Dancin' Dancin' Men!

First off, I need to appologize for the lateness of the comic. But it did get up before Monday was over, so that's a plus. My excuse? Eh, no good excuse. Karen came to visit this weekend, and that was really good. Long Distance Relationships suck, if you didn't already know.

Secondly, in case someone here doesn't read MacHall, this strip makes a reference to two different strips. And all of you who came by way of MacHall ... welcome!

I saw a number of new movies (to me anyway) over the weekend: Cellular, Troy, and Newsies. All of which I enjoyed. Cellular is just one of those feel good, classic action films about an ordinary guy who gets thrown into an extrordinary situation and rises to the occassion. That kind of story always makes me feel better, improves my faith in the human race and all that. Newsies was also fun, mostly because it had a miniature Christian Bale ... who can sing and dance! And I like Christian Bale to begin with. Good times. Troy was also entertaining, but it also made me think. It managed to take a story almost everyone is at least vaguely familiar with and it made me care about what happened to the characters even though I knew they were all going to die. I should point out that I have not, in fact, read The Iliad & The Odyssey, so my basis of comparison is only so-so. So despite whatever glaring flaws I'm sure some Mythology Buff will point out, I enjoyed the movie. What interested me the most about it was how they completely took out the gods' role. They told the story of the battle of Troy as if everyone was actually human. Not one god visibly lifted a finger to do anything to anyone. And Achilles wasn't so much invulnerable as he was the best fighter ever. Like an unstopable storm of destruction and death he was. But not one mention of the whole dipping in the River Styx, nothing of his one vulerability. And here you think, what? But it worked without it. And it all fit without any of the Gods being visible in the workings. While I wanted to see the magic, the story was good without it. And I found that interesting. It was, in a way, a movie about how we attribute miraculous powers to those who are just mere mortals. We uplift our heros. We make them more than what we are, and perhaps too often more than they really are.

There's been a fair bit of talk roaming around the net about the whole "healthier Cookie Monster, but frankly I think that pales in comparison to the "red ink ban. And while cookie monster singing "A Cookie is a sometimes food" doesn't bother me all that much, schools banning red ink because the color is "harsh" gets under my skin. I submit the following micro essay:

I don't know whether to be amused or saddened. While color is a very important thing, I think they've oversimplified and over exagerated the matter. Red, while strongly associated with danger, warning, violence, etc, is also often associated with "edgy." A lot of products that are supposed to be aggressive are often red in color. Lately you'll find a lot of equally edgy and aggressive products coming with that electric green accent color (think x-box green). Red in general has faded somewhat as a popular color, seeming kind of tired or being associated with low quality products (most entry level products in the powertool biz are red, but then again so are Milwaukee tools which are the highest contruction grade). So while I have no problem with "red ink" being less popular for corrections these days (being that something new and bolder migh be more effective) banning it because it's "abrassive" or "harsh" on the poor delicate egos of our young students is flat out the most idiotic thing I've ever heard. I grew up with red on my papers. I didn't realize how bad a writer I was until Mr. Broughton (my 11 grade AP english teacher) practically coated my papers in red. I make corrections today in red. I won't use anything else. Why? Because it the "this is wrong/needs fixing color." Is it harsh? Yeah, maybe. But damn it, the best way to improve anybody's work that I've found yet is to rip it appart at the seams and help them build it back up again. Maybe that's mean of me, but damn it, it works. I didn't become a decent writer until my work was torn apart and set fire to and I realized "holy shit, I suck." Yeah it hurt, but I got over it. I got better. I was deterimined that I would show them all that I could write a cohesive paper with my eyes shut. And today I can. My art improves the most when I realize just how pathetic it is compared to all the other things out there. When I get critiques that point out every glaring flaw, and declaire my work to be amaturish at best, and out-right abismal, it hurts, but I learn from it. I learn good and hard. Some people's advice you have to ignore because they're assholes, but often all that red has some truth behind it. And if red is harsh, then let the grading be red! If we're soft and pliant in teaching, we're only going to dump even more kids into the real world who don't know jack and have no marketable skills, but damn if they don't feel good about themselves. God I hate that. What has society come to when the end all goal is to feel good about yourself? You should only feel good about yourself when you've truly got something good to feel about. None of this "I am special and unique and there for valuable" crap. That's no reason to feel good about yourself. You should feel good about yourself for being able to motivate others, for being able to create great things, whether it be art, literature, new technology, music, or even just a good joke. If all you can do is flip burgers, you sure as hell don't have much to feel good about. Nor should you. And that's what ego-catering education is bringing about. Burger flippers. Teach the kids to think, to dream, to be inquisitive, to be informed, to decide. If they can do these things, then they'll feel good about themselves. Self-esteem is there when you know you've acomplished something. A D- on your term paper is not an acomplishment to feel good about. Give 'em the red! Tell them where and how they can improve! Don't neglect what they did right, but there's no need to go on and on about it. They got it right, good for them, now let's see how they can improve on the parts they didn't get right? That's how they learn. Point out the right, help improve the wrong.

Now, that's ranting! In other news, I've been playing around with painter 9, and while I can't show the pretty painter renderings of some product concepts I did at work today. I can show the little 30 second drawing of a really pretty eye. The color bit was done in photoshop, but the ink was painter. In similar news, there's a new image behind the voting buttons. She's not done, but damn if the Muse isn't a pretty lass. Those ranking numbers have dropped nicely ... well done folks!

Welcome to the Comedity. Don't step on the Penguin.
Garth (Monday - April 11, 2005) -22:17:09