He breaks the world record without even trying.

This was absolutely nuts. I was fucking SCREAMING at the television.

It really sucks because Heath Ledger won’t be able to reprise his role as a fucking brilliant Joker. Absolutely amazing.

The last half of it really made the movie; it might have been because I havn’t been movie-going as often, but it was SO DAMN TENSE. There was enough pressure between my ass cheeks to form diamonds.

By the way, worst opening-night experience ever. Five hours in line is not fun. AMC Santa Anita did not know how to handle the crowd (eight seperate showings!) at all.

The film was also preceeded by a trailer for Watchmen, which looks pretty awesome. The graphic novel was a pretty good read, and while the film seems pretty GRIMDARK compared to the original art, it seems to fit well on film. Given the story and the themes, the color in the original would seem really out of place within the context of modern film; note that the graphic novel was released in 1987. Read it and you’ll see what I mean. I’m very, very interested on how they’re gonna squeeze everything into 2 and a half hours.

And yes, I’m over a week late with this post.

This game is pretty much the most fun I’ve had playing a racing game in a while.

This beat is so fucking sick.

The rest of the album isn’t bad either.

Back to my lab paper and studying for my final…

This is a little ridiculous, guys.

I’m still an artfag, so I thought I’d share this.

Dafen is a village surrounded by the thriving metropolis of Shenzhen, and the origin of most of the world’s reproduction oil paintings. In the popular imagination Dafen’s artists produce anonymous works for unknown customers, operating no differently than a faceless factory churning out counterfeits, replicas and nothing close to what would be considered art.

REGIONAL productively collaborated with the otherwise commoditized community in Dafen by asking selected individuals, some for the first time, to imagine themselves in their professional medium. The final works show the technical, creative, and professional facets of the artists identities subsumed by the styles and relationships they maintain with specific famous artists. The hybrid result of original subject with derivative style comments on originality, global cultural production and REGIONAL’s cooperation with emerging enterprise forms that are internationalizing the village.

Check it out here. Great work here.

This is the best clock ever. It is apparently run by a Tokyo-based clothing label, and serves to showcase some of their cashmere stuff in a manner reminiscent of Gap. You can also include one on your blog! Check it out:

Turn the sound on for greater effect.

Theres an article on Blender that consists of the 20 biggest record company screw ups of all time. The only part really relevant to me (and to you, I guess) happened to be the number one biggest screw up of all time:

THE BIGGEST RECORD-COMPANY SCREWUP OF ALL TIME
#1: Major labels squash Napster
Shawn Fanning’s file-sharing service attracted tens of millions of users, but instead of trying to find a way to capitalize on it, the Recording Industry Association of America rejected Napster’s billion-dollar settlement offer and sued it out of existence in 2001. Napster’s users didn’t just disappear. They scattered to hundreds of alternative systems—and new technology has stayed three steps ahead of the music business ever since. The labels’ campaign to stop their music from being acquired for free across the Internet has been like trying to cork a hurricane—upward of a billion files are swapped every month on peer-to-peer networks. Since Napster closed, “there’s been no decline in the rate of online piracy,” says Eric Garland of media analysts BigChampagne, who logged users of son-of-Napster peer-to-peer networks more than doubling between 2002 and 2007. And that figure doubles again if you count BitTorrent.

Sure, there were legal alternatives for downloading music after Napster folded, but they were all (and still are) riddled with DRM that, like that Goddamned monkey on your back, controlled and restricted how you could use the files that you bought. Its taken about 7 years since then for DRM-free mp3 downloads to be widely available (via Amazon MP3, which is fucking awesome) in the US. Amazon MP3 is super quick, super convenient, and allows me to do whatever the hell I want with my mp3s, making it a minimal hit to time devoted to my porn-scouring endeavours.

Its also the easiest way to download relatively obscure music that you can’t find any torrent for. And since they’re relatively obscure, they could probably use the extra support.

Record companies, take note!

Only a matter of time before I get a Wii now. If I can find one.