June 26th, 2009 by Sydney

io9‘s Annalee Newitz says:

“Among the many things about Jackson that caught the public’s imagination in the 1990s was the way he turned his body into a kind of science fiction story. He became an enhanced human, using plastic surgery and pharmaceuticals to change his face and seemingly his race as well. He became whiter than most white people, and his pale bandaged skin became his trademark.

Jackson was a post-human celebrity, and nowhere was this more obvious than in his video “Black or White” (directed by John Landis). Once again, Jackson turned to one of the greatest minds in science fiction to help with the video. He used the morphing software used by James Cameron for The Abyss and Terminator 2 to create a memorable and oft-copied scene where dozens of people’s faces morph into each other, streaming through different racial identities, ages, and genders with an uncanny ease.”

Michael Jackson was living, breathing proof that if you’re driven enough (and you have the resources), you can really be anyone, or thing, you want to be.  From his body transformations to his fantastical music videos and his deep love for the kind of dreams most abandon after childhood, he was a man that truly sought to create and live out fantasy irl.

Michael Jackson’s Science Fictional Life

June 25th, 2009 by Senna

I guess Amanda’s right, WoW really is taking over the world…

Nordiah - Blood Elf Paladin

I found Figure Prints on Offworld this morning, a magical website that takes your fully epic-geared (or not) characters and produces little statues of them for you to keep and proudly display with your figurines of superheroes (or villans), gundams, and the like.  The production process is quite interesting-its called rapid prototyping, where hundreds of little pieces of paper the make up thin slices of your character are glued together to form the overall shape.  They are then heated up and polished individually.  Pretty neat, huh!  Once I hit 80, I think I might just have to indulge.  They seem like they would make great gifts for your wowhead friends, too.  Oh!  And you can even purchase little pet models so that they’ll never be lonely.  If interested, make sure you check out the video on how they are made-some pretty precise manufacturing.

Atar - Orc Hunter

Kelem - Night Elf Rogue

June 23rd, 2009 by Amanda

It’s official, World of Warcraft is taking over the world. While watching television today, I witnessed this commercial. I wouldn’t have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes.

Wow…just….wow….

Also, why does that girl turn into a male orc? Does that make sense to anyone else?
Strangely though, I’m now compelled to go out and buy some Mountain Dew…

June 23rd, 2009 by Sydney

Nah.  Just kidding. They’re not zombies.  They’re just plain old dead.  But wouldn’t it be cool/cute if they were?

Over the last month, sources from around the world have been reporting that it’s been RAININ’ TADPOLES IN JAPAN! Wahhh??? No, seriously. It’s like The Exodus! Or Magnolia!

Typically, when it starts raining animals, scientists attribute it to strong winds and storms that form over bodies of water that, under certain circumstances, are capable of sucking up small animals, like tadpoles, carrying them inland and letting them loose on the unsuspecting citizens below.  But according to Telegraph.co.uk, local Japanese meteorologists just aren’t satisfied with this theory. Apparently, the wind at the time just wasn’t strong enough to be able to sweep up and carry hundreds of tadpoles across Japan.  Find the complete story here.

Also, Pink Tentacle has been following the story since it first broke and posts updates and photographs as new incidents of tadpole-rainfall occur.

June 17th, 2009 by Amanda

Some of you may be familiar with the game Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock, but for those of you who aren’t, I’ll explain it with this video from the inventors.

Here to give a demonstration is Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory:

I think we should all start utilizing this instead of the classic Rock, Paper, Scissors, although I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be as effective since we all know that everyone would always throw ‘Spock’…Sydney.

June 16th, 2009 by Amanda

This was one of my good friends make up final. When asking her what her inspiration was for this masterpiece, her reply was simply, “Well, I’m an amateur Cryptozoologist, so obviously I wanted to choose something a little scary, but also cute.” Oh, and I got to model for it :D and I must say, I really enjoyed being a cute little yeti for the day. I really did not want to take it off. I actually almost drove home like this and winked at onlookers.

ENJOY!!! ^.^

Make up by Caylin Ellowitz.

Also, during her travels searching for yeti’s, Caylin stumbled upon this amazing blog dedicated to them. Check it out!!

June 15th, 2009 by Senna

Senna here, reporting for duty!

One big step for Noah and Erin, one giant leap for mankind!

Space lovers and soon to be newlyweds Noah Fulmor and Erin Finnegan will be the first couple to be married in space– well, almost. They will be married in a Boeing 727 zero gravity plane departing from the Kennedy Space Center, high above the surface of the Earth. Noah explains, “We would really prefer to do it in space or on Mars but living in the time that we do, this was the closest we could get to zero gravity.”  And the rock?  Nothing less than an engagement ring of meteorite fragments from 30,000 years ago.  Both of the love cadets plan to wear zero gravity wedding attire, a multi layered gown by Japanese designer Eri Matsui for Erin and a special zero gravity tux for Noah.  The price tage of the wedding is a whopping $5,200 a head, and they’re bringing friends.  But no price is too high for a once in a lifetime commitment in a once in a lifetime setting, for Noah and Erin will be two of the few earthlings to experience zero gravity.  The honeymoon will follow straight after the wedding party in Antartica.  Read the whole article here.

Congratulations to the spacey couple!

June 15th, 2009 by Sydney

WIRED is having a special promotion right now. Buy a one-year subscription to Wired Magazine for $10 plus receive a free copy of its new HOW TO GUIDE.  I did it and got mine in the mail the other day and it’s pretty awesome.  My favorite section? How To Be a Geek. Their suggestions?

• Watch TV (Star Trek, X-Files…)
• Play some games (Risk, Simcity…)
• Read books (LOTR, Neuromancer…)
• And some comics (Watchmen, Love & Rockets…)
• Learn some science!!

After this initial period of research, you’re ready to take the next step toward gaining your “geek cred,” which most likely involves building something like a website or a robot… or something.

And as you can see by that snippet of How to be Understood at ComicCon above, the rest of the guide is full of other helpful How To’s, including How to be a Game God, How to Reset a Dislocate Shoulder and How to Feign Sincerity, along with some helpful tips for us bloggers like How to Increase Your Pageviews and How to Build an Army of Followers.

June 15th, 2009 by Sydney

Over at GEEK DAD, Curtis Silver recently posted a list of tips on how to raise kids to be trekkies.  My personal favorite? Tip #2: After dinner every night have a family discussion concerning the positives and negatives of the Prime Directive. God, I wish my parents raised me this way! Read the full article here.

(Photo from Star Trek: The Original Seires, Season 3, Episode 4, “And the Children Will Lead.” Watch it here.)

June 14th, 2009 by Senna

Senna here reporting for duty!

I really need to buy a Wii, I miss playing SSBB. Seen some really good stuff today and yesterday at the SIN tournament in Las Vegas on the live stream. Best of luck to AJAX, MikeHaze, DSF, Nezumi, Tyrant, Havok, (and friends) not that they need it. Just somebody beat M2K :)

Here’s the live stream:

June 13th, 2009 by Sydney

Over at Pink Tentacle, they’ve posted some beautiful pictures of the Gundam stature recently erected in Tokyo.  According to examiner.com, the mech was  built by a group called Green Tokyo Gundam Project to both commemorate the 30th anniversary of the show and promote Tokyo’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics.  It looks so real! I wish it was real. *sigh*

(link)

June 11th, 2009 by Sydney

I’m taking care of one of my grandfather’s dog at my house for the next few weeks… and he looks like the Grim from Harry Potter!!  I don’t know.  I think he looks like the Grim.  Well, whatever anyone thinks, it’s still really scary waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and seeing that in your doorway.

I mean, I guess the Grim ends up being Sirius Black, one of my favorite characters. Maybe Rex is an animagus and he’s just waiting for the perfect moment to turn into Gary Oldman! Be still, my heart.

June 9th, 2009 by Senna

Back here reporting for duty!

A couple of months ago I discovered a performance piece by Italian artist Chris Channing called “The Faun.”  Although I think his videos of fantastical performances could benefit from better cinematography, his fabricated personas and detailed costuming and makeup are absolutely stunning.  Here’s a brief description of his piece, The Faun, from his website, it aligns with our philosophies of FANTASYIRL in some ways:

“The Faun

Life is full of surprises … full of dreams and fantasies that become reality. Between truth and fiction. The Faun. A Mythological Beast. The legend talks about a creature half animal half human. Here is the reality.

This is a young male – around 40 years old – they typically live to between 150 and 170 years old. They sleep in the branches of trees – climbing with the use of only their arms while using their hooves to dig small steps in the trees’ bark. They eat roots and small animals. They are of good character but can be touchy. They do have developed vocal chords but it seems that they use them to make a series of sophisticated noises rather than words as we know them.

This is a ‘pookha’. (The faun is part of the fairy world – the fairy race – and the pookha is another subgenre) He was captured in dense woodland in the north of Ireland. The pookha are divided animal below human above, more or less. Other types of faun are of different dimensions and with different animal/human divisions.

The exhibition of the faun can vary – in a park or villa where he is free to wander ‘alongside’ the guests – he can be brought into a performance arena and shown there or he can be viewed in a zoo like enclosure with the assistant or owner in attendance. She presents him to them, and them to him. She is the verbal communication between beast and public, which alleviates any fear, prevents any ‘hooligan’ type jokes and encourages the public to express their reactions. The assistant is ‘a veterinary or mythology student’ working at a nearby research centre’ where the faun was brought after his capture and from where he will soon be released back into the wild. In a medieval setting she is the gypsy who has bought or captured the animal. This role is sometimes filled by a child.”

View The Faun here

Since I am planning on constructing hooves of my own for my Draenei Cosplay for Blizzcon, I cannot stop admiring the caliber and realness of his faun legs and hooves.  Boy do I have a lot of work ahead of me!

Another short performance piece that is watch worthy is Guardian Angel, viewable here.

June 9th, 2009 by Senna

Senna here, reporting for duty!

The battle of all battles, festival of all festivals, experience of a lifetime for a LARPer.  Drachenfest has been held in Germany almost every year since 2001, attracting over 3,000 LARPers, Medievalists, fair maidens and grotesque warriors.  In essence, I WANT TO GO!

Here’s the backstory of the Dragon Festival:

“In the Last Year of the Silver, during the Era of the Void, the avatar of chaos entered the circle of the Dragons. Like the carcass does for a scavenger, he had been allured by the weakness of one of his most long-term enemies. The Mortal had deprived the Gray Dragon from its strength, and so the Chaos managed to expel the keeper of knowledge and wisdom from the circle of the Divine.
With the deep-seated shock about the events and notwithstanding the desperate fight of the remaining followers of the Gray, it was the Avatar of the Chaos who eventually led them into battle. They had failed, had not been worthy. Fear and weakness had conquered their hearts.

However, the spark of hope had not yet expired, and on the subsequent Dragonfest, in the Last Year of the Green, during the Era of the Void, more than a hundred of the Gray’s followers assembled to offer loyalty to the Gray Way. This act of truth found its reward as the Gray Dragon managed to re-enter the circle of Gods in the First Year of the Orcs. Still full of doubt, unsure about the loyalty of his followers, he was happy to experience that his scruples had no substance: knowledge and wisdom were kept up by His, and their force even carried him to the final battle and, beyond still, to victory.
The Gray Dragon beheld that the Era of the Void did a lot of evil. Never again he wanted to encounter dishonour the way he did when he got banned from the circle of the Divine. He longed to find a way for the Dragons to spread their beloved lore of the ways of the circle amongst the mortals – and he found that way:

The Era of the Void had to come to an end! The Dragons needed a new world of their own to watch over the fate of the mortals, a new start, a chance to make up for past mistakes. So the idea of the Second World of Dragons was born, and the Gray stepped up to the Council of Dragons and announced his decision to which he was entitled as the victor of the Dragonfest gone by. The others welcomed his proposal and together they decided about the shape of the new world for it to endure.

Thus came into being the new rules for the Dragonfest and the rise of the Second World of Dragons.” (Taken from the Drachenfest official website, translated here.)

Sounds pretty epic to say the least.  You Germans (or even all Europeans!) are lucky to have an event like this happen annually or biannually.  If Sydney and I were able to attend, I would drag her on a plane with me no matter how much she threatened to feed me to the Orcs LOL.  If you liked what you read, check out the trailer for Drachenfest 2009.

June 9th, 2009 by Amanda

I found this on YouTube a while ago. It’s called Mario Kart Love Song…I think it’s pretty self explanatory. Besides being one of the most cleverly written songs I’ve ever heard, it’s probably the sweetest. Check it out!!