QXZ's New Writeups

April 28, 2008 (person)

2008-04-28T20:31:00Z

Ah, my fair noders, it has been far too long since I've last addressed you. I have been out in the wide, wild world having adventures of my own... but now I have returned, on a mission.

A mission to Sell You Something.

Don't worry, you'll like it.

For those of you not in The Know, Walter, jaubertmoniker and I are in a band called Seize Them!. This band is awesome. This band is so awesome that we spent several months recording and mixing a five-song EP (conveniently titled "Seize Them!"), ably aided and abetted by our producer donfreenut (who you may also know…

Long Way Round (thing)

2004-12-03T23:09:16Z

You've probably seen his penis several times, so how much better can you really know Ewan McGregor? And do you even want to? Assuming the answer is "maybe", the magic and mystery and majesty of reality tv has provided us with a window into how some seriously hard travel can affect the man, with only tangential mention of his willy.

Long Way Round is a six-episode television series (with companion book and soundtrack) chronicling the adventures of Mr. McGregor and his good friend Charley Boorman as they attempted to ride around the world on motorcycles in the summer of 2004. The concept is simple; the execution not so. Departing from London and terminating in New York City, their route was approximately 20,000 miles long and carried them through the countries of France, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia again, Canada and the United States. As one…

anvil shooting (thing)

2004-08-05T22:03:06Z

The American South has long suffered from unfair stereotypes characterizing its people as backward, ignorant, inscrutable and even dangerous. In reality, most of the practices which cause epidemics of raised-eyebrow north of the Mason-Dixon are based in deeply rooted traditions and noble folk customs that stretch back for centuries: debutante balls, bluegrass music, cotillions, demolition derbies, tractor pulls, NASCAR, the mint julep, dueling over the honor of a fair maiden.

If none of the above tickles your fancy, you could try blasting an iron anvil hundreds of feet into the air with a couple a' fistfuls of black powder.

Said practice, known as anvil shooting, supposedly has its roots in the Civil War. This is unusual in that one is hard pressed to find any Southerner who has even heard of that…

diegetic sound (idea)

2004-03-24T23:01:36Z

The diegesis, simply put, is the world of the story. It is the narrative within which the events of the plot occur and the characters exist. Diegetic sounds in a film, then, are the sounds which exist within the story world and are or could be heard by the characters.

Diegetic sound can be confused by some people with what is properly known as production sound; that is, the live sound recorded on the set which is intended to be synchronized with the picture being recorded simultaneously by the film or video camera. Production sound is contrasted with all the various sound elements created in post production such as special sound effects, foleys, Automated Dialogue Replacement, music (score and/or soundtrack and/or music heard by characters within the film), etc.

Whether or not a particular sound in the film is diegetic or non-diegetic has nothing to do with when in the production process it was created or recorded. It is probable that dialogue recorded on…

Naruto (thing)

2004-03-10T20:12:44Z

"Dude, we're ninjas! We graduated from Ninja Tech!"

-Olly

Naruto is probably the most popular anime/manga about ninjas ever created by a man who was once attacked by monkeys.

The story follows the adventures of Uzumaki Naruto¹, a boy ninja fresh out of Hidden Leaf Village's Ninja Academy on his quest to (with a little help from his friends) become the most powerful ninja ever, to gain the respect of his village, and to tame the nine-tailed fox demon trapped in his belly button. Typical teenage woes, to be sure. If one is looking to describe the story to a newbie with a sound bite, it can be usefully if inaccurately summed up as Harry Potter with ninjas instead of wizards and witches. But... y'know, ninjas are way cooler than wizards, right?²

The…

Anthony Comstock (person)

2003-06-27T01:21:29Z

The (man) doth protest too much, methinks.

William Shakespeare

Few people embody the American tendency to condemn publicly that which they practice with great enthusiasm in private more fully than Anthony Comstock. He is also a rare example of an individual granted the power and authority to force the public to conform to his morality; a wish I'm sure we've all harbored at some point. Comstock's particular hang-ups, though, carry the additional weight of continuing to influence American society's attitudes and legislations regarding sex, pornography and obscenity.

Comstock was born in New Canaan, Connecticut in the Year of Our (his, especially) Lord 1844. His seminal experience with pornography occurred as a child, when he was…