Bathroom On The Right

Assignments, Audio Assignments, , , ,

When I was a kid, most of the music we listened to came to us from the radio. There was no internet and no album jackets with song lyrics, we just relied completely on our ears. When I got older and started buying records and tapes, I was finally able read the words to the songs I listened to. Now, with the internet, almost any song’s lyrics are just a Google search away.

One thing that sometimes happened to me when I listened to music is that I would mis-hear (and mis-sing along with) favorite songs. Evidently I am not the only one this has happened to, because there is a website called Kiss This Guy. Kiss This Guy is named after a famous mis-heard lyric from the Jimi Hendrix song. The actual lyric is ‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky, but plenty of people heard ‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy.

So, without further adieu, here is my favorite misheard lyric: There’s a Bathroom on the Right, by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Process:

First, I submitted this assignment to the DS106 Assignment Bank. Then, I recorded the song Bad Moon Rising off of an old CCR cassette tape into Audacity. I edited the song down to just include the intro and the refrain. I recorded my daughter & I singing the misheard lyrics, “there’s a bathroom on the right.” Then we edited the two tracks together. I saved to an MP3 and published the piece on Soundcloud.

Napoleon Gifs

Assignments, Video Assignments,

Pull me to town Tina you fat lard

Tonight, I did the Say It Like Peanut Butter assignment on DS106. I used to make a lot of animated gifs, but have gotten away from the practice. But apparently, ,the tools have gotten a lot better. I used Photoshop CS6 to do mine. I actually have Photoshop CS5 and CC on my Macbook, but either of these gave me an error saying that video import was not supported on Mac. For some reason, the CS6 version was happy to import a video clip.

For my 2 gifs, I chose scenes from Napoleon Dynamite. My kids & I love this movie, but my wife, and plenty of other people just don’t “get” it. To me, it is a lot like a non-sensical Monty Python film, but come to think of it, my wife doesn’t care for those either. It takes a special brand of humor, I think.

As for my process, since it’s been a while, I googled for an animated gif tutorial and found this one that told me what I needed to know.

*** Edit – Ok, I looked at this and decided I could tell you a bit more about the process I used. I was in a hurry and wanted to get this post made, but I’ll tell you more here.

I used Handbrake to rip the movie DVD. Handbrake is hands-down the best tool I’ve used to make a video file from a DVD. It’s free, and simple to use. It works on Mac, Windows and Linux.

Once I got the entire film into a digital file, I brought it into my favorite editor for quick video projects, Camtasia. It is $179 with an education discount, but really powerful andwell worth it if you make a lot of video projects. It is best known for screen capture, but also has a really nice, simple-to-use editor. If I needed to, I could have skipped the Handbrake step and just recorded the scenes I wanted directly from the DVD in Camtasia.

But I already had the fully ripped film so I brought it into Camtasia, and edited it down to the scenes I wanted to use. I rendered to a new file a smaller video that had only these scenes. Once I had this digital file, I imported it into Photoshop using the “import as layers” command. After it was in Photoshop, under the “Window” menu, I selected “Timeline” so the video frames were visible. From there, I deleted any frames I didn’t want, and used “File -> Save For Web” to save the project as an animated GIF.

A Letter From Out of the Blue

Assignments, Writing Assignments, ,

letter2015

Recently, my family and I were visiting the Eisenhower Center in Abilene, KS for a quick “staycation” not far from home. My daughter noticed a basket full of little American flags with notes intended for veterans of the US armed services. I picked one out for you, Dad, she said. So I took it home with me.

The note came from elderly woman from California, and I received it here in Kansas. My note reads: “My oldest brother did not come home after WW2. He is always in my heart as you all are.”

Since her full name was on the note, and a hometown, I was able to do a little digital detective work and find a street address. I sat down and wrote the woman a thank you letter and dropped it in the mail. I’m not exactly sure when was the last time I mailed a hand-written letter, but it has been some time. About a week later, I was pleased to receive a reply in the mail from her. What a treat it is to receive mail that is something besides bills or advertisements!

So this is my assignment for you. Sit down and write out a letter longhand to someone who will appreciate it.Be sure to get some evidence of your “snail mail” exchange, either by photographing your letter, or even better still, the reply you got back. Extra internet points if you do like I did and write it to someone whom you do not know, but still feel a common connection with.

 

Dr John R Brinkley Social Media

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I was looking for a quick but fun DS106/Digital Storytelling assignment to do and found it in Alan Levine‘s What They Might Have Done in Social Media project. Here is the tweet I came up with for Dr. Brinkley.

Pfizer's got nothing on me. My goat gland surgery is better than Viagra & beat it by 80 yrs.

The original assignment recommended using Twister for creating a fake Twitter tweet, but a quick internet search led me to Simitator.com which has generators for fake Facebook, Yahoo and other services as well.

Most people today have never heard of Dr. John R. Brinkley, but in his day he was more famous than Justin Bieber, richer than Bill Gates, and developed a surgical procedure using “goat glands” that was believed to have similar effects as Viagra, preceding this drug by 80 years. In his time, he was a media mogul; a true household name, doing his radio broadcasts across the USA. He was the original licensee of the XER border blaster radio station in Mexico. He was also a pioneer in distance learning and mediated education, doing lectures over the radio for college credit. It should also be noted that he died in disgrace, broken and penniless.

Welcome to my Nightmare

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Nightmare Ghouls

Well, it is week two of Digital Storytelling and the theme this week is Welcome To My Nightmare. Speaking of nightmares, last night I had one. I woke up heart a-pounding and yelling out as a zombie was eating my face. I think it used to really bother my wife when this happened, but now she just wakes me up & tells me to knock it off. It’s quite a relief to realize your face isn’t actually being eaten.

I went to a PTSD workshop just before school started. We have a lot of veterans on campus and they wanted the faculty to be familiar with what to expect.  As a combat veteran myself, there was a point in the presentation I really had to resist the urge to get up and leave. I’ve never been diagnosed with PTSD, but the symptoms they described sounded familiar. Evidently, people having prior traumatic events can be pushed into PTSD with later events. I didn’t know that, but it explained a lot about me. I’ve had nightmares off and on my whole life,(possibly related to a childhood trauma I experienced) although they have slowed down quite a bit in recent years. I think the theme of our storytelling class might be stirring the pot of my mind a bit.

So I wanted to take a moment for a note to my students sharing what Paul and Jim in a DS106 section at UMW have to say:

A few students expressed some concern over some of the content of this course. We suggest that you approach the recommended stories analytically, rather than reading/watching/listening to them as entertainment. Consider the techniques being used to convey the story. What do the authors do to get reactions from their audience? How do their techniques impact our emotions? How might you employ those techniques? Taking that approach might make the media a little less scary. Anyone who has serious concerns about the content should let us know.

This also holds true for my students. If you have serious concerns about the content, let me know. You aren’t talking to an unsympathetic ear here. The bad dream I had this morning really happened. But do think about viewing this subject from an analytical point of view. Please consider the techniques used by the author to gain and hold the attention of the audience. And also consider the question of why does the audience purposefully subject themselves to this genre? If you step away and view things from a critical/analytical perspective, it may actually help you to be less affected by things.

Therefore, I will press ahead, because I’ve been thinking a lot about the purpose of scary movies. Why do we love them? For me, it is sort of a rush similar to that offered by a roller coaster. You feel like you are putting your life in danger when you experience roller coasters and scary movies.

Dr Marvin Zuckerman explains the psychology of Horror Movies and how this genre has become more and more intense over the years:

Now if you’ve read at least the intro to Stephen King’s Danse Macabre book, you know that he thinks the sort of people who enjoy horror movies and stories (sensation-seekers) are a special breed. They aren’t living life in the same way as ordinary people. To King, they live life more fully, acknowledging human frailty, but charging ahead anyway, fully cognizant of the risks.

If you look around the Big Think website, Dr. Zuckerman has a lot to say about the psychology of sensation-seeking. Of particular relevance to storytelling, Zuckerman says that sensation seeking is related to creativity. I suspect that this is one reason why Stephen King holds his fans in such high esteem. They tend to be creative.

Another reason I think it is good to like scary stories is that it forces us to face our own mortality. Maybe not everyone responds in this way, but I do. Our lives are of finite, relatively short lengths. Let us do the most we can do to live meaningful lives. People can be here today and gone the next day. So let us also treat each other with great dignity and care.

There’s a book by Og Mandino I read many years ago that I highly recommend entitled A Better Way to Live. Like I said, it has been a long time since I read it, but the one takeaway that has stuck with me all this time is his suggestion to treat every person you meet like you secretly know that today is their last day on Earth. How differently would we treat people if we knew in advance that they would be dead tomorrow? Mandino’s point is that we can’t know this in advance, but it could happen. Perhaps it’s even happened to you – losing someone and you might have treated them differently if you had known the end was coming.

Well, horror stories can put this knowledge of human mortality right up front and center for us. We can respond by cowering in fear for our lives, or we can respond by deciding since our time is short we will make the most of the time that we have, and treat others the most absolute best we can as well.

 

 

Essence of Me – Daily Create No. 1328

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Process: I found ten photos on my Facebook page I was willing to share in video form. I used Camtasia for editing. It is my go-to editor for quick and dirty, not-too-fancy video editing. I threw in a music snippet I had handy on my hard drive. Looped 12 seconds over and over for a full minute. Uploaded to YouTube. Posted it here.

PS – Did you know that you can mail-order chickens? I was blown away when I discoverd that. You feed them for six weeks. Then eat them up, yum!

One Day in the Persian Gulf

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warships fighting in the Persian Gulf War
HMS Gloucester, USS Missouri & allies in the Persian Gulf War

For me, February 25, 1991 was an unforgettable day. It was on that day that I was stationed aboard the USS Missouri doing shore bombardment off the coast of Kuwait. Not only were we in an Iraqi minefield, but we were very close to shore.

As we bombed the shore installations, the Kuwaiti oil wells were afire, lit by the retreating Iraqi army. The air was filled with a dense, black smoke. At one point, the alarm was sounded for a gas attack, so we all quickly donned our gas masks, not knowing what would become of us all.

At that point, claustrophobia set in. If you’ve ever worn a gas mask, or any kind of mask really that restricts your breathing, you may know the feeling. But it was especially eerie knowing that poison gas could be lurking nearby, just waiting to overtake us. Then I began to itch. The tip of my nose got an awful itch. But there was nothing I could do. No way to scratch without removing my mask. Definitely not worth the risk.

Just then, our hearts already pounding away, knowing we were under attack, the Captain yelled into the ship’s loudspeaker, “MISSILE INBOUND! ALL HANDS BRACE FOR SHOCK!”

At this point, not only could we not breathe, but we had to find something strong enough to hang onto before the missile slammed into us. “Don’t forget to bend your knees, so they can act as shock absorbers on impact!”

Main battery plot phone talker

I could hear on my headset chatter that the lookouts had spotted the missile heading our way. Then they saw two streaks launch from our neighboring ship, the HMS Gloucester, towards the missile. SPLASH ONE VAMPIRE! (Inbound missiles are nicknamed vampires.) Hoots and hollers cried out! They got it! What the heck happened? I’m not sure. Was it close? I don’t know.

But a nervous relief set in. We narrowly missed that close call, thanks to our friend riding shotgun, the Gloucester.

I read recently, that sadly, the HMS Gloucester is taking her final voyage to the scrapyard. It will be an ignoble ending to a courageous lady who saved our behinds. I’ve never met a sailor who was on that ship that day. But if I ever do, I’d like to shake his hand.

Tales from KSU

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Crypt Keeper

This fall, I am offering for the first time a course in digital storytelling. I have some online students and some face to face students. Since all of the activities are computer-based and shared online, I am working with the two groups together. In fact, we are collaborating with the DS106 group over at UMW.

I met Jim Groom several years ago when he gave a guest lecture at K-State and was amazed by how he turns a course into a narrative with DS106. Each semester has a storytelling theme, and this year the theme is Tales from DS106, a riff on Tales from the Crypt. This year, my students and I are joining in the fun.

Naturally, I have been pondering the horror genre and its significance. This morning I read through Stephen King’s introduction to the latest edition of his book Danse Macabre, and what he said about people who enjoy the genre is fascinating. According to King, the imaginative person who enjoys these stories “has a clearer fix on the fact of his/her fragility; the imaginative person realizes that anything can go disastrously wrong, at any time.” He says that regular folks with banal entertainment tastes suffer from what he calls “imaginative myopia.” It is the imaginative people who live lively lifes, and more bravely too, because although they more fully understand the risks of being human, they keep going anyway. To them, according to King, “horror movies are a safety valve.”

So I’ll ask you, dear readers, and especially to any students who are reading this. Where do you stand? Are you one of King’s “imaginative people” who enjoy a good horror story? What is your favorite? Do you dislike the genre? Why so? Is it possible that your conception of horror stories is narrow, and actually if you broaden the definition of horror, there are some stories that you do like? And finally, what is your favorite movie or book or comic series – what is your favorite horror story? Let’s discuss in the comments below…