The More You Know

Really makes you think.
Thanks again Buzzfeed.

Face Off Obsession

I'm obsessed with Face Off.

And no, I don't mean the 1997 movie starring Nicholas Cage and John Travolta.

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It's a reality contest on the Syfy channel (which apparently exists) about people competing to do the best special effects makeup. Kinda like Project Runway if they were making zombies. 

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I watched 2 seasons in 2 days and basically now I've decided that I want to do this somehow. There are so many complicated, expensive-looking steps on the road to making a finished piece, and the contestants usually have 2 and a half days to make, paint and style their finished looks. 

One episode in season 3 had the contestants making a new alien to put in the famous Star Wars Cantina scene.

They came up with some amazing things.

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Like this evil little Buddha in a robotic chair. 

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Or this party girl waitress, whose head looks kinda like a.... well, you know what it looks like.

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This aquatic queen alien chick looks like a hot squid woman straight out of Legend of Zelda.

But there's always some fails too.

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This guy was supposed to look like a soulful addition to the Cantina band, but he ended up looking like Darth Maul's burnt brother.

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This guy(?) looks like an abomination who just wants to be put out of it's misery. 

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All in all they make for wonderful little aliens. 

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Another stand out episode happened in Season 2 when the contestants had to add another character to fit in to the magical world of Tim Burton. 

The characters they bring to life usually have a complex back story and are driven by a set of morals, either for good or  for evil. Many of them could probably have their own stand alone movies and could definitely be made into toys. 

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This lonely bellhop lives in an enchanted hotel. He steals women's underwear when no one is looking. 

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The ice cream man can't figure out why all the kids run away from his ice cream truck when he pops his head out the window. How much do you love the sprinkles on this mouth and his waffle cone hat?

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This gender ambiguous cellist's love has become a cello. He/she must play the cello to keep his/her love alive. It is also slowly transforming into a cello.

Don't you just want to be a part of this world so bad!?

Check it out, but clear your schedule because you'll get hooked like I did. 

Selfless Portrait

Selfless Portraits is a web app thing where you're matched up with a stranger from anywhere in the world. You draw their Facebook profile pic and you're given another stranger to draw yours. It's so easy!

The final results can range from the super good...

To the super bad..ish?

I participated in Selfess Portraits and got this 19 year old girl from Brazil with an overexposed, bad-angled snap.

Kind of half-assed my contribution to her but ain't nobody got time for dat.

She looks like the kind of girl that would be into Andy Warhol...

After waiting for like a month I finally got mine back. Derek from Illinois really captured my spirit and chin.

It's probably the best I've ever looked.

I highly recommend checking out the website or participating if you've got the time. Derek proved to us all that you really don't need to spend very long on your final result.

Hope yours turns out better than mine.

Game of Thrones Season 3 Mash Up

OMG according to their website, Season 3 of everyone's favorite Game will be premiering tomorrow!
As Kermit the Frog once said, "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy".
Who's your favorite character?

(Fake) Nike Ads for 2013

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These are some great new (fake) Nike ads featuring sports greats like Lance Armstrong, Michael Vick, OJ Simpson and Oscar Pistorius.

They point out the high value that our society places on sports legends, and we tend to collectively forgive their many transgressions because of the many contributions(?) they give to us. 

I think it's high time we start lessening up the huge value of sport that we celebrate in North America. In Ancient Greece athletes were unpaid amateurs, and played only for pride, glory and possibly bragging rights.

Being the best of anything in the world probably comes with a lot of pressure, and there are people all over the world that commit crimes like these, but don't get such worldwide attention. The problem comes in when other athletes of all ages look up to these personalities as role models. If you are great at playing football and you see that OJ can get away with murder because he's great at football, what stops you from doing the same?

Obviously not all football players are murderers, but at least one of them (probably) is. I mean, he wrote a book called If I Did It. Come on.

Nike pays athletes a lot of money to use athletes as examples, and some of those athletes are even featured in this list. Some are not, like Tiger Woods. 

Many sports involve the player getting a ball in a hole by one means or another, why do we make them out to be way more than that?

Ore-Oh My!

Whoever is on Oreo's creative team is a genius and deserves Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize. And Oscar. 

Don't be "That Guy": Anti-Rape Campaign

Here's a great print ad from the Vancouver Police Department, and really timely considering all of the news coming out of the Stubenville trial.

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Too often the message is focused towards the women with warnings like "watch your drink!" and "always have a friend watching you". We should move to collectively shifting the message to "if you drug someone, these are the consequences". I have never been aware of such a rampant and clear message of victim blaming than in the Stubenville case these past few weeks. 

I sympathise with men in that they often have to "prove" their masculinity, especially when they're younger and insecure, and within a group of their friends. For younger males, sex is sometimes treated as a contest to see who can get the most girls in bed. The man with the lowest score is threatened with labels like "gay" or "pussy", especially when confronted by his team-mates in the sport that he identifies himself with. 

Females are not exempt from all blame either, two of the victim's friends have been arrested for issuing threats over social media. Despite what some (usually younger) people think, it's not anonymous and you can be held accountable for what you say on Facebook and over text.

It's within ultra rigid gender binaries that dominant masculinity and submissive femininity provide a backdrop for the horrible events in Stubenville can occur. As a society we need to re-evaluate not only the objectification of women but the hyper masculinization of man, which are never as prevalent as in high schools. It also seems as though rape is still a common occurrence worldwide, no matter the geographical location. 

As a 24 year old woman, I still don't understand why the threat of rape still has to be a worry that hums in the back of my mind whenever I go out at night, or when I'm walking alone during the day. I don't think it's fair that I should always have to watch my drink and keep my guard up, but I don't feel as though there's anything that I can do to change this. 

Now, news outlets and bloggers are frantically posting updates highlighting different places to point blame for the events of that horrible night in Stubenville. It's the boys fault, the girls fault, her friends for not stepping in, the coaches fault because he knew about it and did nothing, society's fault, football's fault, the parent's faults, you could go on all day. 

It was a huge combination of factors that lead to this story which has captured the attention of an international audience. Perhaps it will dissuade future rapists by the harsh example set from the verdict of Judge Thomas Lipps. Maybe it will prevent girls from pursuing a court case against their rapist(s) because of its potential to turn into a worldwide spectacle, blasted on every news outlet and social media platform, and she is demonized further by complete strangers.

Whatever happens, I hope that some good comes of this, and that we are shaken out of our dream-state in which equality amongst the sexes has been attained and women don't live in near-constant fear. I hope that this viral YouTube report make other news stations think carefully about how they report future cases like this one, and they acknowledge their position of power as the primary source for the general public to receive these messages. I hope that moms and dads are not only warning their daughters about how they should behave in social situations, but that moms and dads are warning their sons too. 

I really hope that some good comes of this, so let's not let this international focus go to waste. 

#endrapeculture