TIIA 13 (The Internet is Awesome)

Let's open with something so beautifully weird that must must be experienced. There is nothing to set up except to say that Aardman Animation recently joined up with an SFX company, Nathan Love, and this was their way of announcing it.



This Studio C sketch is hilarious. Especially when you find out what's really going on. :p



This video by Stuart Edge is great, not just for the awesome costumes and dancing, but looking at it as an editor, I'm just in awe of how perfectly it came together.



Sometimes when an artist releases a particularly great album, you fear that their next one might not be able to live up to the standard they set for themselves. That's what I worried about Sia after her amazing album, 1000 Forms of Fear. I had nothing to fear. This is the main single off her new album, This Is Acting. It's just as amazing as the last one.



Mike Tompkins everybody. He's too good.



I can guarantee that you've never heard the Star Wars theme like this before.



CoCo Jones is someone that my cousin and I really liked when she would show up as a guest on different Disney Channel shows, and she's very funny, but I think she's even better at singing! She's amazing!



Let's end this post on a blast from the past, I don't think I ever shared any of their videos on my blog, I think their biggest viral hits were going around before I ever started writing, but back in the day a few member of my family and I were captivated by the amazing vocal stylings of a group called the Voca People. They say that they are an alien race that communicate exclusively through song. Whatever they are, they're beyond amazing. Can I say that they are... "Out of this world?" I apologize. :p Anyway, they recently released a new video, and it could be their best yet. But it's Disney, so I'm biased. :p

Colorado Trip - Cheyenne Mountain Zoo - Part 2

After the harrowing experience just getting to the zoo, (Which you can read about HERE) we had an awesome time. This zoo is so cool. The whole thing is built into the side of a mountain, so as you walk through the zoo, you're walking up the mountain and the view just keeps getting better. This was the first view after we got to an overlook.

As I said in the last post, the main draw of the zoo, besides the views, is the fact that you can pet the giraffes. They have one of the biggest giraffe populations in the US. They also have an indoor area, and in there they were training young giraffe.

They also have okapis. :)

Like I said in my first post, these things are everywhere. :)

View #2.

Part of the giraffe exhibit as seen from above.

This reminded me of Lost. :)

View #3.

The giraffes weren't the only things you could pet. They also had some wallabies out and about.

We all had to take turns getting our pictures taken petting them. :)

These two ladies even had a baby out for visitors to pet! :)

It was adorable!

The colors aren't the greatest in these pictures, the lighting was strange in many places in the reptile house. It was very cool looking, but it didn't make for very good pictures. This room was the coolest. They had snakes in these tanks with all different colors of glass rocks, along with pieces of art. It was so unique. I wish more of my pictures had turned out.

Another visitor to the zoo walked up to this little guy and handed him a piece of popcorn. He took it!

If you look closely, you can see a mountain lion, which Sasha is photographing.

That's all my pictures from the zoo. If you still want more, I have a few more of my best pictures on my photography blog, which you can find HERE. I still have more pictures to come from the rest of the trip, so stay tuned for those!

Colorado Trip - Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

One of the best days we spent in Colorado was the day that we went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. And it was also one of the worst days. Why, you ask? Well, get ready for a story.

For starters, this particular zoo is 3 hours away from my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Nathan's house. So we had a long day of driving. That's not the bad part though. This zoo is TOTALLY worth a three hour drive. It might actually be the best zoo I've ever been too. Only the Henry Doorly Zoo can rival it in sheer awesomeness.

No, the reason that the three hour drive was so bad, was that my iPod died that morning. Like flat out gave up the ghost. Plus, my iPad had also died on the way to Colorado, so we had absolutely no music for the entire three hour drive to Colorado Springs. We still have no idea why those things died. Maybe the altitude? Who knows. The iPod came back to life a few days later, but the iPad never recovered.

Anyway, we had no music for three hours. Nothing. Thankfully Shaina had brought a book to read, so for three hours she read Wuthering Heights to us. Though I still have no idea what Wuthering Heights is about. Was there a ghost? I can't remember. It must not have been the most riveting book. Sorry, Shaina. At least it kept me occupied at the time. :p

But all that was still not too bad. The real problems were just getting started. When we finally made it to Colorado Springs the car's temperature warning light came on, and it was sounding alarms. Now, my car had been having problems like this before. We had tried to leave for Colorado the week before, and it died with smoke pouring out of the hood before we'd even made it to Shelby. But I'd gotten it fixed and we left the next week. There should have been no further problems!

So now, in addition to the blaring heat alarms, the GPS isn't taking us to the right spot, and we went up a steep hill ending up in what appeared to be some sort of gated community where a bunch of rich people lived. To top it all off, Sasha was starting to feel sick! So I called Uncle Nathan and he walked me through what to do. He thought it was just overheating from driving up and down mountains all day. So I dumped water into the car, at his direction, trying to cool it down. He told us to find the zoo and just let the car cool down all day. If it didn't start he'd come get us, but if it did start, we should just drive as far as we can, and if it dies, he could meet us wherever we ended up.

Since we couldn't just leave the car sitting in what is quite possibly a rich person's giant driveway, I had to drive a little more. I knew the zoo had to be nearby, because even when the GPS is off, it's not off by much, so we slowly left the posh little village, taking a different turn, a little further up the steep hill. This turned out to be the right place, so I parked the car. Sasha was still feeling bad, but she said she'd probably be fine after awhile, so we just walked slowly, and eventually she came around.

After the zoo we did manage to drive back to Uncle Nathan and Aunt Ruth's but we had to drive so slowly to prevent it from overheating that it was like 9 or 10 o'clock that night before we got home. And the next day we took the car to a mechanic and left it there for a few days to rack up another huge bill, and even then it wasn't fixed completely. I had to have the transmission replaced when we got back to Harlan. All in all that summer, that car cost me like $3000. I let it live for another year before replacing it, which is more than it deserved.

And that was why the day was so horrible. Now, after all that, that day was probably still my favorite day of the trip. And here's why.

I got to feed a giraffe. We went to the zoo to pet the giraffes, but unbeknownst to me, Shaina bought a bunch of lettuce for me to feed to them. It was so awesome. :)

This is what makes this zoo is so amazing.

This is the reason we drove three hours to go to this particular zoo. When I was 18, my parents sent me to a camp/seminar thing in Colorado Springs, and on one day of that trip, part of the group I was with had gone to a zoo, and I remembered petting a giraffe. When my cousins and I decided to go to Colorado, I figured out where that zoo had been, and we made a point to go there, so we could all pet them. It was so worth the trouble. :)

This is the kind of joy you can only get from contact with these magnificent creatures. :)

I'm going to make this the end of this post. I was just going to do a picture post, but then I remembered what happened that day, and that story ended up taking up all my time. I'll do another post soon, and I might even do a post on my photo blog. I think I have enough good material from the zoo trip. Keep an eye out for that!

Colorado Vacation Photos - Finally!

Yeah, it's been over a year and a half since we took this trip, and I am just now getting these pictures up. My only excuse is that school has kept me too busy, but since it's been almost two years, all that is is an excuse.

Anyway... Like the previous vacation, I have a LOT of pictures, so I'm splitting them up into different posts. And since it took me so long to start this, I promise that I won't take very long to get them all up. I should have them done in the next week or two.

This first post is all pictures I took when we went to Winter Park, which is a ski resort. This was the off season, obviously. :)

Shaina wanted to pose with her new friend. :p

Native Wildlife.

I saw these birds everywhere we went. I think they're magpies.

These things were also everywhere. We got a lot of pictures of them. :p

I didn't get too many pictures on this day, but I'll have the next batch up soon.

KIA (Kimbra is Awesome)

Normally I am the one showing new things to people, but this time it was my cousin Shaina who enlightened me. Two years ago while we were on vacation, she showed me this amazing video, because she knew that it contained scenes that would appeal to my dark side. :p
Not to mention it's just an awesome video, and the music is amazing.



Then she showed me this video, and it was just as amazing as the last one.



Then because we were on vacation, we moved onto the next thing, and I eventually forgot all about them.

Fast-forward two years, and Shaina sends me this video.



Holy Christmas! This was one of the most amazing, well made music videos I had ever seen! I needed to know more about whoever this was that made this! I started looking around, and I eventually found more music by this "Kimbra," and suddenly I realized, Wait! I know this woman! This is that girl Shaina showed me while we were in Illinois! It's kind of weird how some things come full circle like that.

If you're interested, I also found this making-of video, which was pretty interesting for someone like me, who enjoys the technical side of things almost as much as the end product.

4071 (A Poem)

For this poem, I'm just going to post it here for you to read, before I give any context.

4071

I was there when we moved by box,
Long before we moved by light.

I was there when we ate to recharge,
Long before we plugged in to recharge.

I was there when we walked on grass,
Long before it was covered with metal.

I was there when we had children,
Long before we grew clones in tanks.

I was there when we looked to the sky,
Long before the shell was installed.

I was there when we had libraries,
Long before cranial downloads.

I was there when animals roamed the earth,
Long before we owned the earth.

I was there when the trees began to walk,
Long before we cut them down.

I was there when we were human,
Long before we weren’t.

So, as you can see, this is not your ordinary, every day poem. It has a meaning, and it's supposed to tell a story. Can you interpret the story?

That's what my class had to do, so I thought I'd let you all do so as well.

I thought about publishing the poem one day, and then the explanation the next day.

My classmates had to go a week without any clarification, so a day should be nothing. :p

But I guess I'll be nice and put it all in one post.

You all probably didn't want to do any homework today anyway. :p

This poem came from another writing prompt in class. I can't remember exactly what the prompt was, but I'm pretty sure we were supposed to write about a period of history from the eyes of someone who lived through it. Sort of looking back on history with the knowledge they had gained. I can't remember if the teacher mentioned writing about the present from the perspective of someone from the future, or if I came up with that on my own, but that is basically what this poem is. It's a bit of a grim future.

For the record, I don't think that the future will be in any way like this, I just enjoy speculative fiction and dystopian futures, so that's what I came up with.

I'll walk you though everything I had in mind when I wrote this, starting with the title. 4071. That confused everyone at first until they really thought about it. One of my teachers first thought it sounded like the model number of a tractor, (She grew up on a farm) or perhaps an address before she read too far into it. The simple answer is that it's the year that the poem is being written from.

I was there when we moved by box,
Long before we moved by light.

This line refers to cars, or some other car-like vehicle, and the "Light," is teleportation.

I was there when we ate to recharge,
Long before we plugged in to recharge.

This basically means that people no longer have to eat, they've cybernetically enhanced their bodies so that they just have to plug into a power source to get more energy.

I was there when we walked on grass,
Long before it was covered with metal.

In my imagined future, most or all of the earth has been covered over with metal. There is no grass left, at least, none where the author lives.

I was there when we had children,
Long before we grew clones in tanks.

This one is pretty self explanatory.

I was there when we looked to the sky,
Long before the shell was installed.

This one confused the heck out of everyone. In this future world, I imagined that humanity had built a shell around the entire earth. The shell keeps things like asteroids and aliens out, but there's not really a sky anymore.

I was there when we had libraries,
Long before cranial downloads.

This basically means that people download information directly to their brains instead of reading.

I was there when animals roamed the earth,
Long before we owned the earth.

This line refers to most animals being extinct. The ones that are left all live in zoos, there are no wild animals anymore.

I was there when the trees began to walk,
Long before we cut them down.

This line also confused everyone. This was another bit of far-out imagining on my part. I was just going to write about humanity cutting down all the trees, but then I had the idea to give it even more of a twist.

I was partially inspired by the Ents in Lord of the Rings, as well as by the Forest of Cheem in Doctor Who, but I imagined that in the far future, earth's trees became a sentient race, with intelligence on par with humans. Then there was a war between the races, and humanity won.

I was there when we were human,
Long before we weren’t.

This line was everyone's favorite part. Just about everyone circled it, or underlined it and wrote that it was brilliant.

Basically the author of the poem no longer views humanity as human anymore. They've added too much to their minds and bodies, and taken too much from the earth. Even himself, as he's lived for hundreds of years, and has been a part of everything. He thinks that humanity has done so much that they've lost the right to be called human.

Yes, this is a rather depressing poem, but I thought it was fun to write. Like I said, I don't think any of this is going to happen, I am far more of an optimist overall when it comes to thinking about the future, but I do like stories where everything is terrible and people have to overcome it.

I didn't write it as such, but in my head I imagine that after the author wrote this poem, it started a movement to restore the earth to the way it used to be. So if it helps, you can imagine with me that it eventually has a happy ending. :)

TIIA 12 (The Internet Is Awesome)

Before I get into the kinds of videos I normally share, I have one, or two if you want to get technical, that I had to include, because it was too funny not to. One of the things that I love about the internet is that people will take one seemingly insignificant video and turn it into something utterly ridiculous. Case in point, this video.



You'll be asked to watch that video at the beginning of the next one, so I thought I would just add it here and get that out of the way before I post the next one. This is a video by a channel called Mediocre films, and it's a parody of the previous video, which went viral super fast a few months ago. That was a real video by a real woman, who was really upset, and she had every right to be. If I remember right, from what I've read, she's alone in on an island in Alaska with no way of contacting anyone from where she was, which was was she was practically in hysterics. Everything did turn out fine, I think she swam to the other shore, and was able to call for help, and she was rescued. Knowing what I knew about the backstory going in, I really wasn't wasn't expecting the parody to be funny. I was dead wrong. I about died laughing.



Now to get back to the kinds of videos I normally add to these things, lets start off with a Piano Guys video. The instruments in this video have the names of all their original founders from a few years ago. Anyone who helped support them in the time when they were just getting started should have their name, somewhere on those instruments. I was one of the original founders, I sent them some money as sort of a pre-kickstarter campaign, so theoretically, my name is in there somewhere. I never saw it, but you're welcome to look. :)



This next video is another hilarious sketch by Studio C. I don't even know why it's funny, and maybe it won't be to you, but I can't help but laugh every time I watch it.



Last summer I found this song, I don't even remember how, it was one of those rabbit-hole scenarios where you find yourself getting lost in the depths of the internet, discovering things you never knew you needed. This was one of those discoveries. The singer is Britney Spears, but the artist is a guy named Giorgio Moroder. He was a composer in the era of disco, and he hadn't released an album since around the 80's! He had just released a whole new album of music, most of which were collaborations with present day artists, some covers, like this one, and others original compositions. I got the album immediately, and it was amazing. This song was still my favorite though.



This next video left me VERY conflicted. I can not stand most televangelists. From what I've seen and read, too many of them are basically religious predators/swindlers. Including this guy, who has been involved in numerous scandals, which is why I did NOT want to like this video. However, Pogo, an electronic music artist, took this old footage, and turned it into something amazing. I did not want to love it, but I did. And I do. It's just too good to not love.



To follow that up, we'll move on to Pentatonix who are never not brilliant. This is another song off their new album, full of original songs. This is one of my favorites. If you're familiar with YouTube culture you'll recognize a whole lot of YouTuber cameos.



A few moths ago saw the release of the Peanuts movie, which turned out to be one of the EXTREMELY rare CGI animated movies based on a comic strip that was really good! Even the integration of modern music artists worked! I loved this song by Megan Trainor. It really captured the feel of the movie.



We'll end this post with a video by the always amazing Peter Hollens, it's a medley from the movie, The Prince of Egypt, which I have never seen, but I probably should, because if the music is half as good as Peter's cover, then it's probably amazing.