Hell-OOOO Nurse!

So I just watched the latest Nostalgia Chick video which was about the 'Smurfette Principle'. I'm not gonna go much into detail, let's just say that it's another very well made video about very interesting subject (women in media, basically).
But what I really took away from the clip (probably not her intention tho) was a craving for one of the greatest animated cartoons ever created: The Animaniacs.

 

 With Yakko, Wakko and Warner-Sister Dot!

It's one of those cartoons I basically grew up with. It was whacky, all over the place and at the same time incredibly intelligent. It was actually partly way to clever for kids to understand, so if you watched this show as a child, there will be many jokes (even kinda naughty ones!) that you most definitely will have missed. The Nostalgia Critic already went into detail about those naughty moments, check out his hilarious video.

What I want to talk about is the intelligence of the cartoon and the sheer effort put into the show itself. Have a look at this song straight out of the cartoon:

'Modern food technology has the answer!'

Yakko starts listing ingredients of modern sweets and candy bars, revealing that basically everything they eat is filled with chemical 'enhancements' and sugar. But, being the little rascals they are, the Animaniacs really don't mind and - representing the modern society children for a moment - state that they love eating sweets and will stuff them inside their bellies until their 'insides start to rot'. Subtle.

In my opinion a show needs a good amount of balls to denunciate its main audience like that - and of course the whole food industry that nourishes those children and their families.

Now, regarding the aforementioned efforts, check out the music itself: The rhymes are superb, the musical score (as was usual for the Looney Toons and Steven Spielberg) is absolutely brilliant, and as much as you need to get used to the voices, you can't blame them for not knowing how to sing. To me, listening to those songs is not only a very informative experience, but also very pleasant and a feast for the ears.

Another example for the wit of the songs is this little ode to Christmas in which the Animaniacs end every verse in a different word combination that resembles the french Noël. Seriously, what kid is supposed to get that except the ones who just happen to grow up bi-lingual?

One last video - The ultimate Animaniacs Classic: The Nations Of The World!


'... GERMANY, now in one piece!'

Epic.


Other great Animaniacs songs:
- The US-Presidents
- The Senses ('The sense of SMELL's the way to tell that you need to change your socks.')
- The Intro (pure nostalgia, makes me dance every time)

The Beautiful Side Of Winter

Winter can be a time of near-accidents on icey roads, wet feet due to snow slush and frosty temperatures, thus providing plenty of reasons to just stay inside, build a bed fortress with blankets and pillows and consume hot chocolate and cookies.
Still, Winter can be beautiful, as can be seen in Tiny's blog. Also, when I once went through my kitchen, I saw something I immediately needed to take pictures of:

 

  

 

Yeah well... it kinda made me go awww. And it definitely made me appreciate Winter a little more. But it really makes me crave for a comfy bed fortress.








Oh wait - I totally have that!

It's WINTER-EEN-MAS everybody!

Yes, it's this time of year again: Yesterday began the season of Winter-Een-Mas. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's the annual holiday for gamers - by gamers! In fact, its inventor is avid gamer Tim Buckley who first let it take place on his webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del in 2003 and increased its impact, popularity and significance among gamers by including epic story arcs about it throughout the years (see here for the respective strips).

The season starts on January 25th and ends on January 31st. So what can you do?

Besides wearing a sweet WEM shirt such as this. Hell yeah.

Why, play, of course!

To please the Gods of Gaming, you can choose a game of your liking and dedicate your time with it to them. Why not pick up an old game you used to play and refresh your memories?
Or take that old console out of your basement and dust it off!
Take some friends and have a go or two at some multiplayer classics!
Or just play your very favourite game in the Gaming Gods' name!

Two years ago I held a big Winter-Een-Mas party at my place over a whole weekend. Friday night people came over with their computers, and we hooked them up and did some LAN gaming. The next day even more people came and stayed all through Sunday, but Saturday was the most epic day:
I placed all my consoles in my bedroom and borrowed some fine multiplayer games (like Guitar Hero), and other people brought along some consoles as well - in the end we had an X-Box, a PS2, a Super Nintendo, a Sega Genesis, a Dreamcast and a Gamecube, all hooked up onto two TVs.
The kitchen was were we played tabletops, card games and everything not electronic (I think we even had action figures), and when B. showed everyone how 1000 Blank White Cards works, the room was buzzin.

Sadly, noone ever made pictures and I was too busy playing to do it myself, so my awesome selfmade Winter-Een-Mas crown will never be seen by the people.

But my, what a mighty sweet t-shirt that is.

So, people on Earth - I call upon you to play! Have fun just for the sake of it! Let go of your everyday trouble and play whatever you like, even if it's just a round of Solitaire or  a round of cards with someone -

to you who shall indulge themselves in the pleasure of the game, the Gods Of Gaming will be gratious and gracious.

Addendum: Wonders Of The Solar System

I just discovered that symphonyofscience.com who is the awesome dude behind the Carl Sagan music videos just recently released a third installment of his science music. I think it's definitely better than the second one, and it also starts off with an amazing quote by Sagan. I know at least one person who likes this specific quote :)
But again, there are so many great things said in these clips, it's impossible to pick some favourites. Check it out:


'We could be in the middle of an inter-galactic conversation, and we wouldn't even know.'

Do you have any favourite scientific quote? What topic in science do you find most interesting/intriguing/important?

Wonders Of The Solar System

The Oberhausen Gasometer currently holds an exhibit called 'Out Of This World - Wonders Of The Solar System'. It depicts the human exploration of the universe in a stunningly beautiful and very informative way, containing dozens of oversized pictures, recreations of space stations and historical/modern age tools for cosmic measurement, and - probably the main feature of the exhibition - remodels of the planets of our solar system, sized in scale to each other, shown on the lower floor of the Gasometer. Only the Moon appears a little larger (it is considered 'the largest Moon on Earth'), floating above the heads of visitors on the main stage, illuminated so that it is simulating its phases.

View from the top of the Gasometer. Picture taken by Tiny (2010)

I visited the exhibit with my fellow hobby scientist Tiny; check out her sweet blog for more cool pics and impressions!


Btw: Just the name alone made me want to watch the great documentary series from the early 80s, 'Cosmos: A Personal Voyage'. Carl Sagan really built himself a monument with this series; the whole universe (as far as we knew back then) explained by a very charismatic Sagan with visual greatness and deep philosophical elements, but still so very easy to understand that you feel really smart. Go check it out, if you can and if you are at least a little interested in our universe; 'Cosmos' is probably the best way to learn about it. When I visited the exhibit, I felt really clever because I knew some of the facts already - and more, since you can only put so much text on a single information panel.

Here's a great song made entirely from 'Cosmos' quotes (including a cameo from Stephen Hawking) for the five people out there who don't know it already.


'If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars'. Yes please.


The same guy who made this great video made another song consisting not only of Sagan quotes, but other great scientists as well. It doesn't flow as well as the first one though (at least in my opinion), but the quotes are grand. 
Also, check out Sagan explaining our limited understanding of the Fourth Dimension:


' 'Hello', says the three-dimensional creature.'

Always blows my mind if I think about it for too long.

Tiny sent me an interesting video featuring Carl Sagan, Richard Feynmann and others, talking about 'The Fine Art Of Not Knowing':
'Science is not about the truth. What science is about is making our beliefs less false.'

And to end this little rant, here's another great quote by Carl Sagan considering early assumptions about the atmosphere of Venus.
'The arguments, if we can dignify such a phrase, went something like this:
I can't see a thing on the surface of Venus. Why not? Because its covered with a dense layer of clouds. Well, what are clouds made of? Water of course. Therefore Venus must have an awful lot of water on it. Therefore the surface must be wet. Well if the surface is wet it's probably a swamp. If there's a swamp there's ferns. If there's ferns, well maybe there's even dinosaurs.
Observation: You couldn't see a thing.
Conclusion: Dinosaurs.'

Brilliant.

12 Things I Learned From Learning Instruments

Bear with me, I know this is a long text with no pictures or other visual stimulation. But if you persevere, maybe you can even learn something from it! Now isn't that fun?

I've been learning instruments since I was about 10-ish: first I taught myself how to play the drums, a few years later I wished for an electric guitar for Christmas, the following year I got my first bass guitar. I consider myself a good enough musician to successfully play in bands (I've played in several so far) and on stage, although I can't think of myself as a professional – on rare occasions I do feel like one, but that's only because I have learned a few things over the years that increase my insight into how learning and actually mastering music instruments works. The best part: This is not entirely limited to music at all; most points can be translated into basically everything else, like art, sports, writing, you name it.
Some of them are pretty obvious, and I guess everyone who learns anything will one day or another stumble upon them, or you'll hear them from every teacher. But others are a little more specific and sometimes contrary to what you're trying to achieve (or even conflictive to another point on the list), but they can really help a lot. Here are a few things I learned from learning stuff, in no particular order. (after the jump)
...

CLICK HERE FOR MORE, you rascal!

Trailer magic

I like movies, of course, who doesn't. Nevertheless I've never been a great fan of b-movies, trash films or anything like that - they're funny for a few minutes, but sooner or later I find myself wishing for something of higher production value; something where you CAN'T see the strings on the hero's back.

But I found that movie trailers, as little as I like them for high production films, can provide lots of fun without having to sit through a whole low budget film. You get to experience the best scenes from the movie - granted, you don't get to choose what's regarded the best, but really, I don't mind in this case - and you even get to listen to some campy, over the top narrator, explaining to you why this particular movie IS THE SHIT.
Honestly, take a look at this one and tell me it's not awesome, I dare you:
...

CLICK HERE FOR MORE, you rascal!

Zombie Cows

I'm an avid gamer, and I'm especially a fan of the old-school adventures by LucasArts (you know, all the Indys, the Monkey Islands, Day Of The Tentacle,  that kinda stuff). Not only did they provide great story telling, incredible visuals (The Dig is still one of the most beautiful games I've ever played, and it's nearly 15 years old) and superb, often groundbreaking music - they also managed to cram in a load of challenging (but always logical) puzzles and some of the best dialogue ever seen in video games. Only few other adventures kept me coming back as much as they did (the Broken Sword series being the most prominent one), and everytime those games deliver as much fun as they did years ago. Now, LucasArts isn't that much of an adventurer anymore - especially since that 3D bullcrap that were the latest Monkey Islands. They went on and let Telltales do their work, with mostly good results (Sam & Max); they only disappointed in terms of puzzles and visuals (Tales of Monkey Island).

Oh yeah, and that logo that I grew up with had to go too. Morons.

I recently bought The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition during the Steam Christmas Sale just to experience the greatness of the game with upgraded visuals and music, and while of course the initial nostalgia and excitement over the new features kept me busy for a while, I had to realize that, of course, it didn't have as much as an impact as it had the very first time I played the game. Still a worthwhile experience (and I paid just the right amount not to regret the deal).
Anyway, while I was browsing the Steam Sales List I stumbled across two games made by the indie game developer Zombie Cow called Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please! - gotta love their naming policy.

Oh look its a cow

 
I won't go into too much detail about the story of the games (TGP is the immediate sequel to BTDT), but let me tell you this: if you loved the adventures released during LucasArts' prime, you can experience it all over again by playing Zombie Cows masterpieces. Seriously, they are that good. The humor had me smiling throughout every single minute of playing, the visuals may be simple but absolutely adorable, and the puzzles sometimes even make fun of themselves.
Well, it's obvious that the games never take themselves too seriously from the minute you start the game. But the humor is so faceslappingly outrageous and exploitable to the genre's strenghts that it's impossible not to love it - you have to play it to understand what I mean. And the first part is for free as well, so there's no excuse not to! Also, with a price that low for the sequel (about 3€!) you really can't do anything wrong with buying it. Seriously, you won't even get a pack of cigarettes for that! Or a pack of condoms! Even a trip to the cinema is more expensive and offers LESS fun than that game. So think about it.

Robbie McIntosh

A while ago I stumbled across this video: John Mayer doing an amazing cover that seriously is way better than Tom Petty's original.



(watch a better version here without the lyrics)

I wondered who that sympathetic fellow with the white hair and the steel guitar was, and found out that this is an Englishman who has played with more than 30 well-known acts. Most prominently he provided guitar for The Pretenders and Sir Paul McCartney, but he also played with (for?) Norah Jones, Mike and the Mechanics, Joe Cocker, Roger Daltrey, Talk Talk, Mark Knopfler and - holy crap - Boyzone. Dude's been around.




McIntosh playing a small solo piece on stage with Paul McCartney. It's a tiny joy of melodical sweetness, seriously, I really like it. It doesn't seem like much, but he sounds like two guitars at once, which makes this song almost classical. And he delivers the melody with such a breathtaking precision that it's just a joy to watch.
Little anecdote: McIntosh was a very good friend of Douglas Adams, who actually urged McIntosh to record a solo album. From his homepage:

"Prior to [recording his band's debut], at his mate Douglas Adams' insistence, Robbie had recorded all his instrumental tunes. "This was a collection of compositions and arrangements that I just played for fun at home to amuse myself. Douglas insisted that I record them. This collection became the album Unsung, which was to be my second album, even though it was recorded before Emotional Bends."

 Douglas Adams and Robbie McIntosh jamming away on Adams' 42nd birthday. Did you notice Adams was a lefty? Never knew. RIP.

Image belongs to RobbieMcIntosh.com.

 While a master with the acoustic guitar, McIntosh shows some intense skills on the slide guitar and the bottle neck. Watch in awe:





Incredible. A nice blues and a beautiful sound due to the metal bottle neck, and again just perfect precision. I'm really not a fan of anything country-like, but this is grand.

Something else I found out: one of the initial band members of McIntosh's band project was Pino Palladino, a bass guitar grandeur with a long life of stage presence. He also accompanied John Mayer on his Try!-Tour, where he and Steve Jordan (Steve Jordan!) formed the rhythm section to Mayer's guitar. The videoclip from the beginning of this post was taken from Mayer's live DVD Where the Light is, where Mayer performed an acoustic set, a Trio set and a set with his pop band, ending the show with all his band members on stage for three more songs - reuniting Palladino and McIntosh on stage. I know it's not important or anything, but I really like how music always seems to come full circle, this being another good example.

Yet Another Resolution

'Many people know they are unhappy. But even more people do not know they are happy.'
- Albert Schweitzer

Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep. That's mostly due to the fact that I'm someone who can with ease pick a subject and keep brooding about it until I'm totally freaked out. It's not one of my most handsome traits, and I'd love to just flip some sort of switch in my head to keep it from doing that, but it ain't easy; especially when you're already in bed for 2 hours and still awake. In some cases all this worrying creates a panic about something that's perfectly fine and then I go and ruin it by making a fuzz about it and thinking up worst-case scenarios.
Come to think of it, I'm actually a pretty lucky guy – sure I get sick from time to time or have occasional cases of self-doubt, but who doesn't? In return I didn't have a lot of problems I witnessed on friends of mine – I never fight with my parents, I somehow always seem to have money, my graduation went well and I have job that actually balances fun and work perfectly. So all in all I should be happy. I am, I guess. But I seem to have developed a very low tolerance for everything negative: I NEVER fight with anybody (and if I do, I often lose because I can't fight), I don't like losing when playing games with friends, and if something stupid or bad happens to me it takes a while to get rid of it – it often disgruntles me for the rest of the day. You can say: The slightest amount of Negative can overwhelm everything Positive. And boy, does it suck.

But not anymore. Not only do I annoy (and drag down) people I like, but I seriously annoy myself at times. So there's that, a resolution for 2010 that might be a little late, but not too late:

I won't take things too personally, I'll just turn over the coin and remind myself of what's good in my life.