Sunday, June 26, 2011

Bad Journalism

Every so often, there are bad articles in the newspaper. It's to be expected and they happen all the time, usually because there's space that needs to be filled.

Anyway, let's get down to business. There was an article published in the Kaila! section of the Sunday Times (26/06) that was brought to my attention today. It's an article called "Gender Disorder: Confusion." It's rare that the horridness of an article can be solely blamed on the writer, since there are so many people involved in the production of a newspaper. (Okay, by that I pretty much mean it wasn't edited)

You can sort of tell from the moment you see a typo in the first sentence which reads: What do you do when a primary or secondary school student starts behaving like a girl when is a, a boy or a tomboy if she is a girl?

The article pretty much goes on to state that homosexuality is a choice, and that people should be happy with their God-given gifts of being male or female. I know, I gagged a little as I wrote that out too. And that's not even the worst part, but let's look at that for a moment.

Homosexuality as a choice, right. What I like the most about it is how straightforward the writer is. It must be great to have such conviction about something after doing so much research and taking into account the fact that there is no answer to that question. No simple one, at any rate. And yes, she did do research! In fact, she gives you the website from which she copy pastes entire chunks of writing.

The website in question, is actually at the center of some controversy for it's views on homosexuality not having any basis in medical or scientific studies. Whoops.

I was going to get started on the religion bit too, but that may be an entirely different kettle of fish. Let's just say that it's my personal view that using religion is a little bit lazy when it comes to writing. It just doesn't make for good media. It's like if the weather report consisted of "Today we had rain because God made it so", instead of an analysis of weather conditions.

People read the newspapers to be informed and to make informed decisions, and if you don't give them the right facts, you are taking advantage of your readership. In this case especially, the audience in question are children. Teenagers in primary and secondary school.

Teenagers are already confused, let's be honest. There is so much going on with hormones and new and exciting developments of the bodily kind that half the time you live in this perpetual land of ups and downs. And that was just me as a heterosexual teen.

What this article does is tell you that you're wrong if you have thoughts about someone who is the same sex as you. That there is, in fact, something wrong with you and that you have to be fixed. Teenagers already have such fragile egos, they don't need to read stuff like this.

And on top of all of that they have to do exams too!

My favorite part of the whole article though is halfway through; just before it dissolves into a frenzy of copy-pasting, where it actually looks like the writer attempted to well, write something.

Yes, I'm talking about the part where the writer gets personal. "For most of the young women I knew, these were confusing times for them, but they later got married and lead a happy, heterosexual life today." There is no basis in fact for any of these statements.

And I challenge you to find me a happy married person (Ba bum pish! thankyou ladies and gentlemen).

All in all, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But when you're a journalist for a newspaper, you need to give people facts that you've properly researched.

And okay, if it was an opinion piece, that may be legitimate. But you can't present your bigoted opinion as fact.

Because that makes you a fucking idiot.

And that's my opinion.




Wednesday, June 22, 2011

So Damn Witchy

Was slightly traumatising to be honest. Haven't had much playtime with The Witcher 2 yet, but once I do, I'll write some thoughts down, don't you worry!


Tuesday, June 21, 2011

500


So here we are, the 500th Awesome Cake post. Don't ask me why this is suddenly a big deal for me, it's just a strange feeling I had. Even though the blog has never been anything more than a place to deposit words and pictures I've made from my brain, this somehow feels like a milestone.

I probably need to get out more.

My first post was pretty bad. As were many of the following ones but give me a break it was 2007. To be honest it's really whiny, and I can't read it without getting a bit of a headache. The first ever drawings I posted were a set of three images I'd drawn after getting sick. Here is one of them now.


Yeah, I know it's awful, but I was so proud of it. Seeing as how I have tagged 238 posts with "awesome art" I guess Awesome Cake is mostly an art blog. As well as a place for me to shamelessly tell stories about my life. And videogames.

But hey, that's what blogging is all about. It's not journalism or deep meaningful pieces of writing (although they can sometimes look similar depending on the light) it's opinions written in a little corner of the internet. A way to catalogue your thoughts and if you write 500 posts, look back and go, "man, what a tosser."

Now, let's see how long it takes me to get to 1,000.

Special thanks to Lawrence, Wilson, MJ, Sian, Sharky, Chels and you! You're the reason I write, draw and otherwise make a fool of myself in general.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Vampires, Fairies and Dragons. Oh my!

It's not like Fat Vampire was even that gross. I mean, I could have drawn him fatter.

Not always nice

Sometimes I like drawing grot stuff just to remind myself that I can, and that it's not all unicorns and rainbows. One day, Imma draw some grot stuff with unicorns and rainbows. And it will be awesome.


Sunday, June 12, 2011

Better than Gold.

Click to make bigger!

According to the stats page, I have hugged one hundred and eleven people. That's a lot of hugs.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Fable III done!

If you don't count all the quests that unlock once you finish the main story I guess. This is by no means a comprehensive review of the game at all, mainly because it's twenty to two in the morning, but more of an excuse to post these screenshots I took.

Don't be a drag, just be a Queen.

It was good fun, I'll give you that much, with a couple of moments in it that were surprisingly emotional, and a definite contrast to the whole tone of the game. Sure, Fable has always been about morals and making decisions, but mostly the tone is lighthearted and self depreciating. I mean, one of the real "moral" quests is to decide the fate of a flock of chickens.

I also can't remember a lot of the specifics of the reviews that I read were, but I do remember listening to a podcast where someone pointed out the endgame and how it's a serious drag. Yes, I guess I did find it slightly dragging as well, and perhaps even an extremely artificial way to extend the length of the game, but once again, it was optional.

Balverines. God, I killed SO MANY BALVERINES.

Also, I have to admit that everything was extremely streamlined. There's no life bar, instead you get a Call of Duty-ish border when you take too much damage, and you can either gulp a potion or wait to heal. There's a lot of handholding in Fable, (literally, because sometimes you have to take people by the hand to get them places) but I don't think that it suffers for it.

The combat mechanics are simple, but I found them deep enough to be enjoyable. The only thing I wish I had was some sort of way to switch weapons faster, because if you want to switch weapons you have to go to the sanctuary, which replaces the traditional menu screen with a 3D environment. Sure, it's different, but here I feel that Lionhead was just being different for the sake of it, and at times it's extremely clunky.


Just like Red Bull, finishing the main quest gives you wings.

And I think I'll leave it at that, more sleep is required before I even attempt to form an opinion and write it down :P


Friday, June 3, 2011

What? I'll be right there!


Me receiving the call for the shoot.

So I have been pretty busy lately with work and such. Methinks it might just be the season, but that's all good. It's all life experience :P

But I did have an enormously fun time last night with the cast and crew of the new short we're working on for the Kula Film Festival. I was just going through some of the "behind-the-scenes" stuff that we have, and some of it is video!

The producer and I in our epic car chase scene.

Seriously though, this years production is shaping up to be epic, we have another day of shooting to do, and then the production stuff will start cranking out things.

Which there will be links to from here, of course, so stay tuned.