Life is sweet in the belly of the beast In the belly of the beast And with her song in your heart, it can never bring you down It can never bring you down
Lost in a maze of a thousand rainy days Of a thousand rainy days But when I heard her voice, oh it led me to the end Yes it led me to the end
Cause when she sings I hear a symphony And I'm swallowed in sound as it echoes through me I'm renewed, oh how I feel alive and through autumn's advancing We'll stay young, go dancing
As the music plays Feel our bodies' sway When we move as one We stay young (Go dancing)
Life is sweet in the belly of the beast In the belly of the beast And with her song in your heart, oh it can never bring you down It can never bring you down
Cause when she sings I hear a symphony And I'm swallowed in sound as it echoes through me I'm renewed, oh how I feel alive and through winter's advancing We'll stay young go dancing Stay young go dancing Stay young go dancing
It's Christmas. Right now it's the 1:00 AM hour and I just got finished washing dishes. As I grumbled under my breath during that task, I had an idea. Now, I'd have recorded my thoughts in an audio post ASAP if I were more inclined to, but I am not Cole Sprouse.
But anyway. I want to talk about books. Books are fantastic. They're like an escape from the world around us, while simultaneously giving us insight about that same world through alternate versions thereof. I've tried doing that on occasion. Your mileage may vary on whether or not I succeeded, but that is a different story for another time.
But how are the writers related to the books, and the books to the readers? I pondered how I wanted to express my thought on that triple relationship, and then I found a tidbit stuck in my mind that suddenly clicked perfectly.
John Green once put on his website the phrase "books belong to their readers." I like that idea. I stumbled upon it when I was trying to find the pronunciation of the neologism "bufriedo" from his book Looking For Alaska (great novel, by the way). At first I just thought that it meant I could say bufriedo any dang well way I pleased, but there was more to it than just that.
If you ask me, I think it means books, and the universes they portray, are like little playgrounds, built by the authors. The kids that play on them are the readers, of course. By extension, being a kid in the playground means you can imagine your surroundings however you want. The writers are free to play in their own playgrounds too, and they may imagine it a different way than you do, and you both might imagine it differently than your English teacher.
But none of you are wrong. Everyone can interpret a book in a slightly or wildly different way, and each variation is an OK one.
"But Tre," some might say. "Doesn't that mean some kids may try to ruin the playground by drawing on the walls with fan fiction and stuff?"
Maybe so. When JK Rowling made Harry Potter, she probably wasn't expecting My Immortal to be one of its end products.
But not every fanfic is as bad as My Immortal. Heck, there may be worse ones out there. (It's doubtful, but possible.)
And even then, a little drawing never hurt anyone, right? The original playground's still there, and you can ignore the drawings as you please.
The scene: July 14, 2010, and I'm sitting at my Macintosh, watching the E3 press briefing being held by Ubisoft and Tumblring at the same time. Some of the content of the conference had interested me slightly, but I was mostly bored because it catered to the wrong side of my Great Divide. Too much dudebro and grit, not enough whimsy or fun. (Sorry, Assassin's Creed fans.)
But then, near the end of the conference, they pulled out a trailer for their brand new UbiArt engine, which was made just for 2D games that wanted style previously seen only in concept art, but without the haggle of rendering it all. The concept was cool, yes, but what really interested me was Ubi's first project with the engine: an episodic platformer, to be released on PSN later that year, that was set to realize the beginnings of the company's longtime mascot of sorts.
I was mesmerized. Sure, I was familiar with Rayman thanks to the Rabbids, but this was a whole new animal. It was irreverent, ridiculous and fantastic, and a far removal from any perception I'd had of ol' Ray before, even though nowadays I know it's more of a flashback than a reimagining.
I'd forgotten about that experience in 2011, after the game had been delayed to become a full-scale disc release (and after it had lost its prequel status). Most of my gaming focus was set on Portal and its sequel, which had me stumped to the brim. I'm not the most avid of gamers, either, so I didn't really pick up much otherwise. Thus the holiday season came and went, and with it, the game's November 15 release date. My Christmas gift was a netbook that was more subpar than I wanted to believe.
The netbook's screen cracked in October of last year, right after my birthday. Being bummed about that, I had my heart set on a phone for Xmas to more or less replace both it and my nigh-unusable Android from 2010. As a result of both of those, I started using my iPod touch a bit more, and one of the "What's Hot" games on its App Store was the very same platformer I'd been floored by two years before, just in a compressed form.
And so with the wad of iTunes cash I'd gained for my IRL Cake Day, I bought Rayman: Jungle Run. It was glorious. Nearly every level was just challenging enough to be fun without being a frustrating exercise in futility, and those that were just pushed me further. I'd gotten the whole of the game's normal levels finished in 3 nights. I needed more.
Christmas brought me the phone I wanted and some throwaway entry in the Need for Speed series, but I didn't bother touching that. I needed to repent for the opportunity I'd lost-- to finally open that portal into the Glade of Dreams.
The next month brought generous extended family members, so I got my chance that Groundhog Day. I was shaky to buy it new at first, but I decided to because I figured it was worth the full $20.
I couldn't have been more right, because Rayman: Origins is, to put it simply, my new favorite game, possibly ever. It's not perfect, it's not particularly popular, and it's not always the best at managing frustration levels.
But there's enough to like about it that I'm willing to ignore all of that. Play it with a friend sometime, and be sure they've got a good sense of humor (they'll be needing it).
It's funny how well we remember our relationships with certain musical acts for extended amounts of time. Me, I don't think I've had such a long and satisfying connection in any other case but the one of my love of the work of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, more commonly known as Daft Punk.
The first time I remember having heard anything by the robots was when I was about six or seven, living in an alternate universe version of the same house I do now, and my aunt was taking care of me because my parents had jetted off to Indiana or somewhere for my sister's now-defunct track running arrangements. My dad wanted me to make a playlist of good music for them to listen to when they got back, so I'd kept Radio Disney blaring out through Music Choice on our big screen TV for hours, waiting for some fantastic song to come and sweep me off of my little feet, for me to buy on iTunes and put on that playlist, that amazing, random playlist, that little Tre-Tre loved every single song on.
And then, in the middle of that afternoon, they played that song. It wasn't like anything I'd heard before, that one song, but it didn't need to be. It was so different than anything Disney had loaded up that afternoon that skipping it for the playlist was a crime of the highest order.
I had to have that song.
"One more time, we're gonna celebrate
Oh yeah, alright, don't stop the dancin'
One more time..."
I can't remember whether or not my family liked the rest of my playlist but by the time I was ten years old, in my house One More Time had gone from a simple Radio Disney song to a feeling, a kind of euphoria that very few songs I've heard before or after have really duplicated for me.
But I'd never listened to much more Daft Punk other than that (besides Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger and Technologic)-- not until I was 12 years old, when on a whim I'd decided to get Discovery as a bit of an experiment. I enjoyed the rest of the album a lot, but I really, REALLY adored one particular song on it because it expressed a side of me I was just starting to find in myself at the time, and that made it stand out. Moreso, I thought it had an emotional quality that One More Time lacked, and as an angsty 12-year-old boy, well, it was the perfect fit.
"Last night I had a dream about you
In this dream, I'm dancing right beside you
And it looked like everyone was having fun
The kind of feeling, I've waited so long"
After Discovery I'd dived into Alive 2007, and at first I didn't know what to expect. I'd never listened to a live album before but I loved me some Daft Punk, so I went into the album with open ears on a road trip. I don't know whether or not it was the lack of things to entertain me otherwise, but I almost feel like that made the album itself better-- it's all about the music with the robots, and when one is a bored preadolescent, aurally drowning into a lifelike dreamscape crafted by the artificial intelligence duo is less of a diversion from reality than it is a necessity to stay sane.
Then again, that just makes you wish you could see the world up close.
And so I wished. And wished. And still wished.
I'm still wishing now, but less so that Daft Punk will show up at my house tomorrow to show me the ropes and more that I'll get to go to that dreamscape once again sometime while they're still jetting around the world, around the world, but that time it'll be for real, with the pyramid and the seas of people and the camaraderie of being somewhere where everyone really is having fun.
But until then, I've still got two more albums to start to love, and a third on the way. So I'm not ultimately concerned with them going on tour right now, nor am I going to pass judgement on Homework until I've had enough time with it (and the same applies to Human After All). I'm just going to shut up and enjoy the music.
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IN OTHER NEWS
In the belly of the beast
And with her song in your heart, it can never bring you down
It can never bring you down
Lost in a maze of a thousand rainy days
Of a thousand rainy days
But when I heard her voice, oh it led me to the end
Yes it led me to the end
Cause when she sings I hear a symphony
And I'm swallowed in sound as it echoes through me
I'm renewed, oh how I feel alive and through autumn's advancing
We'll stay young, go dancing
As the music plays
Feel our bodies' sway
When we move as one
We stay young
(Go dancing)
Life is sweet in the belly of the beast
In the belly of the beast
And with her song in your heart, oh it can never bring you down
It can never bring you down
Cause when she sings I hear a symphony
And I'm swallowed in sound as it echoes through me
I'm renewed, oh how I feel alive and through winter's advancing
We'll stay young go dancing
Stay young go dancing
Stay young go dancing
You owe your existence to me!
I AM YOUR GOD
I did?
I forget when it happened, look at the very beginning of Quip's comments.
Monsterpost inbound.
But anyway. I want to talk about books. Books are fantastic. They're like an escape from the world around us, while simultaneously giving us insight about that same world through alternate versions thereof. I've tried doing that on occasion. Your mileage may vary on whether or not I succeeded, but that is a different story for another time.
But how are the writers related to the books, and the books to the readers? I pondered how I wanted to express my thought on that triple relationship, and then I found a tidbit stuck in my mind that suddenly clicked perfectly.
John Green once put on his website the phrase "books belong to their readers." I like that idea. I stumbled upon it when I was trying to find the pronunciation of the neologism "bufriedo" from his book Looking For Alaska (great novel, by the way). At first I just thought that it meant I could say bufriedo any dang well way I pleased, but there was more to it than just that.
If you ask me, I think it means books, and the universes they portray, are like little playgrounds, built by the authors. The kids that play on them are the readers, of course. By extension, being a kid in the playground means you can imagine your surroundings however you want. The writers are free to play in their own playgrounds too, and they may imagine it a different way than you do, and you both might imagine it differently than your English teacher.
But none of you are wrong. Everyone can interpret a book in a slightly or wildly different way, and each variation is an OK one.
"But Tre," some might say. "Doesn't that mean some kids may try to ruin the playground by drawing on the walls with fan fiction and stuff?"
Maybe so. When JK Rowling made Harry Potter, she probably wasn't expecting My Immortal to be one of its end products.
But not every fanfic is as bad as My Immortal. Heck, there may be worse ones out there. (It's doubtful, but possible.)
And even then, a little drawing never hurt anyone, right? The original playground's still there, and you can ignore the drawings as you please.
Thanks for reading. Merry Christmas.
T.
schools out forever
except that doesn't rhyme
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
yep
and he said it himself so it's not actually offensive
Limbless and lovin' it: a random Rayman rant
The scene: July 14, 2010, and I'm sitting at my Macintosh, watching the E3 press briefing being held by Ubisoft and Tumblring at the same time. Some of the content of the conference had interested me slightly, but I was mostly bored because it catered to the wrong side of my Great Divide. Too much dudebro and grit, not enough whimsy or fun. (Sorry, Assassin's Creed fans.)But then, near the end of the conference, they pulled out a trailer for their brand new UbiArt engine, which was made just for 2D games that wanted style previously seen only in concept art, but without the haggle of rendering it all. The concept was cool, yes, but what really interested me was Ubi's first project with the engine: an episodic platformer, to be released on PSN later that year, that was set to realize the beginnings of the company's longtime mascot of sorts.
I was mesmerized. Sure, I was familiar with Rayman thanks to the Rabbids, but this was a whole new animal. It was irreverent, ridiculous and fantastic, and a far removal from any perception I'd had of ol' Ray before, even though nowadays I know it's more of a flashback than a reimagining.
I'd forgotten about that experience in 2011, after the game had been delayed to become a full-scale disc release (and after it had lost its prequel status). Most of my gaming focus was set on Portal and its sequel, which had me stumped to the brim. I'm not the most avid of gamers, either, so I didn't really pick up much otherwise. Thus the holiday season came and went, and with it, the game's November 15 release date. My Christmas gift was a netbook that was more subpar than I wanted to believe.
The netbook's screen cracked in October of last year, right after my birthday. Being bummed about that, I had my heart set on a phone for Xmas to more or less replace both it and my nigh-unusable Android from 2010. As a result of both of those, I started using my iPod touch a bit more, and one of the "What's Hot" games on its App Store was the very same platformer I'd been floored by two years before, just in a compressed form.
And so with the wad of iTunes cash I'd gained for my IRL Cake Day, I bought Rayman: Jungle Run. It was glorious. Nearly every level was just challenging enough to be fun without being a frustrating exercise in futility, and those that were just pushed me further. I'd gotten the whole of the game's normal levels finished in 3 nights. I needed more.
Christmas brought me the phone I wanted and some throwaway entry in the Need for Speed series, but I didn't bother touching that. I needed to repent for the opportunity I'd lost-- to finally open that portal into the Glade of Dreams.
The next month brought generous extended family members, so I got my chance that Groundhog Day. I was shaky to buy it new at first, but I decided to because I figured it was worth the full $20.
I couldn't have been more right, because Rayman: Origins is, to put it simply, my new favorite game, possibly ever. It's not perfect, it's not particularly popular, and it's not always the best at managing frustration levels.
But there's enough to like about it that I'm willing to ignore all of that. Play it with a friend sometime, and be sure they've got a good sense of humor (they'll be needing it).
You'll be glad you did.
(Side note: never played Castlevania but it looks interesting. I'll mark it as a "possible thing to try".)
And then, in the middle of that afternoon, they played that song. It wasn't like anything I'd heard before, that one song, but it didn't need to be. It was so different than anything Disney had loaded up that afternoon that skipping it for the playlist was a crime of the highest order.
I'm still wishing now, but less so that Daft Punk will show up at my house tomorrow to show me the ropes and more that I'll get to go to that dreamscape once again sometime while they're still jetting around the world, around the world, but that time it'll be for real, with the pyramid and the seas of people and the camaraderie of being somewhere where everyone really is having fun.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have some mildly viral gifs to tend to.
Wow. Was I really this bad at one point?
for once, I feel somewhat awesome about my art
(I won't be done until tomorrow at least but still DUFE LOOK AT HIM HE'S ADORABLE EEEEEE)
pfffffft
The fact that not all of the episodes will be out at once makes it last a bit longer :P