Spring 07 – Midpoint – Written Proposal

So, Spring was the time in which I had to present my project to the evaluating board. First time around, I got a conditional pass because the evaluating committee wanted to see some preliminary designs of the supportive characters, and their stats, which -even though I had- it didn’t occur to me to include in my proposal.

A few weeks later, I submitted the proposal with more character information, and I passed. After this, the first thing I decided to do was to take a summer Usability course with Kathleen Watson, thinking the architecture of the project was going to be the most challenging part of it all. Included is my resubmission of my midpoint proposal. A lot has changed since then, but this is the way things were going back in Spring 2007.

Stranger than fiction: Marla and Jack take a holiday

No, this is not another movie review. This is to inform you, with a good use of poetic licence, how my life is stranger than fiction. It started like any other Wednesday, well… not really. I was very sick with the flu and had not moved for 3 days straight. Still, I was feeling better, and somehow I knew this would be the last day of me feeling sick. I receive a phone call from an annoying roommate. She says she has something to tell me. I knew she was either going to bitch me out, or to tell me she was moving out. Either way, I was in the mood for some emotional support. Marla comes over… for a little bit. The sex we had could send any good christian into the bowels of hell. We had to clean up soon, though… a quick shower instead of a bubble bath was in order. She was late for rehab. God knows how those fuckers are about unpunctual junkies. A few minutes after we part, annoying roommate comes in and tells me she’s moving out. Something about different lifestyles. I just nodded pleasantly… avoided saying that the only reason I didn’t kick her out, was because I wasn’t sure of the city’s laws regarding evicting roommates, which is why I resorted to the “i’ll-make-your-life-a-living-hell” technique.

This calls for a celebration. I decide to give Marla a little visit. Not that I wanted to get laid again, but was looking for a good time nevertheless. She looks a bit happier than usual to see me. She tells me she loves me, and that she feels honored I appreciate her art. For a moment I think this is too perfect, but the normal level of happiness grows into glee. It can only mean one thing: She’s fucking high as a kite again. Lets make the most out of it. Lets be kids again. We cook everything inside her cupboard. I know after tonight it will be a nightmare. The initial good feeling of a high always gets substituted by a need for survival of the high, which means there will be a constant panic attack for the rest of the week… sometimes even longer. Nevertheless, always too long.

Morning comes, Marla leaves for work, I know she won’t be able to get there. I decide shut my mind up, and go on about my day. My mind has never been too good about obeying me, so I decide to give her a call, convince her to go back home. She’s confused, lost, incoherent… a hear the cars’ horns going off in the background. This is a dissaster. I knew she was walking in the middle of the street, not looking. My fears turn into panic when I hear a crash, a thud, and a signal lost.

I call again, silence. What to do? She said she was in Masonic? Where though. I’m freaking out. I call the police. “Has anyone reported any female pedestrians ran over in the last half an hour?” “Yes, there has been,” says the dispatcher after ruffling through her papers. I gulp. “Can I ask for her condition?” is my next thought. Unfortunately they cannot give me that information over the phone, they tell me to go to the General Hospital. I get there as soon as possible. “What’s your relation to the patient?” the social worker asks. “I’m her friend, ahem.”

Substantial head injuries. The body? Nothing permanently damaged. I do not believe though, and as soon as they let me see her, I look under the sheets, same way Mothers inspect their newborns. “Two legs, two arms, two hands, 10 fingers…” I inspect my surroundings, to see what other victims looked like, more out of embarrassement for what I had just done, than out of true curiosity. No, right now, my full attention was on Marla and on her swollen eye, and her bruised up chin. I thought it must be a movie, because her injuries were strategically placed. Bad enough so that she had something to show as proof of her lethal encounter with a two ton vehicle, but not too bad to entice disgust or for the audience to flip the channel. After all, this is her narrative, I’m just a special guest. Marla returns for five seconds from her half unconsious state to say, “They have me naked? How undignified.” She faints again.

After my initial concern dies out, I start to get bored. I look around to find some gory entertainment. What do I find? Convicts, serial killers, white trash, transgendered-suicidal-HIV patients. Honestly, this is my worst nightmare come true. To be surrounded by crazy lepers, and knowing that, if they wanted, they could spit a huge pint of blood on me, infecting me with their Hepatitis C. I look at my half unconscious love, and squint my eyes. She belongs here with these lunatics… yet why am I not scared of her? She’s a good girl caught in bad things. Is she?

I get another phone call from my other roommate. The other one; beautiful hypocrite who deserves to be gang banged by the lepers found in this ER. “What do you want?” I ask. She tells me she’s moving out. I tell her she has to paint back the room to its original color. “Hope it is not too much of an inconvenience,” I state. “Can you call the landlord and ask him for the original color? That way we can just skip a step.” I can tell she’s pissed. I bet she has done things to my toothbrush. Which makes me think, I should do something to hers.

Marla and I leave the ER at nighttime, they hand in her clothes that have been ripped open by the Ambulance crew. “My $300 assymetrical sweater??? How dare they? Someone must pay!” On our way back, she scores more drugs, knocks over some trash cans, newspaper stands, ya know… someone must pay for her clothes. She’s up to no good. That swollen eye does look kind of nice.

Marla calls these little escapades and encounters with death “holidays.” I wonder… do I really take some enjoyment out of the suffering she puts me through? Are these my holidays too? I don’t really have time to think about it now. I must search for new 2 roommates, and put some toothbrushes inside the toilet bowl.

– Jack

Spring 07 – Midpoint – Mantis Flash Gallery

Beam me up… so characters are clickable. A fun fact is that, if you dont want to enlarge the gallery, you can just click it and make the characters go round using the arrow keys in your keyboard.

As I prepare for the midpoint, I use my Experimental Flash class with Mitch (simply the best flash instructor in the world… *waves at him*) as a vehicle to portray who are the mantis. This is my first round of character design painted in flash. Up until this point, the habitants of Silicon City only existed in the pages of notebooks and my imagination.

All this action takes place in Silicon City, also known as the “new” New York. A gallery like this helps me, not only show the characters to the world, but also to brainstorm possible stories as I find my way through this 3d carrousel of ideas.

-Alex

Pagan Origins of Easter

Well, some people believe Easter is a fairly new celebration commemorating Joshua’s crucifixion and resurrection. Others are a bit more knowledgeable, and are aware of the Jewish Passover festival, celebrated to commemorate Jewish people’s escape from Egypt. Unfortunately, not many people are aware of the Pagan roots to this festival. They don’t know that for thousands of years, Easter in different forms has been an important part of the human experience. And, it might surprise some, but things like egg hunts, the Easter bunny, and Easter lilies aren’t a new phenomenon brought to us by corporate America. These concepts are so old, their origins get entangled with myth and legend.

We should start by explaining the “scientific” reasons this time of the year has been important to the human race. Ever heard of the Vernal Equinox? There are two times of the year in which the axis of the Earth is in such position (in relation to the sun) that causes day and night to be of equal length: the spring and autumnal equinoxes. Vernal Equinox literally means “equal night,” and it happens during March, marking the first day of spring.

Now, how does all this celestial mumbo jumbo apply to us, earthlings? Simple answer, ancient people found the moment in which the sun stopped freezing the land, and flowers began popping out of everywhere to be a sacred one. Think about it. You are one ancient dude completely conscious of the necessity of understanding the seasons… you know vegetables don’t grow inside a supermarkets’ freezer, and you believe the earth is sacred. Celebrating the sanctity of spring (the time in which people sow) seems then the natural thing to do, eh?

So, what does our contemporary Easter celebration have in common with the old one? Many things. For starters, the word “Easter” comes from the Anglo-Saxon maiden-goddess of fertility, Eostre. You can link her to other Ancient goddesses, as the Middle East’s Ishtar/Astarte, or to the Roman goddess Aurora. The basic principle of Easter was to rejoice in the arrival of spring, and thank Eostre for the re-birth of the Earth.

In the Mediterranean region, there was a pre-Christian spring celebration that honored Cybele, the Phrygian goddess of fertility. Cybele’s partner, Attis, was considered born of a virgin and was believed to have died and been resurrected three days later. Attis story is similar to other earlier gods, Osiris, Dionysus, and Orpheus. What do all of them have in common? They all are supposed to have been born of a virgin and suffered death and resurrection as long as 500 years before Christ was born. Sounds familiar? Contemporary Easter might have more Pagan roots than we thought.

Well, how do eggs fit the picture? Eggs have always been a symbol of fertility. They were, along with hares (bunnies), symbols for the goddess Eostre. The ancient Babylonians, as well as the Egyptians, had rituals involving painted eggs. The Egyptians thought the moon-child Hathor, son of Isis (who was born out of an egg, as tradition has it), laid the Golden Egg of the Sun. This “Golden Egg” hides for a good portion of the year, but comes out in spring. This explains the origin of painting eggs with bright colors and hiding them from children. This is a game/ritual commemorating the Golden Egg’s return.

What about the Easter Bunny? Aside from hares being a symbol for Eostre, hares were the Easter symbol of the divine for Ancient Egyptians as well. You can see how all these symbols repeat trough thousands of years and have similar manifestations in different places. In Germany, tradition has it the Easter Hare gives eggs filled with chocolate to children. Also, the Easter lily is an ancient symbol for male genitalia. You never thought giving away lilies during Easter was equivalent to praising the linga, I bet.

So, what have we learnt here? Aside from drugs and alcohol being bad, and having unprotected sex being bad as well, we learned that we really haven’t changed much as human beings. We like to celebrate stuff, even if we don’t know why. And the stuff we celebrate isn’t as hip and new as we all once thought and it isn’t created by corporate America either. In fact, corporate America cannot come up with one original idea even if it bumped us on the head. How else would you explain the existence of such tv shows like American Idol, Newlyweds, and (for you, locals) Objetivo Fama?

Is abortion today’s eugenics?

It seems as if, with the fall of the Nazi Reich, eugenic practices were swept under the rug. No more sterilization practices were induced upon minorities against their will. In fact, nothing of the sorts was mentioned again in theory books. Then, the Civil Liberties Movement happened, and with that, more focus on equality became even more obvious. No one remembered that the same racist neutering practices performed in Germany during the 1930s, were also performed in other Western countries that fought.

By me stating these facts, by no means I am accusing non-germanic countries of hypocrisy during the beginning of the 20th Century. On the contraire, I’m laying the historical ground for what I’m about to explain. And that is that, as liberal as many people think they are today, in their need to be clever, they end up becoming as conservative as those they fervently criticize. For all things can be explained in the perfect form of a circle. At the beginning of it, you find one state of being, in the middle, you find the opposite. Near the end of the circle, at the tip of the snake’s tail, you find extremes that become one with the idea they were opposed to begin with. A great example is someone who considers that all men are equal; he is opposed to a conservative person who says people are not. An extreme liberal can become conservative himself by trying to censor -or even kill- the conservative person who attacks the equality of men. This “liberal” person is the one who exists at the tip of the snake’s tail.

Lately, I’ve been reading unconventional-thought type of books such as The Tipping Point, and Freakonomics. These books focus on reevaluating everyday things with a different pair of lenses. One of the predominant subjects is the drop of the crime rate in the 1990s. They study what data is constant in a given situation, in this case, crime. The economists call this “regression analysis.” They try to determine what are the constants, if the data correlates, or if the data causes a situation. Many experts determined that abortion, longer jail sentences, and improved police practices helped the crime drop. But their winner though (as in, what stopped more crimes from happening) was abortion. And how to blame them? If high abortion rates correlate with low criminal activity. What’s more interesting is that states that legalized abortion sooner (like California, Alaska, Washington, New York, and Hawaii), are the places that enjoyed the drop in crime faster than the rest. Also, these results are constant with other countries like Australia, that also experienced the sharp drop a few decades after abortion became widely available.

It seems as if, those $1.5 million of fetuses who are “disposed” of annually do make a difference. The reality is the following: who aborts other than people in disadvantage situations? Lets face it, middle-class married women tend to abort less than teen would-be mothers. The truth is that people who abort are making the right decision late. They are practicing a reversed form of Eugenics. Instead of making sure these women aren’t getting pregnant to begin with, they are installing abortion clinics outside of the projects.

Somehow, liberals feel sick at the thought of sterilizing minorities. But place abortion in the equation, and it doesn’t feel as sick. The reason -and this is where I dare to speculate- is because certain “solutions” hold either negative or positive connotations depending on what side are we on. Both liberal and conservative people fail to realize they are attempting to solve the same problems; they desire to pursuit the well-being of humanity. Sometimes, liberals might come up with a good idea, but because of the source of that idea, conservatives do not accept the suggestion, and vice-versa. People first study what “team” came up with the solution, instead of focusing on the solution itself. And lets face it, this is something that holds a logic behind it, because if we all were independent thinkers, nothing could be accomplished. We would not agree enough to be able to make teams and perform the changes that we think are needed.

So, eugenics are ammo for liberals, while abortion is ammo for conservatives. They all accomplish the same, although one is related more to the raise of advertisement, while the other is related to fascism. Basically, sterilizing minorities implies to blatantly MAKE people do what they dont want to do. Meanwhile, abortion is like advertisement: “You don’t have to abort, but it would mean a lot if you actually did!” It is the act of persuasion, of allowing chance to exist, that makes abortion appealing to liberals. But why don’t liberals just try to persuade minorities to get sterilized? That way 1.5 millions of fetuses wouldn’t have to die to begin with. Well, I think this is too borderline conservative, so they wouldn’t even bother.

The point is that I do believe in abortion. But I see it more as one of the two German Shepherds that are trying to push sheep into the right direction (a better world). Which one is the other dog? Social reform. Why? Because it would be really hypocrite of us to expect disadvantaged people to not reproduce, yet not try to solve the country’s health/education/minimum wage problems. If these books would also focus on the evils of “leaving people behind,” they wouldn’t be at the tip of the snake’s tail. But because they make such a point in proving how the best solution for the crime problem is to have would-be-criminals not be born at all, is that I accuse them of missing the point.

-Alex