Messages

Yes, maybe I need rewatch the movie. Because last time I watched it, I could only find some three or four instances where Americans actually acted or spoke out of ignorance, prejudice or stupidity.
The rest of the time, they acted as politely and tolerantly as you'd expect from anyone, given the extreme situations. I mean, if you have a person giving you a bag of poo and then bringing a prostitute to your house, it's understandable if you run out of tolerance.

The times he actually got people to make those purely prejudiced and stupid comments were of course the highlights of the movie (like the arena-speech, the car-purchase (how fast need I drive to kill a crowd of Jews? and similar scenes) but they were rather few compared to all the scenes depicting how extremely uncivilised and backwards Borat's own culture is.

I think Sasha Cohen made much better satire when he was Ali-G in America, because then he got people to lower their guard without being so absurdly provocative.

[YOUR DAILY SONG TIP THREAD]

With all these loose music threads tossed out sporadically on the board, I thought we could organise it a bit.
So I present to you

YOUR DAILY SONG TIP THREAD

* You pick a song which you've listen to recently (though not necessarily for the first time), a song that the mainstream audience might not be already too familiar with.  Preferably, it should be something you came over by chance. A serendipity discovery.
* It doesn't have to be your favourite song, or belong to your favourite genre etc, so don't be affraid to post something non-representative. The only requirement is that you can write something personal about it, if it affected you in a good or bad way, etc.
* Write a little comment about it, how you discovered it and, (optional) some fun fact.
* You may post in this thread max once per day. You may only post in this thread if you can contribute with a song! If you wish to comment on a previous poster, separate the feedback from your own song with a horizontal rule [ hr ].
Posts in this thread that don't provide a Daily Song Tip will be removed!

Example:

Song: Nosebleed Section, by Hilltop Hoods (available on Youtube, albeit with a non-original video)
Comment: Definitely not my typical kind of music. Very corny, of all things Australian hip-hop! But this song is simply so corny it's good. Made me all giddy inside. Apparently, they are the shit in the Aussie hip-hop scene.
How I discovered it: My girlfriend played an old CD last night which she had got as a present during her stay in Australia, long time ago.  We listened to the song several times and giggled over it.
Fun fact: The sampled song is Melanie Safka's "People in the front row", which I, to my great satisfaction, reckognised immediately.

Now you go ahead! You can write more lengthy than I did, or half as long if you wish.

Ok, thanks a lot for your comments. Yeah the background obviously has some major incoherencies which I guess I need to address.

Vince Twelve; not exactly sure how long but maybe 3-4 hours. The process behind this particular piece was pretty linear, and I haven't had to re-paint (as of yet) large chunks of it.

Well if you ask around here, people will prefer that you work with that highly promising game of yours, rather than discuss Britney Spears on youtube

Dave Gibbons painted the backgrounds in BASS in a very oldfashioned, handpainted style, pretty much based on his comicbook experiences.

They are not flawless perspective-wise, nor are they very meticulous in any other technical aspect. I think their strength lies mostly in of their wonderful atmosphere, colours and imaginative settings, which create this imaginative, slightly enigmatic retro-futuristic style.

Let's just not start debating Britney now

Let's just say that you've learnt your first lesson about what it means to vent oppinions publically.
Also, it's interesting that you say "to hell with those who don't agree"...it pretty much underlines that you don't intend to take part of a debate, you just want to get your message across.
But you chose a medium which revolves around the commenting system, and not a particularly moderated or overly polite such. Something to ponder over.

Yep, Bio, this is the worst scenario. Then again, we don't need videoblogs to take part of random people's lack of self realization, just switch American Idol and you'll see an introverted teen with some sort of artifically inflated self-esteem make a fool of herself while the respected "norms" of the jury make sure to roll their eyes to the camera and squeeze out every drop of comedy this humiliation can produce.

We probably all remember the jedi-kid who taped himself while he had some make-believe fencing session with an imaginary light-sabre, several years ago.
But why do we remember him? Because back then, they weren't so plenty. They were some unfortunate souls who preceded the huge blog-bubble and thus caught the attention of basically everyone who browsed the web at that time. They were the prenatal victims of the nobody-revolution.
Now people can massacre their dignity much worse without reaching a fraction of that attention. So what I'm saying is basically that if everyone keeps humiliating themselves like this, there will be little room to expose the individual.

Well some of you know that I tend to draw my backgrounds rather sloppily. I wonder if this is enough for a "good" quality AGS game, or if you would expect more cleaned up backgrounds?

Imagine a few characters and some sporadic objects.

The process of cleaning up is so lengthy that I tend to stop working on my bg's roughly at this stage.
Feel free to give advice on how I can improve it in any direction, too

About Borat:

I thought it was to exploit America, not make fun of Kazakhstahn.

If you've seen it, you'd agree that 90% of the comedy is based on how primitive Kazakhstan is (or Borat himself), and only some remaing percents actually mock USA.

Just don't forget that many people take too wide steps into this public domain, and may not at first realise what it means to be "official", to spill your guts in front of a thousand anonymous viewers.
To share your life is to hand out portions of it, bits and pieces that may not regain control of. I don't mean that you'll necessarily end up with people stalking you and giving you mysterious phonecalls in the middle of the night, but I do think that it's not always beneficial to release so much of your private life without carefully thinking it over. It will change who you are, and it will radically change the way you regard yourself.

The problem is that most laymen - along with probably most dictionaries - have a more liberal view on the term, and do not automatically connect it with all those rules and codes and abbreviations that you have insight in. Most people simply consider a person who builds his body a bodybuilder, full stop.

But I think we now know better. We now know that people who build their bodies are bodybuilders to the same limited extent as those who simply run automatically become track and field athletes.

Yeah, good point, Geoffkhan.

In essence I think many types of communities cater for the same needs. Whether you share your artwork, your photos, your texts or poems etc; what you actually pursue is simply to be a part of a context, a piece of the great puzzle. That's why all those communities are primarily about friends-making and returning favours. People have their own centers/homepages, and it's all about gathering comments and guestbook entries. That's why comments are seldom sincere, elaborate criticism, they are just meant to say "I have seen you. You're now a part of my world. Now you need to head over to my page and see me."
In extension, blogs are just another medium for this, cutting some middle activity; now what you create is the pure you, about you, nothing else than you. The videoblog becomes the prime example of this jigsaw piece. You don't need to produce something any longer, you don't need to come up with something original, it can be only you doing nothing, but it won't matter, people won't be less inclined to comment or give guestbook entries. You've just made life easier for them, for now they don't have to pretend that they actually read all that goth-poetry or appreciated those 32 manga-sketches you published in your gallery, now they can cut to the chase and honestly say: "I've seen you now."

How's this? I think they are goblins.

Damn, Mods! I felt so special for a while there, and then you go ahead and post a list like that!!

It tells something about Lucas' ability to write dialogue when his movies are equally appreciated without voices.

But isn't this the case with the entire North America? My idea is that the names of all locations in each and every state are identical, only sort of re-shuffled in terms of sizes and relative positions.

I've thought about doing a VBlog but I'm not really that interesting or beautiful.

Fishing for pity will get you nowhere
You have a good radio-voice and you're at least very passionate about the stuff you do, which is interesting enough for many people, I'd say. Actually, go start one right now, I dare you.

Oh and in order not to hi-jack the thread....good job, Coffee Lady. And you look a bit like Avril Lavigne, but with more make-up.
I guess I myself prefer blogs which are more "themed", so to speak, with more defined topics and not just ramblings. But I guess it can be a good outlet when you feel a bit down and blase, or just crazy.

This video is bloody amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RGZ6k8dj7M&mode=related&search=

No offense, Chicky, but I can't tell whether you're being ironic or not. Or, for that matter, if the video was a parody or not.

Yep, remember this pic when it was first posted. I also remember it incited some sort of weird discussion between me and Snarky about the rotation of the earth and whatnot

And yes, I agree with previous posters about its resemblence to BASS backgrounds.

A problem I see with it is that the colourscheme is very "flat". You need to create more depth in your scene.

An idea:


The problem is of course that I haven't taken the time to highlight and crank up individual colours and central objects, making the whole picture a bit washed out. You need to start from here and re-paint certain central elements that the viewer can focus on.

I don't see why people are so picky about the definition of "body-builder".

Helm showed a picture to display a grotesque sample of someone who obviously is the result of a twisted view on human esthetics, which is also something you'll find in body-building. I'm not talking "let's drop by the gym tomorrow after school and push dumbbells and then spin a bit", I'm talking full-fledged, hard-core professional body-building, the sport whose participators are depicted on magazine covers in your local kiosk.

I mean, isn't body-building just about having as big and defined muscles as possible, along with visible veins? Or what did we miss?

Also, saying this like "sigh" and "no, Telemachus" in a debate sounds very snide to me.