Quackalishus's Xanga

Day 1663

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:39:24 GMT

Batman's Story?

The most interesting and distinct thing about the story of Batman, both in the comics and the movies, is the focus on the villains. Batman himself has one story, and that was told in Batman Begins, as well as a few editions of the many comic books. Every other movie has been a story of his villians, the monsters and psychopaths that are just as much victims as Bruce Wayne is himself.

Scarecrow isn't a theatrical villian, but merely a pawn of a greater evil. He's a psychologist that begins to relish the horrible experiments he conducts on the patients of his asylum. He tampers with drugs and fear to satisfy his own interest in the deterioration of one's psyche.

Rhaz al Gul (I'm sorry I don't know how it's spelled) is a member of a dark organization that has survived for centuries. Like Batman, this organization takes justice into its own hands. Maybe because of the many generations of work, or maybe because of the individual perspective of the leader, Rhaz, the methods used are strict, uncompromising, and cold. Like most villians, he lacks the compassion that makes Batman acceptable to the people of Gotham.

The Joker suffers a horrible tragedy that changes him, both physically and mentally. I haven't seen the most recent movie, Dark Knight, yet, so I can't comment on his story in that movie specifically. Something happened to the Joker that changed him, that drove him crazy.

Two Face is a man who suffers a horrible scarring accident, and has to bear a second personality in his single body. He can't reconcile the two parts of himself, so he chooses to take the control out of his own hands, but leaves it to the chance flip of a coin.

The Riddler is yet another villian that suffers from a mental problem. He feels a need for attention that drives him to commit crimes, all the time leaving clues that point straight back to him. He intentionally leads his pursuers to him, perhaps for the attention, or perhaps to satisfy the need he has developed to infuriate others with unanswered riddles and unsolveable problems.

Penguin is mutated and discarded by society, and so lashes out against the society that so rejected him. Penguin is the villian that, in my humble opinion, most reflects Bruce Wayne. He suffers a tragedy, and must choose ho to respond. Bruce chooses to do everything he can to make sure that no one else will ever have to suffer the way he did. Penguin takes the hate and rage and fosters it inside until he is ready to resurface and release on the city of Gotham all of the evils that he himself had to endure. You might even say that Batman seeks justice, while Penguin seeks revenge, and the line that separates the two characters is very thin.

Cat Woman is attacked by an employer, and barely escapes with her life. The circumstances of her survival drove hatred into her heart, and spurred her villainous, and somewhat theatrical, response. She, like Batman, chooses an alias, a costume, and a myth to hide behind, but she uses hers for personal gain.

Poison Ivy is a scientist struggling to complete her research that protects plants, only to discover that her work is being used by a fellow scientist to create horrible monsters to be used to unethical ends. The scientist lashes out, throwing Ivy into the toxins used for her research. Leaving her for dead, the toxins transform her body. She emerges from her near-death experience determined to exact revenge on mankind, and more specifically men, and restore the earth to her natural form, supplemented by Ivy's killer plants.

Freeze is trying to save his wife from a disease that would ultimately kill her. In the course of his experiments, he has an accident which changes his body's composition. Suddenly he needs a certain temperature to survive. His suit that allows him to move freely about the world requires diamonds, a fuel source that he can't afford to continually supply. Desperate, he resorts to crime. He steals the diamonds he needs, all the while trying to find a means to cure his frozen wife and to force an environmental change on Gotham that will allow him to live like any other human.

These are only some of the many villians that enrich the dark story of Gotham city and its beloved protector. Many of these villians don't have malicious intent. They simply want to right the wrongs that they suffered, they want revenge. In most cases, the psychosis that accompanied their tragedies lead that desire to a much darker and twisted purpose that is merely a result of a twisted or exaggerated perspective.

In this way, I find Batman to be unique from the other super heroes from comic books, and in that respect, infinitely more fascinating.

Thoughts and comments are welcome. ^_^

Also, I haven't seen Dark Knight, so please no spoilers.

Day 1662

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:56:43 GMT

If you could only keep five of your personal possessions, what would they be? Why?

1) Laptop - My laptop computer, besides being necessary for my classes, is something I couldn't do without. I talk to friends, I check my e-mail, I draw for school projects, I create digital art, I keep in touch with friends, and I spend hours of every school day on it. In addition, because of the many uses, this is the single most practical possession to keep.

2) Laptop Power Cord - Because the laptop is useless after about 3 hours if I have no means by which to charge it.

3) Cell Phone - I don't actually use my phone as much as most people use theirs. The reason I would keep my phone is because the function it performs is so important. It allows me to keep track of other people, (friends, family, classmates) and it allows other people to know where I am. To me, it's a safety measure. I don't go out at night without my phone with me and turned on.

4) Cell Phone Charger - This is just as important as the laptop power cord, and for the same reason.

5) Portfolio - My portfolio is a record of my best artwork. Since keeping the artwork is impossible, given that each piece is a separate item, I would choose to keep my best record of the best pieces I have ever done.

Day 1660

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:04:58 GMT

How do you feel about the limited space in pulse messaging? How has this affected you personally?

Blagh! Talk about the devil! Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have a designated place on xanga for chatting, random blurbs, collecting info, running polls, and all the other misc things that pulse is/can be used for. But damn! I've posted comments on a few different pulse threads, but rarely have I needed only one comment to say everything I want to say. I feel like I have to use the vocabulary of a 6xth grader just to make my entries fit in their stupid character limit.

Which is another thing. Why did they pick that number? I think it's arbitrary....and that pisses me of any more.

Pulse sucks.

Day 1659

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:34:48 GMT

The Big Read reckons the average adult has read only six of the top 100 books."

1. Bold the books you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Underline the books you LOVE.
4. Star next to the books you're reading/have read some of.
5. Copy, paste and repeat.

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1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronteu
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare*
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

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I've read 21 of the 100 books listed here. The one I recommend above all the others is Life of Pi (#51). It's amazing.

Day 1658

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:13:58 GMT

"If you're a Christian, what do you think of telling little white lies, particularly when they seem to make people feel better (No, I really do like your new haircut)?" - From Musicisoxygen

I don’t know if I’m still Christian. I'd like to start by saying that I don't think being a Christian should have anything to do with this question. True, it implies a certain moral code (i.e. lying is a sin), but I would expect people that answer this question that hold to that moral code to explain that in their entries.

Having said that, I don't know if telling white lies is right or wrong. I think that there are thousands of situations where a person might tell a white lie, and that each situation should be analyzed separately. I guess this question goes back to my discussion of ethical perspectives in an earlier post.

But she didn't really ask if it's right or wrong, did she? The question asks what I think of telling white lies. So here's my answer. Telling white lies is cowardly. When you tell somebody that you like their new haircut better, when in fact you think it needs to be trimmed up again, you are choosing to avoid the negative consequences of being honest. You are hiding from what could happen if you told the truth. Maybe you're avoiding hurting your friend's feelings. Maybe you're avoiding starting a fight. Regardless of the situation, telling that lie is simply a way for you to manipulate the situation to your advantage.

I'm not saying I'm above the occasional white lie, because I'm not. And what's more, I don't really think anybody is. And certainly, attempts to sugar coat things and say certain things tactfully could be construed as telling white lies. It's always a matter of perspective, dependent on the situation. So it's a difficult question to answer.

So to sum it up, I don't have an opinion about the morality of telling a white lie. I believe that it is cowardly, because it's avoiding negative consequences at the cost of your honor. I believe that it is manipulative, because it molds a situation to your own benefit. I believe that it CAN be justified, but every situation should be analyzed by itself within its context, which is impossible for any one person to do, certainly not me.

~~~~~~~~~~
Also, I don't know why my text has decided to go crazy and change sizes so much. I tried to correct it, but it won't let me...or something. Anyways, it's not my fault, and I'm sorry for any inconvenience or annoyance it might cause. =(

Day 1657

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:20:56 GMT

Taken from musicisoxygen's alternate featured questions:

"What do you want to do when you grow up?" From TheSecretLifeofPandas

This is an amusing question for me, because I consider myself to be grown up.

I’ve always known that there were lots of different things I would enjoy doing for a living. Architecture, Interior Design/Decorating, Staging, Flipping Houses, Art, Interior Design, Singing, Writing, Testing Video Games, Fashion Design… For the most part, these various jobs all involved some kind of artistic expression or design.

Ultimately, I chose architecture. I’ve been contemplating architecture for years, since 6^th grade, to be exact. Now I’m about to start my third year in the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University, and I’m happy here.

Somewhere between 2-4 years from now, I will be sitting down in the office of an architecture firm for my job as an architect. I can’t wait. ^_^

As for other plans? I want to get married and have children. At least 2, but I’d be comfortable with as many as 5. But…I don’t plan to have children until I’ve settled into a stable job, AND bought a house.

I’d like to end the post by saying that I know how lucky I am, and how unusual it is for somebody my age (20) to know, without a doubt, what I want to do with my life. For a lot of people, this is a really difficult question.

Thoughts and comments are welcome. ^_^

Art is Hard!

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 03:06:02 GMT

I have officially reached 500 pageviews! Yay! ^_^

Day 1655

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:19:57 GMT

From musicisoxygen's compiled list of alternative featured questions:

"If you had the power to read minds, would you use it? Why or why not?" From VaultESL

Certainly, the answer is that I would TRY not to read the minds of others.. But lets be honest here. Who can resist? I mean, who can ALWAYS resist?

For starters, I want to acknowledge that reading minds is incredibly invasive, especially given that the victim can't stop it and (probably) isn't aware of it happening. How violated would you feel if somebody walked into your room and read your diary (assuming you have one for the sake of argument)? These kinds of violations of privacy are completely invasive, and are completely uncalled for, are ethically wrong, and should never happen.

But...

There are exceptions to every rule. For instance, if you have a very close friend, that you care vary much about, and you suspected they were indulging in recklessly self-destructive behavior...what would you? If this person refused to talk to you about it, or said they weren't, but you felt like you were being lied to, how far would you go to help them? Is it okay to invade their privacy if it could mean saving their life?

Example 2: What if you believed your boyfriend or girlfriend was cheating on you? What if when you asked them to their face, their answer was unclear, or it felt like they were lying to you? How far would you go to find out if they were violating your trust?

My point is, there is a situation for every person, that is enough to push them to investigate the situation, even when it means violating somebody's privacy and/or trust. And in *some* cases, I don't believe that it's wrong to violate that privacy.

So, I'd like to sum up with a question and answer that I think will really help clarify my thoughts on this.

In general, would I use the power to read minds? No.

Are there circumstances where I would feel that I needed to read minds in order to prevent something horrible or protect myself from injury (whether it's emotional or physical)? Yes.

In those situations would I read minds? Yes, and I probably wouldn't feel bad about it.

Are there circumstances where I would really WANT to read minds, even though I wouldn't need to? Yes.

In those situations, would I ever read minds? Honestly, I would try not to, but I don't know if I'd be strong enough to always resist that temptation. Certainly, I would break, and read minds sometimes. But, I have no doubt that I would feel bad and regret my actions later. Guilt is an emotion that is hard to escape, and in this case, is one that I should bear.

Thoughts and comments are welcome. ^_^

Day 1649

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:04:11 GMT

I've been really active on my deviantart recently, but it has been so difficult to generate page traffic. I started thinking more and more about it, and I started to wonder. How many people are having the same problem? At this exact moment, there are 32,817 members of deviantart.com online. This is just a small fraction of the total population of this particular site's users. Of the hundreds of thousands of users that browse the billions of pieces all day long, none of them spare a moment for me. I have good work. I've posted at least one entry every day for the last week or so, which garauntees that my work shows up earlier in the browse functions... Despite it all, I can't muster even 500 pageviews. 500 compared to the thousands that I've seen on pages that belong to users that couldn't draw their way out of a retard's shoebox.

It's amazing. You start to realize the futility of it all. Nobody cares if I have talent. Nobody cares if I work hard. Nobody cares if I consistently update. Nobody cares if I browse other people's pages, comment on their work, in the hopes that just one of the hundreds of people will repay the favor. Nobody cares. So I have to ask myself. Why do I continue? Why do I still post artwork? Why do I find myself checking back several times a day, hoping for just one more hit? Why do I bother?

I'm disgusted by the sheer apathy of the online world, but I'm so addicted to the gratification that comes from just one sentence, one little smiley face, waiting in my inbox, that I can't stop. So I keep trying, and trying, and trying. It's one disappointment after another. I don't know what to do anymore. Do I keep working on the art I love, praying that somebody will validate the work I do and tell me that it's not horrible? Or do I give up, and escape the constant disappointment by giving up the chance to do anything worthwhile with what talent I do have?

Day 1646

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:06:54 GMT

Today, I want to talk about a controversial issue that a lot of people are very sensitive about: Abortion.

It seems like just about everybody know what it is nowadays, but just to give this entry a base in accepted fact, I wanted to share the definition given by the ever-so-handy dictionary.com.

Abortion-

1) Also called voluntary abortion. the removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus in order to end a pregnancy.

2) Any of various surgical methods for terminating a pregnancy, esp. during the first six months.

3) Also called spontaneous abortion. miscarriage (def. 3).

It’s interesting to me that a miscarriage is considered, by definition, to be an abortion. For the purposes of this entry, I will be referring to voluntary abortion, not spontaneous abortion, as defined above.

We all know there are two distinct and very different generally accepted sides to the debate over the legality of abortion. Bear with me here, people. I’m being very general, to give an overall idea of the sides and their respective values. I know that there are tons of exceptions, this is just to get a starting picture of the debate.

1) People who are “Pro-Choice,” believe that abortion should be legal. They are often known to argue that to deny the option of abortion is to oppress women, probably because it would force them to carry a child for the entire term of the pregnancy, regardless of the circumstances. Often, these people are more politically radical, and less involved in religion.

2) People who are “Pro-Life” believe that abortion should not be legal. They are often known to claim that having an abortion is committing murder, saying that the unborn child is still a living child (and a helpless one, at that.) Often these people are more politically conservative, and more involved in religious institutions.

I am, in a sense, pro-life. I believe that abortion is probably murder. This, of course, starts a whole new argument about when the fetus is officially “alive” as its own being, which I’m choosing not to go into at the moment. Generally, I believe that abortion is murder. Unless keeping the child through pregnancy puts the mother’s life at risk (high risk, mind you), it is morally wrong. There is no just cause for the termination of that child except to save the life of another.

I am, politically speaking, pro-choice. I believe, whole-heartedly, that abortion should be legal. I don’t think that denying the option oppresses women. I don’t even think abortion is right. What I do believe though, is that the government does not have the right to tell a woman that she cannot control what happens to her own body. The government doesn’t have the right to tell a woman that she MUST submit her body, and endure an unwanted pregnancy and all the pain and humiliation that *can* come with it, whether she wants to or not.

Now, having said that, I still believe that things need to change. Abortion, in my opinion, should be legal, but it shouldn’t be so easily accessible. Consider for a moment, gun control. The government cannot ban American citizens from having guns. However, the government CAN restrict access to those guns, and make it a little more difficult to obtain them. There is a waiting period before the weapon is actually given to the consumer (although I admit that I don’t know if that’s determined at the state or federal level).

Why, then, is abortion so easy to gain access to? Access to guns is restricted because of their potential to be used for murder. A girl can have an abortion just by going to any clinic on the street and asking for it. Doesn’t that sound just a little fishy to anyone? Guns, which CAN murder, are hard to get. Abortion, which IS murder, is as easy to get as a loaf of bread. Ridiculous. Maybe a waiting period (in cases where time allows) should be instituted. Maybe certain requirements should be met, like a psychiatric evaluation, or consent of the father. Maybe it should just be harder to find and set up appointments, discouraging all but the most adamant. I’m not claiming to have the answers here, these are just ideas to work with.

So, in conclusion, I believe that abortion is murder, and therefore wrong, unless it is done to spare the life of the mother. I believe that the government does not have the right to deny the option of abortion to its citizens. I believe that abortion should be more strictly controlled, and harder to access, but not illegal.

Thoughts and comments are welcome. ^_^