Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Ignorant Photo of The Week: 4 - Those People...
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Album Review: Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
As you should all now by know Mr. West has created what he thinks is "THE BEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME". His first album since the auto-tune infused 808 & Heartbreaks in 2008 is truly a change of pace for both his career and the current hip hop scene dominated by instant internet hits and Lil Wayne's Young Money group. While Kanye was always known to heavily sample older songs in his amazing production, he has now expanded past funk and Motown sounds to include the likes of Black Sabbath and King Crimson. With his intense attention to detail Kanye's intricate production will delight his old fans and entice new ones. He has truly become the Hip Hop idol that can touch any part of pop culture and turn it into gold.
The album truly plays like a masterpiece that should be listened to in sequence, from the enthralling Dark Fantasy with Nicki Minaj's intro, to the crazed Gil Scott-Heron sampled outro on "Who Will survive in America". Highlights in between include the awesome flow of "Gorgeous" with GOOD Music star Kid Cudi and Wu Tang alum Raekwon as they rhyme over a creeping baseline. "All of the Lights" is a powering mosaic of diverse sounds - powerful horns, pounding drums and even a feature by the likes of Elton John. "Devil in a New Dress" is a wonderful mix with a Smokey Robinson sampled backtrack while Rick Ross comes on at the end of the track and actually manages to provide a good verse for once. Finally, "Blame Game" has John Legend and a magical piano melody while Mr. West diversifies his flow as the song proceeds, yet the Chris Rock feature seems somewhat tasteless and out of place. All in all, this album contains some of West's best lyrical content and definitely his most grandiose deliverance. If you want the winner of that Grammy for Best Album of the year, there are fewer more complete albums in the running.
10 Swag Juice Bottles/10
Wikipedia
iTunes
The album truly plays like a masterpiece that should be listened to in sequence, from the enthralling Dark Fantasy with Nicki Minaj's intro, to the crazed Gil Scott-Heron sampled outro on "Who Will survive in America". Highlights in between include the awesome flow of "Gorgeous" with GOOD Music star Kid Cudi and Wu Tang alum Raekwon as they rhyme over a creeping baseline. "All of the Lights" is a powering mosaic of diverse sounds - powerful horns, pounding drums and even a feature by the likes of Elton John. "Devil in a New Dress" is a wonderful mix with a Smokey Robinson sampled backtrack while Rick Ross comes on at the end of the track and actually manages to provide a good verse for once. Finally, "Blame Game" has John Legend and a magical piano melody while Mr. West diversifies his flow as the song proceeds, yet the Chris Rock feature seems somewhat tasteless and out of place. All in all, this album contains some of West's best lyrical content and definitely his most grandiose deliverance. If you want the winner of that Grammy for Best Album of the year, there are fewer more complete albums in the running.
10 Swag Juice Bottles/10
Wikipedia
iTunes
Monday, December 6, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Group Members That Annoy You
Hey guys, just finished two group projects involving presentations and I tell you that they can be awesome. You get to know cool people, collaborate and make something and look back and celebrate together once it's done. We all, however, have worked at least once with someone who annoys everyone else to the point that we wouldn't mind holding meeting in suburban Kandahar if it meant they couldn't make it. I find that amongst my last foes in the world of group projecting have contained the 5 following qualities:
1. Gauge. May seem like a strange word to pick, but I feel that the first thing these forsaken individuals do is gather each member together so that they can scoop out all of our sanity and privacy away by asking an insane amount of questions about ourselves. I mean way beyond basic contact info of cell number or email, I'm talkin average sleep duration and favourite meal time. They suggest they need it so we can plan meetings, but you know they have a much more sinister plan.
2. Annoy. While you may not have realized off the bat with some of these people, you have now seen that something is clearly wrong, Perhaps its from the number of times their parents dropped them on the head when they were young, but it definitely means that they are up your lower colon with non-stop questions every minute, on the minute. You get sequences of texts, repeated facebook messages and my favourite the "What was the answer on lecture 3, slide 5, table 1, line 4? And to make sure I know you got this text me back :)))))))))". -_-
3. Instigate. You are now a week in to your two week project and tempers are beginning to show. Your other group members know you went to high school with this crazy b*^%# and ask you for proper coping mechanisms as the criminal at large has dropped 50 angry emails to those unfortunates that came 1 minute late to a meeting and forgot to print off the last page...even though they already finished their part and had 3 midterms, 2 labs and 4 quizzes.
4. Lie. Ahhhh. My favourite, and as we begin to see what Dr. Phil Collins, citing Mrs. Lauper, and calls true colours of the perpetrator. You know about that time you told them you were going to spend you're entire Friday organizing the 50 odd references? No you remember stating that the group could meet up on the Friday to review the paper and complete the menial task before the group decides to cancel the meeting because editing can be done individually. So you sleep in on a Friday, wake up to 12 different texts from the liar questioning you're allegiance to the group, sign onto skype before putting on pants and still half asleep and quickly message them with you're deepest apologies over missing the meeting that didn't happen and how you are ready to take on anything they give you in penance. Of course, they have taken it upon them self to do the noble work of renumbering the embedded references and reply with the classic "Its a one person job, but you can read through and edit the entire thing before submitting it". Why did I even wake up?
5. Escape. You are finally done submitting the answers and presenting to the prof. Your group goes out for a celebratory lunch, even with individual responsible for the drama inducing atrocities. Everyone is happy, till you get the mark back and get deflated as its at least 5% lower than you thought, so you go leader mode and request a meeting to the prof and make it happen. Everyone meets up before the meetings and grieves together over missed chances but conclude that those guilty of the mark losses were right in feeling bad, but ultimately the group loses. There is no I in team, and we are all responsible for that mark. Sadly, the hell-spawn demon has taken it upon themselves to spread word that it is your fault for losing "a lot of marks"through the gossip wire. They have gotten their way and have escaped with only minimal hard feelings as all other group members are focused on the mark. Yet they still have the guts to smile with you all, before besmirching your effort and character to anyone that will listen because neither you nor the TA understood something you've never seen specific to an article. UHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Well, there you have it in plain sight. These people arein lincoln park out there and they will find you, so proceed to hide your loved ones.
1. Gauge. May seem like a strange word to pick, but I feel that the first thing these forsaken individuals do is gather each member together so that they can scoop out all of our sanity and privacy away by asking an insane amount of questions about ourselves. I mean way beyond basic contact info of cell number or email, I'm talkin average sleep duration and favourite meal time. They suggest they need it so we can plan meetings, but you know they have a much more sinister plan.
2. Annoy. While you may not have realized off the bat with some of these people, you have now seen that something is clearly wrong, Perhaps its from the number of times their parents dropped them on the head when they were young, but it definitely means that they are up your lower colon with non-stop questions every minute, on the minute. You get sequences of texts, repeated facebook messages and my favourite the "What was the answer on lecture 3, slide 5, table 1, line 4? And to make sure I know you got this text me back :)))))))))". -_-
3. Instigate. You are now a week in to your two week project and tempers are beginning to show. Your other group members know you went to high school with this crazy b*^%# and ask you for proper coping mechanisms as the criminal at large has dropped 50 angry emails to those unfortunates that came 1 minute late to a meeting and forgot to print off the last page...even though they already finished their part and had 3 midterms, 2 labs and 4 quizzes.
4. Lie. Ahhhh. My favourite, and as we begin to see what Dr. Phil Collins, citing Mrs. Lauper, and calls true colours of the perpetrator. You know about that time you told them you were going to spend you're entire Friday organizing the 50 odd references? No you remember stating that the group could meet up on the Friday to review the paper and complete the menial task before the group decides to cancel the meeting because editing can be done individually. So you sleep in on a Friday, wake up to 12 different texts from the liar questioning you're allegiance to the group, sign onto skype before putting on pants and still half asleep and quickly message them with you're deepest apologies over missing the meeting that didn't happen and how you are ready to take on anything they give you in penance. Of course, they have taken it upon them self to do the noble work of renumbering the embedded references and reply with the classic "Its a one person job, but you can read through and edit the entire thing before submitting it". Why did I even wake up?
5. Escape. You are finally done submitting the answers and presenting to the prof. Your group goes out for a celebratory lunch, even with individual responsible for the drama inducing atrocities. Everyone is happy, till you get the mark back and get deflated as its at least 5% lower than you thought, so you go leader mode and request a meeting to the prof and make it happen. Everyone meets up before the meetings and grieves together over missed chances but conclude that those guilty of the mark losses were right in feeling bad, but ultimately the group loses. There is no I in team, and we are all responsible for that mark. Sadly, the hell-spawn demon has taken it upon themselves to spread word that it is your fault for losing "a lot of marks"through the gossip wire. They have gotten their way and have escaped with only minimal hard feelings as all other group members are focused on the mark. Yet they still have the guts to smile with you all, before besmirching your effort and character to anyone that will listen because neither you nor the TA understood something you've never seen specific to an article. UHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Well, there you have it in plain sight. These people are
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