Some YouTube Things:

[capri0mni]

1) I've been posting about this under a custom filter... Here's an update that's public:

For most of May, I've been wrestling with the new version of Windows Movie Maker (They've eliminated all my favorite title animations! D:), to make a video of a satirical Disability Protest song (to the tune "Irish Washerwoman"): The Very Sad Tale of Monsters in Our Town

The word "monster" comes from the Latin for "omen" or "sign": -- monstrum (the root of the words de-MONSTR-ate, and MON-i-tor), and originally referred to livestock or humans born with a variety of physical deformities, since the ancient Romans believed such births were omens that the gods were planning on punishing the people with an even greater calamity. ...It was only natural, then, that people would want to hide their "monsters," and pretend they weren't born at all, in hopes that the gods would forget which village was next in line for punishment.

Fortunately, our understanding of the world has evolved in the last 2,000 years or so, and (most) people no longer believe that disability is a punishment for sin. *Unfortunately*, the underlying belief that "It's better for Society as a whole if the Disabled remain as invisible as possible," persists. The responsibility of overcoming disability's stigma (divine mark) is still piled onto the shoulders of the Disabled, themselves. Social, educational, and economic segregation continues to be the norm, even two decades after the passage of the A.D.A..

I briefly thought about putting a "preface" into the video, explaining about the etymologies and such, But I've since decided to make it a separate piece, and uploading it as a reply to this one (and vice versa?)

2) Watched this video (a TEDtalk) before bed last night, and it made me happy in all my happy places:

David Christian: The history of our world in 18 minutes

His opening gambit is all about how entropy is the central law of the universe, and then goes on to spell out all the ways the universe goes to great length to create order and complexity... Also, he basically states my belief that it's storytelling that's essential to humanity, rather than language, per se.

3) YouTube is going to switch everyone over to their new channel design in 8 days, whether we like it or not (I do not, but)... I got prompted to upload some channel art... So now, I'm contemplating making a channel banner as my next visual art project -- something monstrous. :)

Comments

[smw]

1) Just watched it on your other post—fantastic! I would never know that you were struggling with the program; it doesn't show in the least.

2) I've got this bookmarked so that I can watch when I'm able to turn up my sound a bit more; it looks interesting. Thanks for the link.

3) Lookin' forward to more art from you.

[capri0mni]

1) Well, every time you see a shift in words/images, that's an individual "frame" that I created in Microsoft Paint, which took some figuring and fiddling to get right. At least, in Post XP Windows, they've made mixing fonts and typefaces easier (Though they've also taken several of my favorite typefaces off the menu)... So there are about twice as many individual frames as there would have been if I could punctuate the phrasing of word-only passages with shifts between varying animations. As a contrast, I was particularly pleased with what I was able to do with overlapping animations at the end of my Monster Challenge IV: Identity starting at ~1:26... That was entirely an overlapping of animation templates (about 3)... and none of those templates are available in the new version of Movie Maker...

2) You're welcome :-) Short version: order and complexity take a lot more energy and resources, and is a lot more fragile than mush... But -- every time the energy and resources are available, the universe tends in that direction... (The great big universe that could?) ;-)

3) Yeah... me too... (going to work on that now)