Web-Based Romanticism

Point of fact: I'm a big soppy romantic. I may come across as a satirical female dog, but in my heart of hearts I'm as romantic as they come.* Another point of fact: I'm not particularly good with visuals. So with our web-based story I'm going to play to my strengths and edit the craig's list page and more specifically I'm going to "write" a big soppy romantic story about missed connections using craig's list.** It's not particularly fancy and not particularly original, but in my opinion when something not original is done really, really well it can still be great. And my goal is by focusing on a simple design with a simple story I'll hopefully be able to create something really great. Or at least very good. :Says something baiting and semi-pointless:
Anywho, that's my web-based story. I have a rough outline in my head based on years of making up little romantic stories in my head and watching way too many rom-coms, but the exacts aren't there and probably won't exist until I sit down and start doing it. That's generally how I work, save for my radio show but that's special. I have nothing else to say...

*I blame Disney, fairytales, and the Beatles. Also, quick thanks to Prof. Groom for giving us so much time on this assignment, though for those people who are actually doing complicated stuff they are probably slightly less grateful.
**Does anyone know if that name is actually capitalized (eg Craig's List)? I'm going with lower case, but I'm really not sure. Suggestions would be helpful (and prove if anyone reads these.)

Senior Thesis/Radio Show Playlist

I swear, I write more blog entries in my head than I actually write on my blog. I come up with great ideas and then stuff happens. Like other homework that's slightly more important (like say a thesis presentation) or relaxing (after said presentation.) This is slightly (but only slightly) more relevant for my other RL* blog where I can go a whole month without updating, but I find it interesting how I do that. I actually had a blog entry made up in my head about my senior thesis/presentation but...stuff. I will say that I starting next week (after the paper part is done) I can devote way more time to all my classes including this one** which is a good thing, especially considering what Prof. Groom is likely to lay on us. I will say this though: My senior presentation went really well and once this paper is done I will*** be completely free to not stress out about how much work I have to do.****
Anyway, while I have written about last week's radio show, I have yet to post a playlist and so will be doing that right now. And a reminder: If you want to listen to this week's show (70's singer/songwriters) be sure to tune into wmcw.umwblogs.org at 7pm on Wednesday. Should be a good show.

1. Hot Blooded - Foreigner
2. We're Not Gonna Take It - Twisted Sister
3. Rock and Roll All Nite - Kiss
4. Eye of the Tiger - Survivor
5. The Final Countdown - Europe
6. Africa - Toto
7. Livin' on a Prayer - Bon Jovi
8. Tom Sawyer - Rush
9. More Than a Feeling - Boston
10. Don't Stop Believin' - Journey

*Real life or more appropriately non-school blog
**Especially this one. That radio assignment was brutal
***Have four more papers to write and an opera to perform
****This is a lie. See above footnote for why

Random Comments and a Radio Show

I was a ballerina for nine years. Ballerinas have a very specific hairstyle and really any deviation from that hairstyle can cause problems. Ones hair is long, not layered, and does not involve bangs.* The first thing I did when I stopped being a ballerina was cut my hair incredibly short and get bangs. Since then my hairstyle has been a variation on long/short, bangs or no bangs. Usually the no bangs phases are fairly short and I haven't cut my hair nearly as short as I did when I first quite ballet. The wildest thing I've done to my hair is dye it and I'm currently working on backing out of that style decision.** So it should come as no surprise that I've decided to grow out my hair and I got bangs today. And with that I would like to give a warm welcome to the return of my fringe.***
I recently finished reading Neil Gaiman's biography of Douglas Adams and I noticed while reading that the way Mr. Gaiman (and the other authors') formatted their footnotes was the same way I formatted my footnotes in my blog(s). I figured this wasn't a coincidence and that the common source had to be The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Well, I've only found one example of similar footnote formatting but it confirms my suspicions that the way I format my footnotes in my blog(s) is based on the way Douglas Adams formatted footnotes in HHGG. However, I doubt Mr. Adams somehow fitted in six footnotes into one page.
Today was a marathon of student created radio shows on DS106. One of those shows was created by myself, Erin, Alex and Grace. It was a long and ardous process that at times was incredibly hilarious. I will forever remember this class as the class that introduced me to the concept of a manshed and the sisters Cheddar. Those are good things.

Velociraptor's Variety Show

The list is long as to who we need to thank, so I'll start by thanking Prof. Groom for being the first outsider we interviewed and for giving us such great material. I would also like to thank the following people for being interviewed by us and generally being used for our own amusement: Emily (MauveShirt), Matt, Meredith, Adriane, Titus, Grace's friend, Alex's Mom and high school dance teacher, Erin's brother and his friend, and a number of other people who's names I can't remember. We would also like to thank freesound.org and all its users for supplying most of the sounds we used as background as well as a number of YouTube users who's sounds we also used. As with most things in life this was a group effort in more than one way. I hope you guys enjoyed it, god knows some of it was a helluva lot of fun.

*I usually substitute bang for fringe in my head which just shows how insane I am.
**Not that I didn't enjoy having red hair, it's just hard to coordinate red hair with a largely green wardrobe without it looking like I celebrate Christmas all year. Next time I think I'll go for something slightly more neutral.
***This entire paragraph was written for the sole purpose of writing that sentence. Sorry.

Cheesy 80's Rock is Not in My Wheel House

Last night in a rather confused conversation with Prof. Groom (at least from my perspective), he basically ended up dissing me for playing into the stereotype of the kind of music that existed in the 1980s on my radio show this past week. When people think of the 80s, they think of the music my sister associates with the 80s* unless they are specifically tuned into other less popular genres of music. But for me, I don't necessarily associate the 80s with White Snake or Journey. I'm more likely to think of the Talking Heads or Duran Duran, really loud clothing and John Hughes. This is because I grew up not with Toto but with the Talking Heads and the Tom Tom Club.
The point of my themed shows is not only to expand my listeners knowledge of music, but also to a certain extent to expand my own knowledge of music**. Because I grew up with two parents very much attuned to the alternative music scene of the eras in which they lived, some of the more mainstream stuff got pushed to the side or completely ignored and derided. Really, if this were all about me, I should be doing disco instead of singer/songwriters for the 70s because I know about ABBA and not much else when it comes to disco. But for better or worse this isn't all about me, so I'm doing singer/songwriters next week.
I have come up with a new idea though for one of my themed shows. I've always had problems programming female artists into my regular shows, a fact that's bothered me almost from day one, and so for my fourth themed show I'm going to be devoting an entire hour to female singer/songwriters. So while I might play into certain stereotypes, I'd much rather go for an alternative than low hanging fruit most days of the week. Even if that means playing hair metal.

*This is not meant to be a diss to my sister, but fact is she really likes hair metal. And she knows it.
**Except for the Kinks. That show's entirely because I don't get to write about them this semester and I freakin' love them.

Saturday Morning Cartoons

There are shows from one's childhood that, because of the wonders of the internet and DVDs, you can rewatch now. When a person does that, they usually notice things in those shows they didn't notice when they were 6 or 7. I'm not much for nostalgia when it comes to the cartoons I watched on Saturday mornings. I'm more prone to be nostalgic about music from well before I was born and books that I read in elementary school. I've really only recently gotten into television as an artistic medium and even then I'm less likely to look back longingly at what I watched when I was a kid because there so much good TV happening right now that to me there isn't a point to going back and rewatching "Rocko's Modern Life" or "The Adventures of Pete and Pete." I almost prefer keeping those shows as they are in my memory because I feel like rewatching them will somehow ruin them in a weird way.
My sister has no such worries and so recently purchased the little known TV series "ReBoot." ReBoot was a computer generated cartoon that aired on ABC from 1994 to 1996 and was about characters who lived inside a computer. Before last night, when my dad, myself, and my sister watched the first episode, I only had a vague memory of what the show was about. I didn't remember the character's names for the most part (though they came back to me the minute we started watching) I didn't even really remember what the show was about to be honest. All I knew was that the technology the show used to create its animation was way ahead in terms of computer animation at the time and that it was something I watched along with "Animaniacs" and a plethora of other Saturday morning cartoons. The first thing that hit me watching the show last night was how very corny it is, but that's almost to be expected with a kid's cartoon show. But what really stuck out to me, 15 years or so after the fact, were all the computer references. The main villain of the first episode is Megabyte an evil virus who's trying to get into the Super Computer. The non-"sprite" characters, the one's without names basically, are 1's and 0's. Literally, they are in the shape of 1's and 0's. There was a reference to readme files and Main Frame, the city where the show is set, looks like the inside of a computer. I get those references now, but there's no way as a six or seven year old that I would have gotten any of them. The show is as much for kids as it is for computer geeks (at least at a very basic level). And watching that first episode for the first time in fifteen years...it was just kind of strange. Not necessarily a bad kind of strange, but just strange. I don't have a real hankering to now watch all the shows I watched as a kid and watching that one episode didn't really change my perception of the show as a whole, but it also wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be. Just kind of strange.

Project Update

Here is a quick update on my semester project. Very quick actually. Moving on. In bullet points*:

• Not all cheesy 80's rock comes from the 80's. Some of it comes from the late 70's and might more accurately be categorized under glam rock that happened to influence cheesy 80's rock.
• The reason I'm referring to this show as cheesy 80's rock is because what I consider to be cheesy 80's rock actually falls into multiple pop/rock/ categories including hair metal, album rock, and stadium rock. Since they all sound the same it's easy to lump them into "cheesy 80's rock" but the fact is that Journey does not equal Twisted Sister no matter how hard you try. And I've tried, trust me.
• Cheesy 80's rock tends to be longer in terms of song length than music that came before it and music that came after it. Which means that my original idea of asking for song suggestions will not be happening because I already have enough music. This makes me a little sad, but we shall persevere.

More information will be imparted during next week's show. Until then enjoy AV Club user's interpretations of Charlie Sheen as a tiger-blooded warlock. Some of them are really good.

*Bullet points are actually my favourite way of dealing with the fact that I can't always come up with complete sentences/paragraphs. It's a wonder I haven't used these more often to be honest.

Zombies and Other Things

Now that I've given myself a few days to relax and gotten through my mid terms largely intact I'm going to do an entry on my radio group's five minute clip.
Our clip, as you heard in class last Thursday, is about zombies. I would like to point out that our entire show is not about zombies, but instead we are using zombies as kind of a back drop to a more... ordinary (?) talk radio show.* The reason we went for the zombie interviews first was because of all the segment ideas we came up with, the zombie interviews would be the quickest and easiest to do. Initially we wanted the zombie aspect of our show to be more surprising, but since you've all heard it, we're going to embrace the "campy" aspect of zombies and just go for it.**
Ds106 velociraptorsvarietyshow by cydwarning30
The format for the zombie interviews, by the way, will be I ask a question and then a bunch of people answer that question, hence why Prof. Groom's answers/stories just seem to come from nowhere. Right now we have over 10 minutes of zombie interviews and then over the break everyone will be doing other non-zombie interviews and when we get back we'll be putting together probably the most complicated segment. After that it will all be mashed together into one crazy show that is not entirely about zombies.

*I say ordinary, but if someone from my group can come up with a better adjective, that would be good. Because our show isn't really that ordinary to be honest. We just have some less insane segments in it.
**I keep imagining our show as this strange combination of "This American Life," "Monty Python's Flying Circus," and the epilogue of Shaun of the Dead. Also, there's nothing wrong with camp or being campy. At least with camp you don't have to take what you're doing too seriously and can laugh when your teacher talks about his manshed. Because that shits just funny.

Nora's Awesome Vintage Radio Show - 2/23/11

A word of warning before I begin: My brain is currently dribbling out my ears from mid terms. Therefore coherancy is not going to be a strong point for this entry. And now we commence...
Last night was the last "regular" show I'll be hosting until March 22 and it went pretty well. The fact that I was physically and mentally exhausted didn't impede things too much and I actually ran under when I was worried I would end up running over. All in all a good way to leave things until the 22nd. For those of you who regularly read this blog the playlist for this week is going to look very familiar largely because I just couldn't be bothered to come up with a new playlist from whole cloth. So here's this week's run down:
Playlist

1. Jump Into the Fog - The Wombats
2. Grenade - Bruno Mars
3. Rolling in the Deep - Adele
4. Howlin' For You - The Black Keys
5. Under Cover of Darkness - The Strokes
6. Glad Girls - Guided By Voices
7. My Body - Young the Giant
8. I Can Talk - Two Door Cinema Club
9. Hard Times - Patrick Wolf
10. Born This Way - Lady Gaga
11. Long Time - Cake
12. Time Honoured Tradition - Kaiser Chiefs
13. Sway - Matthew Morrison

Releases

• Adele - 21
• Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX - We're New Here
• Radiohead - The King of Limbs
• Bright Eyes - The People's Key
• Drive By Truckers - Go-Go Boots

News

• Twin Peaks, Star Trek, and The Twilight Zone among shows coming to Netflix streaming aka Nora's Summer Plans
• Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark hires some musical help or how not to spend $65 billion.

Next time I write it will be about cheesy 80's rock.

Project Manifesto

I'm still a bit hazy on this whole final project thing we have to do for this class (I should really write down the stuff Prof. Groom says) but I'm writing out this manifesto outlining what my project is going to be. And it's going to involve Radio DS106 and my own show.
As I told Prof. Groom on Friday I'm of two minds when it comes to this project. On the one side I want to do something amazing that forces me to expand outside my comfort zone. On the other side I'm taking 20 credits and there are only so many hours in the day. So here's my compromise: Theme shows. For the rest of the semester I will be hosting my normal hour long show but each week I'll devote the show to a new topic. I'll also air the show my group puts together in conjunction with a normal half of my show. This ambitious project will start the week after spring break so I can give my regular listeners a head's up on what's going on. After that I'll start with hair metal and who know's maybe I'll even do a week on rap.
I will say this though: I'm not going to devote a show to a genre or topic I absolutely hate. And I'm not going to do this every week. This is my last semester as WMWC DJ and probably the last time I'll ever host a radio show. I want to go out on a bang not on a "Nora completely went off the rails." Every two weeks I'll do my regular show and I'm going to continue to announce the week's releases and if there's a news story of utter awesomeness that will be included, even during a theme show. Granted this does mean that my listeners will be subjected to at least one week of the Kinks and one week of Glee. The point though is to learn and to inform which I think is the whole point of this project in the long run. Whether people will enjoy is kind of beside the point.
So that's my manifesto. I don't know whether my show will air on Radio DS106, but if you're at all interested in listening to my show it airs weekly on Wednesdays at 7pm over at WMWC Blog. As I said this week will be normal but the week of March 7th will be hair metal and I guarantee I will play the original version of "Don't Stop Believin'" because I'm awesome. Check it out.

Sound Story

My first experience with Audacity was during my senior year of high school when I was preparing my IB Music portfolio. Part of the portfolio was twenty minutes (more or less) of performing. My private clarinet teacher introduced me to Audacity as a means of recording my performances of two pieces for the portfolio. While my teacher had a pretty nice set up for recording I had a less than nice set up so I got to spend a lot of time figuring out to my the solo piece I had to record sound as good as the accompanied piece I had recorded at my teacher's house. I can't remember whether I managed to do that, but I did explore Audacity quite a bit during that period. Since then I've used Audacity on and off for various projects including something I did for my freshman seminar and then during my junior year putting together a portfolio for my application to the University of Westminster. I wouldn't say I'm an expert at Audacity, I even learned something while putting together this 90 second sound story, but I know my way around the program okay. Anyway, this is a really long introduction to my group's sound story which I cleaned up this afternoon.* I'll explain the story after the "jump."

Ds106soundstory by cydwarning30

A group of jolly kids are walking in the woods having fun and whatnot. A magic tinkling is heard in the air along with the creepy** cicadas come out in the summer. The kids head toward the sounds, intrigued my what they hear. And again, the creepy cicadas. Soon they hear the magic tinkling and the sound of music box coming from the creepy cave. Curious they head into the cave despite it being creepy. As the trapped wind roars around them they find the music box and laugh one. Last. Time.***
Sounds courtesy of the following FreeSound users: Royal, DJ Cronos, Timbre, Hazure,Shades, EuroBlues.


*Or more accuratly put, put the thing together for the first time in one track. If you ever need to convert a stereo track to a mono track in Audacity, for whatever reason, simply click on the "Track" menu on the main menu bar the click "Stereo track to Mono track." So simple a baby could do it.
**I find cicadas super creepy. They just sit there making their creepy noise and you know that if you piss them off they'll attack you in your sleep. I really don't like cicadas.
***Trying to impart the creepiness of this story. It may or may not work.

What I Like About You/What I Like About Me

I'm going to say right off the bat I'm in desperate need of a nap. This whole going to sleep at midnight waking up at 8am just isn't working for me. Anyway, if this entry comes across slightly incoherent blame it on the sleep deprivation.
My immediate impression of this class after the first week was "Damn these guys are creative." And over the past two weeks everyone has proven me right. The output for both the Daily Shoot and the design/visual assignments have been just amazing. Trying to pick favourites, which is a hard task no matter the format, is nearly impossible because I like so much of what everyone did. As for what I did, well that's a lot easier. But I'll start with which assignments I liked the best and then tell you what I liked the best from what I did. Short and sweet.
I've said this before, but I will say it again, I'm not a big visual/design person. I'm a music major and to you can divide music majors into four major camps: those who want to perform, those who want to teach, those who want to do research, and those who want to compose. From these we can break it down even further to two bigger categories: those who create and those who don't. I'm in the don't camp. However despite not being someone who creates I appreciate those who do and I admire the work that they do create. So while I can't (at the moment) create a .gif file or do anything in Photoshop (except destroy) I appreciate and value those who do. So from the assignments outside of Daily Shoot, here are the ones I wish I could have done and the three that I did do to some success.

• The Big Caption/The Big Hip Hop - I like the idea and loved what some of fellow classmates made based on this assignment. It's simplistic but perfectly encapsulates internet fandom as I know it, so seeing it translated into something not fandom based is pretty damn cool. Go Tim Owens.
• Four Icon Challenge: I love the premise behind this. Distill your favourite movie or tv show into four basic elements. So simple, yet so difficult. I thought about doing this one and even knew what icons I wanted to use, but...I didn't. However I love the idea and some of the icon challenges you guys made were awesome. Go Kyle Tezak and Tim Owens (again).
• Minimalist Travel/Movie/TV Posters: Before this class I had seen minimalist movie posters before and had always been impressed with their ingenuity. Expanding that to travel/tv posters just made sense and the designs that I saw were just as if not more impressive than the minimalist movie posters I had seen before. Go Martha Burtis/Tom Woodward.
• Buddy Photo: I did this one largely because it's a fairly simple if really fun idea. Bring along a little "buddy" and take pictures of it wherever you go. I brought it along with me on a Tuesday or Thursday and it was fun, probably more fun than the Daily Shoot (in my opinion.) And it was student created so kudos to anagahama for that spot of genius.
• Stories Written in Windows Media Player: Another one I did because it was simple and fun. I had seen memes involving creating things based on music collections before, but I liked trying to create my own poem based on songs in my music collection. And the poems other people created made more sense than mine and were awesome. Go callean.

So those are my favourites. As for what I did what I liked the best was my Buddy Photo series. Explaining Cthulhu to my music history teacher was fun as was finding places to take little Cthulhu's picture. And there endeth my ramble on the past two weeks. If you can get something out of that you are a smarter person than me.

The Playlist That Would Have Been My Radio Show This Week

Unfortunately I won't be having my regular radio show this week.* However every once in awhile I put together random playlists, largely composed of songs I recently download** and while I was listening to it today I realized "hey, this group of three songs would be great on my radio show." So, since I haven't been blogging as consistently as I would like*** I'm going to create a radio show and put on here. It will only be the playlist, but youtube videos will be involved, so that's nice. Here we go:
Playlist

1. Love Song - Sara Bareilles
2. Grenade - Bruno Mars
3. Rolling in the Deep - Adele
4. Howlin' For You - The Black Keys
5. Glad Girls - Guided By Voices
6. Fluorescent Adolescent - Arctic Monkeys
7. My Body - Young the Giant
8. I Can Talk - Two Door Cinema Club
9. Under My Thumb - La Roux
10. Hard Times - Patrick Wolf
11. Long Time - Cake
12. I've Got a Feeling - The Beatles
13. Sway - Matthew Morrison

Enjoy and if anyone wishes to use this on Radio DS106 I give you permission to do so, you don't even have to say it's from me (though that would be nice). Expect more blogging about the Daily Shoot and other things tomorrow.

*This falls under "Crap you guys don't get to know because it's from personal life and I'm not that touchy feely with the internet." Sorry guys, there's got to be a line and this is it.
**Legally. From Microsoft.
***You'll find this if you ever talk to me about school or my radio show or how well I play the clarinet: I hold impossibly high standards for myself. Standards I'll probably never reach but keep me going.

Waiting for the Audio Assignments...

Last design assignment before we start what I think will be my favourite section of the class: audio.* It's a mix of Tim Owen's "The Big Caption" assignment and "The Big Hip Hop." See, I did what I thought was "The Big Hip Hop" without reading through all the instructions. Instead of picking a song from the Top 100, I picked a song from my collection that I thought fit the photo.** So I've put this under both assignments because technically what I created doesn't really fit either but is in the spirit of both. This was created at Picnik using a photo from the Big Picture. The song is "Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai from the Center Stage soundtrack.*** Enjoy!


*Three and a half years on the radio, 11 years playing the clarinet, singing since forever, and I'm a music major. There's a reason I consider myself an audiophile.
**Though I'm sure I could find a Top 100 song that would fit the photo just as well if not better. In fact, from the Top 10, Katy Perry's "Firework" would work (and I only know that song because of Glee don't take my hipster accreditation away from me.)
***Before I realized I like chocolate and am always going to be 5'10" I wanted to be a ballerina. Nine years of ballet classes prove that fact. And I still like that movie and I still really like the soundtrack.

It's All Very Small Really

From the following tweet my our prof: "What's behnd the 106 in #ds106? Check out this article http://bit.ly/g0GVkh thank you @procsilas You are a maniac http://bit.ly/etQlWA"
I went to the first website: 106 (number)
I looked for any references to 42* and didn't find any.
Preceded to scroll to the bottom of the article and found this:
Smiled profusely at the cleverness of however stuck that reference in there and went "ctrl + print screen."
Copied the image into MS Paint, cropped the image down to the bare essentials and saved it to the desktop.
Went back to twitter and copied the tweet from Prof. Groom and wrote this entry.

*The answer to life the universe and everything. I look for it almost every where.

Five Card Story

I did this a few days ago, but have been away from my computer so here it is. My five card story. Fill in the details with your imagination (and by the way I imagine it's set in Italy, but any country will do.)

---

Five Card Story: A Day in the City

a Five Card Flickr story created by imnora

flickr photo by krutscjo

flickr photo by bionicteaching

flickr photo by kairós

flickr photo by bionicteaching

flickr photo by DavidDMuir

It was a day in a city they'd never been to, enjoying the sites, sounds, and food of this utterly foreign place.

---

Photo of a Poster

Parts of the walls the define my room(s) have, for the past nine years have been lined with tickets and postcards documenting my life as I've made my way from high schooler to nearly post-collegiate.* Right now I have about 35 tickets, one bumper sticker, 8 postcards, one clay figurine of Ricky Wilson, 4 iron patches, three keychains, one candy bar wrapper, 1 bat, and one lecture leaflet that constitute what I call "The Ticket Wall." There's also a photo of a poster on a telephone booth in London. While I could tell a story about every piece of paper that are on my walls, this photo holds a special place in my heart because of what it depicts and the timing of the photo itself.
My grandparents decided on something of a whim to take my sister and I to London over spring break. I was a freshmen in high school at a boarding school in Staunton, VA while my sister was a senior at the local public school. So it was decided that trip would be over my sister's spring instead of over mine (which totally makes sense by the way.) I had been a hardcore anglophile for about a year at this point and so the idea of visiting London, even if only for a week, was absolutely thrilling. And London held up its end. Even when walking around in 2 inch heels to the top of St. Paul's Cathedral was awesome. One of the things I remember most clearly though are the posters that lined the Underground and dotted the streets for a movie called Shaun of the Dead. I didn't recognize the actor on the poster** but I loved the tag lines on the posters and given their ubiquity in the city I was deeply interested in seeing this movie. I figured there would zombies***, but what else was this movie about? While I lost track of the movie after leaving London, my sister didn't and when it eventually came out on DVD she pounced on it. Shaun of the Dead remains one my favourite movies and I've since seen everything produced by writing/acting team behind the movie. And the great thing is, I will always have that picture of that poster. When DVDs and Blu-Ray discs are over taken my brain implants**** I'll still have that photo and I'll still remember the story behind that photo. And I can say the same thing for every ticket, postcard, iron patch, candy bar wrapper, key chain, bumper sticker, and lecture leaflet in my collection. Which is incredibly sentimental and I'll just leave it with this: You've got red on you.

*A fact which scares the crap out of me in a way I can't even describe. That and 8th grade just doesn't seem that long ago to be perfectly honest.
**Simon Pegg for the unintiated. And if you haven't seen this movie yet go see it. NOW!
***Because, well, duh.
****This will happen. All the sci-fi movies tell me so.

Creativity Conundrum

Creativity is kind of a funny thing*. I had a choir director way back in the day say to my mom that anyone who can talk can sing. This isn't true. My mother, bless her heart, can't sing on pitch to save her life, try as she might. But while my mother can't sing on pitch I can't draw anything beyond stick figures despite the fact that my mom majored in studio art.** I also can't compose music*** despite the fact that my dad majored in music composition. But what I can do (besides sing) is write. In spite of the fact that I shouldn't be able to write as well as I do, I write quite a lot. For me, my writing is the only original creative outlet I have. I might not be able to write a piece of creative fiction, but I can sure as hell tell you about my day in an interesting way.****
What interests me about creativity is the way people define. Society almost automatically ascribes creativity to people who are some how involved in the performing or fine arts (and somewhere in there people who write books, poems, and short stories). The person who created the internet wasn't creative, he was very skilled at his job and was quite possibly a genius. But not creative. The men who figured out DNA weren't creative, nor was whoever actually invented the telephone.***** They were just really smart and very, very talented. Einstein has never been described as creative, just as a genius. And this divide intrigues me. Why can't scientists or mathematicians be described as creative? Because let's be honest, they are creative, very creative. Yes, artists are creative, but so are biologists and geologists.
So that's my deal. I think anyone who expands human knowledge is creative and that creativity should not be limited to the fine and performing arts (and writers.) There will those who disagree (or think I'm making a really lame point.) But I stand by my idea because it means that the people who major in computer science and biology are equally creative as people who major in theatre or studio art. And I like that principle.

*I literally had this conversation in my Intro to Theatre class two weeks ago. Most of what you'll read is based on that discussion.**Therefore I should have natural skill at drawing things beyond stick figures.
***See previous footnote.
****But not today. Today was really boring.
*****I've watched way too many episodes of QI and therefore know too many random facts. I'm pretty sure Alexander Graham Bell didn't actually invent the telephone though. Pretty sure.

Nora's Awesome Vintage Radio Show - 2/9/11

So this week's show was interesting on many levels, at least for me. The first level was just doing my show (which is always interesting). The second level was incorporating an assignment from this class to make the playlist for this week's show. And the third level of interestingness was the fact that while I was broadcasting over WMWC waves I was also broadcasting over Radio DS106* waves. And there was no fourth level of interestingness.** And now for the run down.
Playlist

1. Glad Girls - Guided By Voices***
2. Sail - Awolnation
3. We Are Golden - Mika
4. Heads Will Roll - Yeah Yeah Yeahs****
5. Rolling in the Deep - Adele
6. Cecilia - Simon and Garfunkel
7. The Underdog - Spoon
8. All My Friends (London Session) - LCD Soundsystem
9. 40 Day Dream - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
10. She's Not There - The Zombies
11. Twist and Shout - The Beatles
12. The Authority Song - Jimmy Eat World

News

• Cake tops the charts and helps the record industry reach an all time low. Go Cake!
• The Strokes have a new album and a new single. Go Strokes!
• Goodbye Guitar Hero. You will be missed in dorm rooms throughout the country.

As mentioned there were no releases this week, but I expect there will be next week. And until then have a good weekend and don't let the overwhelming stress of school get to you. Two more weeks and it will be spring break! And then you can catch up on the sleep you've been missing.

*Others may call it DS106 radio, but I will ever follow the tradition of the BBC and call it Radio DS106. Besides, it makes the whole thing sound more stately and less insane (which it actually is.)
**Interestingness is a word and failed Inception reference is awesome on some level.
***No videos this week since I'm trying to get this out before I go to bed. And save for maybe a handful, most of these songs wouldn't have videos anyway so no real loss.
****What are Yeah Yeah Yeahs? :end veiled reference to Glee:

Adventures with Little Cthulhu

My days, by and large a pretty busy. But today, as part of anagahama visual assignment, I brought a little "buddy" around with me to document my day. anagahama may have been thinking of something else, but I had fun taking pictures of Little Cthulhu* in the various places I live and work. And, as compromise of sorts this will count for a "design" assignment** because I don't do design.*** So here's the adventures of Little Cthulhu.

*Purchased at a comic bookstore in York, England about a year ago.
**Or at least I'm hoping Over Lord Jim will allow for this compromise.
***And at this point Over Lord Jim says "No! You must stretch yourself in uncomfortable ways!" and I mumble something and do a real design assignment.

Playlist Poetry

[caption id="attachment_95" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="This is what happens when Nora makes a playlist"][/caption]Here is my playlist poem. There are some words that probably need to be inserted to have the poem actually make sense and admittely those last four songs don't actually make sense in the morning light* but the neat thing is, is that because of this assignment I now have the playlist for this weeks show. So here's the breakdown:

• Glad Girl - featured on How I Met Your Mother
• Sail - number 18 on Alt-Nation's weekly top 18
• Rolling in the Deep - realized Adele was coming out with a new album and had a new single
• Cecilia - featured as part of chart on HIMYM
• The Underdog - featured on HIMYM
• She's Not There - featured on Sunday night's episode of Glee
• All My Friends (London Session) - mentioned in last week's show
• We Are Golden - because it's awesome
• New Low - featured on the Alt-Nation's weekly top 18 (I forget which number and probably won't be played on the show)
• Heads Will Roll - featured as part of a mashup on Sunday night's episode of Glee
• Twist and Shout - my friends mentioned it at their birthday party.
• The Authority Song - Jimmy Eat World are playing on Wednesday.

And for those of you wondering, yes that is really how I make my playlist every week. Two parts what I've seen on TV, 1 part what's been recently released and 1 part whatever the hell I feel like. The fact that this week's playlist makes a kind of poem is just kind of icing on the cake. And I don't have to worry about making a playlist this week. Up next: Little Cthulu takes part in my Tuesday/Thursday schedule.