Dragon. The film that made me believe that Dreamworks had real potential as a serious animation studio. Dragons is about the same five viking teens from the movie, after the dragons have become accepted by their society. When it first aired I was a little disappointed. The animation was excellent, but the writing was a little weak. Since then, however, the writing has vastly improved, and I now look forward to every new episode.

On the completely opposite end of the spectrum, tone-wise, is The Looney Tunes Show. Basically this is a sitcom starring the Looney Tunes. I wrote a review of it over a year ago, HERE. Since that time my views of the show have evolved somewhat. By the end of season one, I still really liked it, but I didn't feel it was quite as good any more. I thought the writing had gone somewhat downhill, and that some of the characters, had changed into something that their classic counterparts were not. Daffy especially just seemed over-the-top mean sometimes. I mean, he's always been a comedically mean character, but sometimes it seemed to me that he just went too far. As a whole, the show was still usually pretty funny, it just didn't feel exactly like "Looney Tunes" anymore. Thankfully these issues have been resolved! After months of waiting, they finally brought the show back recently, and the writing was back to being it's greatest again. I now can highly recommend it once again.

One of my favorite "Non-Comedic" shows of all, including live action, is an animated series called Young Justice. It is the best super hero show I have seen since I was a kid watching the Animated Superman and Batman series' in the '90s. I have loved the DC comics characters ever since then, and they are all perfectly represented in this show. The animation is awesome, the writing is excellent, and the characters are all great. The show follows the "Sidekicks" of the Justice League, Superboy, Robin, Miss Martian, Aqualad, Speedy, Artemis, and Kid Flash. There are many more characters that join the show later, but these are the ones the show began with with.

When it first started, it kind of seemed like another Super-Powered Teens kind of a show. Not that that's a bad thing, the show was still awesome, it's just that "Super-Teen" shows have been done before. As the season went on though, it just got better and better, and when season 2 began, the show somehow managed to get even better than before! It flashed forward 5 years. The main characters are now all adults, some have abandoned the group, and may have even joined the "Bad Guys." The dynamics have completely changed, to the point where it almost seems like a new show, but that is a good thing. There are now even more "Kids" joining their "League," and some of the oldest ones are trying to convince the "Adult" Justice League that they are good enough to be full fledged members of the Justice League, instead of just "Sidekicks." The stakes are now higher as some of the Justice League seems to be being framed for crimes that they don't remember committing, but there is video evidence proving their guilt. The Young Justice League is trying to fill in where the "Adults" can't go and investigate, because they are no longer trusted.

Anyway, enough of my rambling on that show, if you can't tell, I REALLY love it. :) Unfortunately it also suffers from really bad scheduling. I haven't seen a new episode in months. I'm hoping that the new year will bring new episodes. I really need a Gravity Falls and Young Justice fix. :)

And those are the cartoons that I currently watch. If you like animation, I highly recommend any of them. If you think cartoons are "Only For Kids," I highly recommend rethinking your life. You sound like you need a good laugh. :)

A Pretty Ok Bag

My cousin has an awesome tote bag.

Yes, I overuse the term awesome. But I don't care. :p

Just because I want to, here's a side by side comparison of the Photoshop before and after versions.

Unicorns Really Do Exist!

I had started this post last year, but when my computer crashed a couple months ago, it was forgotten in a drafts folder on an external hard drive. Today on Facebook, a friend posted a cartoon which reminded me of this post, so I went back to finish it.

I had made a similar post on my other blog ages ago, but now that that blog is gone, I decided to revisit the subject, since I can easily relate it to another of my favorite subjects, Cryptozoology.

If you’ll recall, in one of my papers last semester, I explained that Creationists believe that Dinosaurs were the creatures behind all the dragon myths that permeated many ancient cultures. But what about all the other famous mythological animals? Surely they can’t all have been purely make believe. Couldn’t some of them have been based on a living animal?

Second only to the dragon, most people’s favorite mythological beast would be the unicorn. These days, it seems popular to view the unicorn as a wimpy little animal that only little girls like, but I've never really been one to care what's popular. I still think unicorns are awesome. I prefer a little more of a dangerous version though. When I was younger I liked an illustration from the final book in the Chronicles of Narnia series that showed Jewel the unicorn with blood running down his horn. I may have been a slightly disturbed child… :p

Aaanyyywayyy…

Where did the unicorn come from? Was it real? The Bible talks about Unicorns, and it talks about them in passages that do not suggest they are speaking of a fictitious creature. It speaks of them the same as it does a sheep or a horse. So if one believes what the Bible says, then obviously there has to be a real animal behind the name. But what was it? Someone much smarter than me actually took the time to track down an answer, and the video he made pretty much blew me away. It makes so much sense, I don’t know why this didn’t occur to anyone before this guy figured it out!

Answers in Genesis, the ministry behind the Creation Museum, and the upcoming life-sized Noah's Ark in Kentucky, wrote an article about this as well, and they went on to say that in the 18th century there were reports of explorers in Africa, discovering ancient drawings on stone of equine-like animals with one horn. Could the "Mythical" version be real as well? As far as I know, there isn't any documented evidence of these drawings. I think AIG would have referenced them if there were.

I still think it would be cool if there were a real animal that looked like a horse with a giant horn growing out of its forehead, but knowing that the unicorn was (And still is!) a real animal is pretty awesome. :)

By the way, here is the cartoon that reminded me to finish this post. :)
The artist may have been making a joke, but I bet they never guessed how close to the truth they were!

Beanie Babies

So, as promised in my last blog post, today's post is all about Beanie Babies! Actually I have been planning on writing this for the last few months, because my first project for Design 2 was all about Beanie Babies. Yes, Beanie Babies. I have a very large collection of them.

"Jonathan, you're almost 26. Why do you have a very large collection of Beanie Babies?"

Well, it all started many years ago...
My Aunt Linda gave me and my brothers each a Beanie Baby one year. Mine was a dalmatian named Sparky.

We had never heard of them before, but soon afterwards, Beanie Babies blew up in popularity. They were the "It Thing" to have. Mom started buying them for us for Christmas, other family members bought them for us, and if I saw a Beanie Baby of some animal I really liked, I bought it for myself.

I think this was the first one I ever bought myself. Is anyone really surprised that it's a giraffe? :)

So over the years I amassed a rather large collection, and they all ended up stuffed in a giant plastic tote and put away. Who would have guessed that they would one day resurface to become the focus of the first half of my fourth semester of college?

This project was based on the book "Creature" by Andrew Zuckerman. The assignment was to study an artist and make a work that was a tribute to their style. Mine ended up more of a parody than a tribute, but everyone loved it and my teacher is encouraging me to have the pictures I took made into a book of my own. I won't be able to share all my pictures on my blog, but here are a few, just so you can get an idea of what I did. I may post more to my photography blog at a later date. (No, I haven't abandoned that blog, I've just been too busy to work on it.)

That's all for now, but I promise, this is not the last you have seen of my Beanie Baby collection. :)

Legendary Creatures Around the World

I have been working Extremely hard these last two weeks getting everything completed for all my classes. Last week I finished an almost 6 page report on Legendary Creatures for my Geography class. I just checked on my grade and aside from a couple “Grammatical Errors” which he did not point out, I aced it. Generally the teachers in the online classes do not write much for reviews, but my teacher did have a rather complimentary, if brief bit of praise to offer.

So far one of my favorite papers since I've been teaching this class (3 years now). I enjoyed the subject matter immensely.

I now have a final exam to complete, and then I will be completely finished with this class, and as this test is the last thing I need to complete for any class, I will soon be done with all of this semester’s work. Woo Hoo!
I know some of you have enjoyed reading my other things about cryptozoology, so I will share my paper here for those of you who would like to read it. :)

Legendary Creatures Around the World

By Jonathan North

The deep forests in the North America, the deserts of the Australian outback, the icy depths of a Loch in Scotland, the snowy peaks of the Himalayan Mountains in Asia, and the dense jungles of the African rainforests; all these are places today that have significant legends attached to them, legends of fantastic creatures. Creatures laughed off by most as just stories or superstition. But what if these stories are more than just stories? What if these creatures all really exist?
Today there are creatures in zoos all over the world that were once laughed at as creatures of myth and legend. Kangaroos, pandas, and many other creatures at one time were disregarded as myths by the scientific community until given absolute proof. In fact, one of my favorite animals was considered a myth until the late 18^th century when Europeans were first introduced to a living giraffe. They had heard of giraffes from ancient Greek and Roman writings, but having never seen such a beast for themselves, it was thought to be an animal that the ancients had invented. Similarly, the giraffe’s only known relative, the okapi, was also thought to be a myth until its official discovery in the late 1800’s by Sir Harry Johnston. In 1903 the first live Okapi was captured, and today you can find them in zoos all over the world.
When explorers brought the remains of a platypus to England from Australia they were accused of creating a fake animal by piecing together parts from the bodies of real animals. It was not until sometime later when scientist saw for themselves living, breathing specimens, that they accepted that the platypus was not a beaver with a duck’s bill taxidermied to its face.
Some scientists think there is a definite possibility that there is truth behind our modern day myths, and have dedicated their lives to trying to prove them as truth. These scientists, working in the relatively small, and often maligned scientific field of Cryptozoology, the study of unknown animals, ask a very simple question. Is it possible that mythological creatures have some basis in reality? While it is unlikely that all these animals are exactly as the stories depict them, I fully believe that for every legend there is, or was, a real, live creature behind it.
All over the world, and throughout the ages of time, every culture has stories of fantastic beasts that great warriors fought and killed. When the great beasts are called a bear or a lion, it is generally accepted that such a story truly happened. The hero’s deeds may be exaggerated for dramatic effect, but generally such stories are thought to have a grain of truth to them. But what about the stories with a creature we don’t recognize?
Many countries and many cultures all over the world had legends of monstrous and unbelievable beasts. Native Americans told of massive birds with such huge wingspans they created thunder as they flew. Sailors have long told stories of encounters with strange creatures, such as mermaids, and fearfully large creatures, from the massive Kraken to enormous sea serpents that would attack ships and drag them to the ocean floors never to be seen again. And many, many cultures have legends of gigantic reptiles called dragons. But these were all just stories, right? Maybe, but legends had to start somewhere.
What if these legends were stories that these cultures used to explain real life animals that they did not understand? It is generally accepted now, that the legend of the Kraken might have been based on encounters with giant squid, an animal undocumented by science until recent years. Similarly the stories of mermaids, may have come from sailors, dehydrated and not able to see straight, who saw sunbathing seals, or swimming manatees. Why is it so different to believe that a story of a dragon was based on a real animal?
While this explanation is usually laughed off by mainstream scientists, Creation scientists have hypothesized that the dragon legends of cultures all around the world, from ancient Babylon, to ancient China, to even more recent examples like the medieval European legend of St. George and the Dragon, were based on encounters with dinosaurs.
Since Creationists see fossils as evidence of a world-wide flood in the days of Noah, they see no problems in believing that dinosaurs were alive at the time of man. They obviously would not have been called dinosaurs, a name coined only in 1840 by Sir Richard Owen, but could they have been known by the name dragon, or other names throughout history, depending on the culture who tells the tale? Since most Dragon legends end with the dragon slain by the valiant hero, perhaps the reason for the dinosaur’s extinction was the same reason that so many species are in danger of going extinct today; us. Humanity is generally thought to be the cause of the Mammoth’s extinction. Humanity caused the Dodo’s extinction. Humanity wiped out the Passenger Pigeon, the Moa, and the Tasmanian Tiger. If the dinosaurs did not go extinct millions of years ago, is it such a stretch to believe that we caused their extinction?
Some people, not just creationists, even believe that some dinosaurs may still be alive, as there are stories all around the world to this day of creatures that fit the descriptions of dinosaurs. There are stories of multiple creatures in Africa, the most famous of which, the Mokele Mbembe, fit the description of a living dinosaur. Australia also has stories, as do the Native Americans here in our own country. Ancient artwork occasionally depicts creatures that do not resemble any known creature today, and some of them look vaguely like dinosaurs.
But dinosaurs are not the only creatures around which legends might be based. All over North and South America, there are legends of giant hairy ape men. To the natives in Canada, these creatures were known as Sasquatch. To Americans, who more often use the name in derision, the creature is known as Bigfoot. In South America they tell tales of the Mono Grande, “Big Monkey”, a giant tailless ape.
Without solid proof, people who claim to have seen such creatures are laughed at, but to scoff at such stories has often left the scoffers with egg on their faces. Until about 200 years ago the scientific community laughed at African natives who claimed that giant, hairy, wild men lived in the jungles of Africa. Their laughter turned to astonishment when a French explorer brought back the body of a gorilla. Is it so difficult to believe that similar creatures could exist on one or both of the Americas?
Similar to these stories is the Abominable Snowman in Asia, or as the native people refer to him, the Yeti. A wild man said to live in the Himalayas. Is it possible that this “wild man” is a type of ape? In Australia, they tell of a creature called Yowie, and their descriptions are also of a hairy ape man. To me, so many similar stories all over the world, can’t be laughed off as coincidences.
Another famous beast, beloved by tourists and derided by scientists, is the Loch Ness Monster a giant beast said to live in the Loch Ness in Scotland. Most accounts told of the creature describe it as what looks to be an extinct marine reptile, similar to a plesiosaur. Scientists say that there is no way it can exist there, but researchers have found evidence of underwater caverns that may contain air, and channels that could lead to the ocean. Who’s to say that “Nessie” is just one creature? Isn’t it far more likely that what people have seen throughout history are just different members of the same species? Perhaps the Loch is just a stop on their migratory rout?
The Loch Ness is not the only body of water said to contain a monster, in fact there are stories of lake monsters all over the world. However, one lake, Lake Champlain, a lake between New York and Vermont, has been the only place other than Loch Ness for someone to provide somewhat credible evidence for the existence of such a creature. In July of 1977 a woman captured an image of the beast that is still debated today. The image shows what appears to be a plesiosaur, even clearer than the ones taken of Nessie. This was in the days long before Photoshop, so the chances that this woman was able to fake this photograph by herself are quite slim.
We humans love stories. We love hearing tales of the unknown, and stories of creatures that couldn’t possibly exist. But every story had to be inspired by something. I think it is completely within the realm of possibility that all these stories, all over the world, told by cultures throughout history, had some basis in truth. After all, The Gorilla, the Panda, and the Giraffe were once stories. Perhaps someday, our descendants will stroll through the zoo and laugh at us because we once thought that Sasquatch and Nessie were figments of someone’s overactive imagination.