Art without art

When you take away the material component of art, the brush strokes on the canvas, the notes of the music, or the stanzas of a poem what is left is the emotions and thoughts that drove the artist to create their work. The physical item, or the sound created is little more then the medium through which the artist has chosen to express their emotions and place them into a permanent existence. Thus this shows that the nature of art is not so much the piece of art itself, but the story that is given to it of both its creation and the story that it is used to portray. When one looks at a painting by Pollok one doesn’t simply see the erratic splashes of paint that cover the painting, but instead they see his movements he went through as he created it, as well as the story it tells. Take away the painting itself and though the story looses some of its brilliance it keeps the tale of the creator. When one looks on Van Gough’s Self Portrait with the his troubled, depressed expression, and the bandage covering the place where an ear once hung from his face we do not simply see a sad man with a bandaged ear, we see a portion of the tale of Van Gough’s life and his depression over a failed relationship which drove him to cut off his own ear and have it sent to his lover. If the painting is gone the story still remains, though it is less illustrious then it is when one sees the painting and even when one considers the collections of paintings known to be done by Van Gough at that point of his life. Even the Mona Lisa has pieces of it that remain though its story is no longer known there is still the story of Da Vinci himself and the amazing life that he lead. In the end the best way to describe the nature of art considering this line of reasoning is that the material portion of the art, exists as a vivid and tangible portal into the artists mind and maybe even into their soul itself.

Death of the Gamer

for those of you who read VG Cats read this comic, for those of you who don't, still read it.

this brings up an interesting point. As the medium of video games becomes more popular, games become more accessible, not in number, but rather in the skill that is required to play them. at any given time if you are to talk to someone under the age of 30 they likely either currently have of have in the past owned a console of some sort. and with the advent of the WII the number has grown to include almost anyone with children.

because of this shift in popularity the question is raised, what is a gamer? it used to be that a gamer was often a person who spent hours a day toiling to get through a pixalated hell scape, digging through insiders guides, industry magazines, and online resources for any combo code they can get their hands on, and if all else fails the least invasive cheat code they can find.

then gaming got it's limelight, it wasn't popular, but it was mainstream enough that people might know what you were talking about if you mentioned what game you were playing at the time. it introduced the Casual Gamer; They might dabble with the thumb wrenching tests of endurance that the now termed hardcore gamer thrives on, but not with the same zealous nature, and online game companies produced small and simplistic games such as the well known Bejeweled. And while no-one would claim the office worker playing Bejeweled while looking over his shoulder to make sure the boss is nowhere near his cubical a gamer, it helped make the industry more for the common man.


so now, what is a gamer truly? what makes it so that a person can claim this boisterous title? is it the amount they play? their dedication to completing every last bit of what can be done? is there some sort of minimum time that a person must play per day before they can be considered a gamer? or is the gamer now the equivalent to the movie buff, the bookworm and the rabid sports fan?

Also; Stephen Colbert still rocks, I can't wait to see the "Who's Chasing my Coat-tails on this comic.

On The Last Man

here's a piece of recommended reading for you, Y The Last Man. As the title implies the story revolves around Yorik Brown, the last man on earth. that said, there's a whole lot of women. an unexplained event causes every male mammal on earth to die except for Yorik and the helper monkey he is in the process of training. the storyline itself follows Yorik and his friends as he attempts to find his girlfriend, who as storybook luck would have it; is on the other side of the planet in Australia.

Y explores many different ideas, from how it would effect the world if in a matter of moments all the men died, to the variety of ways that people may deal with it. from ultra feminist groups like the "Daughters of the Amazon" who believe that all men were a blight on the earth and every trace of their previous existence should be wiped from the planet. To a seeming utopia run by convicts who were released shortly after the disaster. it explores the spread in gender rolls in the modern workplace, showing the impact when all but 5 of the fortune 500 CEO's, 95% of commercial pilots, 99% of Mechanics, electricians, and construction workers, and the entire Catholic, Muslim, and orthodox jewish clergy die. in some places the world erodes into chaos and in other amazing levels of stability remain.

I've often found that the best comics are the ones that shy away from the realm of the superhero, or other traditional stories and instead go for the areas of life that are rarely explored, Transmetropolitan, or V for Vendetta.

If ever you are in a bookshop and see this title, take a look at it. you are sure not to be disappointed.

Dissecting the Jedi

When you think of Star Wars one of the first things you think of is the Jedi, or at least one of them or their lightsaber... you get the picture. But when you look at the Jedi themselves, ignoring the religious aspects and the equipment... (oh that sweet light saber... how i want you...) they boil down to one thing. the "Force", or the mind powers that the Jedi have. really that's all that that they have that other people can't make themselves.The Jedi are simply an organization of people with a combination of telepathic and telekinetic powers of a varying degree.

simple, right? apparently not, because in the much "loved" Phantom Menace, "Midiclorians" are introduced into the picture. It seems that Jedi get their powers from the Midiclorians that inhabit their bodies, and Midiclorians are apparently microscopic creatures in and of themselves.

this raises some questions after you find out that a Jedi's power are hereditary, if the powers come from Midiclorian, which are presumably a form of virus, and passed on to offspring of a jedi, is it possible for the Midiclorian to colonize a person who is not a Jedi?

if not, then why, is it some sort of genetic compatibility? and then, if a person who does not have Midiclorians in their system but has the genetic compatibility sleeps with a Jedi, would they gain the force?

this line of thought leads me to think; THE FORCE IS THE GREATEST STD EVER CREATED.