Saturday, December 25, 2010

A very day

     Today is a very important day for everyone. Some may take me for an idiot, or try to attribute a certain segregative feel to this day of the year, wich has not. This day is a day of unity for people of all ideologies and beliefs who know to love and be loved, and who enjoy it, to express that love they feel that maybe it's hard to express the rest of the year. Today is the day we can all get together and celebrate a historical event of incalculable value, a birth like no other in the whole of humanity.
     Yes, my readers, you guessed it: today is my birthday. No, wait... My birthday was yesterday, the twenty-fourth. ¿Now what was it? ¡Of course, today is my father's birthday! No, no, my dad's was the twenty-third. But the twenty-fifth was something, ¿right? ¡Oh, yes! ¡Hellboy's birthday, how could I forgot!
     A day like today, sixty-six years ago, on the outskirts of an English church, Anung Un Rama was invoked in this world by the gloomy Rasputin, in an operation financed by Hitler that secretly hid much more destructive objectives of... Well, I don't remember the whole story, but it goes something like that.
     Although now that I think of it, Hellboy was born the twenty-third as well, so his birthday is already over. ¿Wasn't I told that something happened the twenty-fifth? Well, it's alright, surely it wasn't that important.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

The beautiful imperfections of Tim Minchin

This is what happens when an Australian as funny as Tim Minchin wants to make another funny song of his, fails, writes some beautiful lyrics and we all end up crying.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Discursive contradiction

I made these three vignettes to represent something that happened to me in college this last semester. While all are based on real events, each of the three is less strict with reality than the previous one. At first I thought it had too much text, then I realized that it represents so well the university situation and then I left it as is.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Today I die

¿Can it be that I never write about videogames on my Notebook, they being one of the great loves of my life? Today I put available to you Today I die by the Argentinean Daniel Benmergui (from ADVA). While it seems most literally translated to Today I die, I translate it to Today I die because it is as it appears on the official translation into Spanish, from which I gather that is the closest to the original intention of the author1.
For less knowledgeable (ie, those who spend their time in more productive things, such as Facebook) I write some brief instructions that almost ruine the whole experience:
1. The whole game can be completed solely using the mouse, clicking and dragging things around on screen. Most visible elements are sensitive to the pointer.
2. The poem that appears on the screen can be modified by replacing the words with the ones that appear, and modifying it modifies the game. As a player, eventually, you have power only over the last word of each of the three verses2, which are respectively an adjective, a noun and a verb. A word can only be replaced by another of the same species.
3. To be able to use a word, it must come to have a bright color (green or yellow), which is usually accomplished by holding it safe from a certain danger for a certain amount of time.
It may not be the greatest thing in the world, but it was the first online game that made me respect this format, tiny and pixelated, as a possible means of artistic expression. The protagonist is a girl tied to a big rock that's sinking into the depths of the sea. To complete game you have to save her, and near the end there's a choice to make, more or less, which leads to one or the other of the two possible outcomes. Except for those who surrender, those who feel really frustrated and the cold-hearted, it is quite difficult or impossible to reach the ending without getting a lump in one's throat.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

I give up

I give up. ¿You hear me, mother? You were right: the man sings well. The song sucks, the video is ridiculous and all together is a big fat musical goods, but the man can sing, that I no longer deny it.