Back in November, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart asked me to put on my ridiculous costume and be in their music video. It’s now finished and on the Internets:
I’m the one with the yellow pants.
Tag Archive for 'lol furries'
I meant to have this done within a week of the con being over. That didn’t quite happen.
Often with these videos I run into editor’s block. There’s always one point where I just can’t figure out the right clip to match the song, and it stalls me. Then I stop and decide to come back to it later. And despite how much I really want to get it done, “later” sometimes means months later.
But it’s here now, so…
You can also watch it on YouTube if you’re on an Android phone or iPhone, but only because you can’t watch Vimeo on those. Seriously, only click that link out of necessity. If I catch anyone watching this on YouTube because they actually prefer it over Vimeo, I will smack them in the face with the Internet. No joke. I will literally pick up the Internet and hit someone with it.
Let’s be realistic here: copyright is dead. At least, it’s dead in the sense of “the right to make copies.” Once a piece of media is digitized — be it textual, visual, audible, or interactive — copying it costs exactly zero dollars (or -45,000 euros at the current exchange rate). Because of this, the perception of art not as a product but as information is rapidly reentering the collective human psyche after about 100 years of technical difficulties.
So this means artists who hope to make a living will now have to rethink their business models, because basing your livelihood on the assumption that all people will pay you for the privilege of merely experiencing your work is on par with [wikipedia]Young Earth creationism[/wikipedia] in la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you factor. But never fear, artistic community, because a ton of niche nerd fandoms have come to terms with that assumption since the heyday of [wikipedia]Usenet[/wikipedia] (because many of them probably had a hand in inventing it). They all operate with similar conventions, but because everything is better with cartoon purple foxes, the example I will explain is the furry subculture.
Continue reading ‘Furries and the Art of Surviving in a Post-Copyright World’
Well, folks, it’s that time of year again. The time of year when the entire economy of the city of Pittsburgh is sustained by about 3000 crazy people wearing tails. Once again, I will be one of them.
This, of course, will result in another musical video mashup that will draw the attention of lots of people and get an attempted takedown from YouTube by the Copyright Mafia. Like this one from last year:
I’ll hopefully be able to confuse the Content ID robots this time around, and perhaps have an even more clear-cut case of fair use, by mixing a few different songs together, altering some of their tempos and pitches at various points and resampling and inverting and slershkergerber. That’s totally a word. Shakespeare said it. In his sleep. Once.
Every day, I’ll attempt to do some kind of short writeup. It’ll probably amount to summarizing whatever I tweeted that day, though. If you’d like to keep track of my Anthrocon experience up-to-the-minute, just search for tweets from @XerxesQados tagged #AC09. Or click the link in the previous sentence if you’re lazy.
See you there, if you’re going, and reading this, and stuff.
How the Wolf Got His Assault Rifle — A Children’s Fable About Gun Control
Once upon a time, in a Magical Forest, there lived a friendly Wolf. Wolf was a model citizen of the Magical Forest, and was always nice, kind, and neighborly to his fellow animals. Wolf was also very enthusiastic about firearms, and owned lots and lots of them. He liked to take his guns out to a big clearing in the middle of the forest and try to shoot apples off of the big tree stump from very, very far away.
But Wolf was always very careful with his guns; he made sure never to turn the safety off or put any ammunition in them unless they were pointed downrange, and that no other animals were standing near the big tree stump. He always locked up his guns in a great big secure closet in his den, and never, ever shared the key with any other animal. He also made sure to never, ever, ever unlock his gun closet if he were feeling angry or upset, or if he’d eaten any magical mushrooms less than four hours prior.
One day, Wolf decided he wanted to buy the most awesome new gun he’d ever seen. It was a high-powered rifle which could fire 800 rounds per minute in fully-automatic mode, and could take magazines with 60 whole rounds inside them. This gun was epically badass, and Wolf knew he’d enjoy having it very much. But because it was so ridiculously badass and awesome, Wolf realized that he would need to get permission from Owl, the leader of the Magical Forest.
Continue reading ‘How the Wolf Got His Assault Rifle — A Children’s Fable About Gun Control’