Oh wow, this is so cool, just like Star Trek and stuff!! I bet next thing you know, they'll be beaming people all over the place and making William Shatner actually not suck at acting! I'm sure glad to be living in the twenty-first century! Now if they can just find a way to keep my black jeans from fading after being washed three times.
I have been in love with the Final Fantasy series for nearly the entire second half of my life. These games all follow a very traditional, "hero, evil villain, save the world," type format, and I would EXPECT the movie to follow the same general theme as the video games. To have done anything otherwise would have been betraying and insulting the fans.
To even suggest this movie could have been done with anything other than CGI is insulting in itself. No live actor could ever accurately portray the darkness or surreality of some of the characters in these games. The name of the movie/game is Final Fantasy because it is precisely that -- a fantasy. The apocalyptic worlds and circumstances these characters exist in could just never be done justice any other way than completely out of the artist's imagination -- either with traditional artwork (the Amano FF illustrations), or CG. (I still remember crying when Celes threw herself off the cliff in FF3/6, while the opera house theme played...)
That being said, I think they did the best they could with the time and technology available. I am personally a bit disappointed they went more for photo-realistic, and didn't give the characters more of an anime-look, as in FF7. If you can't appreciate this movie for what it is -- a tribute to a long line of video games and a more in-depth rendering of the kind of "action sequences" its fans have been imagining for years, and watch it with that in mind, then I think you have no business reviewing it. I usually read your reviews and I often wonder just what criteria makes a movie good to you, since you seem to have some critical problem with everything.
Even Roger Ebert gave it three and a half stars, you big grumpus.
I think some of it may have to do with the nature of the information and the site... alot of sites like k5 or/. might have a harder time getting support because there are other similar sites which would charge less or be free. (I saw this morning that k5 has got up an ad-free "subscription" right now, and I paid $30 for six months of ad-free use of the message board on my site.)
I personally have had a fairly positive experience with getting donations/selling things for my site, but then again if anyone wants to see my drawings, I'm the only place they can get them. I'm also very up-front about what the money goes towards -- paying off my debts so that I can work less hours and create more content (photos, writing, art, whatever...). I think it helps when the site's visitors have a more personal interest in the success or failure of the site. It's easier to send $5.00 to someone when you know a bit more about them, and actually want to help them, than a faceless organization just asking to be sent money.
I'm thinking about subscribing to k5, but it's only because I use their "diary" feature to mirror my Journal on. I personally don't feel the quality of articles there is worth paying for (even their bandwidth), but the personal use I get out of it could be worth that $5.00/month.
I agree. The original comic he did felt almost insulting at the time, particularly since I've (and I'm sure many others) had the ability to make donations to me on my site for quite awhile. The thing is that a very very minute portion of traffic actually pays anything! Most of the artists online aren't fortunate enough to have the benefit of an offline source of revenue from their work.
Here, let me open up my e-mail from Dr.So-and-So who really likes my artwork and saw my site on the way to a business meeting, then eat my toast and butter for dinner for the third night in a row. Yeah...
And for those of us working "day jobs," it's extremely depressing, disheartening, and frustrating to work miserable jobs every day and get treated like crap by customers then come home and read fanmail.:p
Any online artists wanna get with me and organize a "boycott the public" week where all the online comics and art sites become unavailable?
I guess I'll be obsolete soon. At least computers can't dress up and black and sit around in coffee shops, while making strange faces at the people that walk by. Yet.:(
Of course, on printers (which is what most people would have access to) the best this program can do is create the illusion of depth and paint texture. The printed surface would still be flat. Van Gogh's paintings are very thick and textured... he would sometimes even use his fingers to paint because the brush wouldn't hold enough to satisfy him. Or are they working on a solution for this problem too?
There is more to a painting than just the image. There's the warmth of the medium it was created on (wood, canvas, clay, etc.) and the media used to create it. Oil paints have a certain shine, texture, scent, and even behaviour as they crack and dry out over time.
Why don't we just build a robot to paint for us, so we don't have to waste our valuable brain power any more doing things like being creative or actually having ideas? Then we can build robots to appreciate the robotic art, because we'll all be sitting in front of the TV watching Friends every night. Why even bother being human to begin with?:(
I am a more traditional visual artist (I work primarily in coloured pencils, pen and ink, and oils), but I have done some digital work, ranging from completely Photoshop creations, to hybrid hand-drawn/digital pieces. (Shameless self-promotion: If you're interested, the URL is www.jinwicked.com/portfolio/ for a quick glance at my stuff.)
I think it's difficult to distinguish whether computer-created graphics are artwork or not. The main problem here is that so many powerful visual-creation tools (particularly filters) exist for programs like Photoshop, that anyone (even me) can sit down and with a minimal amount of practice learn to create sophisticated and impressive-looking digital imagery. I think the detail to remember is that just like much traditional imagery is not considered art by the establishment, much computer generated imagery will not either. I think the content, method of creation, motivation, and any possible meaning will have more of a say than just the fact that it happens to be digital. There are many photographers and artists creating "digital" work that is collage and enhanced photography on computers, and it is not only beautiful but can be quite popular. These are blends of purely digital work, hard photography, drawing, painting, and more.
I am interested to see the long-term effects of computers on the art world. I myself tend to blend machinery and digital themes into my images, expressing the interaction between technology and humans as individuals. My web graphics have also historically been either Photoshopped photography or altered artwork. (I consider my sites to be functional art.) I don't really care for strictly computer-generated images because they tend to sometimes have a blocky, cold feel to them that lacks emotion, but I'm sure with the growing power of personal computers, eventually someone will be able to duplicate the textures and warmer feel of physical media.
Come on now, just because this story was on the other site doesn't mean it should be voted down. After all, some of us here don't read that other site.
So, Jon, is it time to stop complaining about capitalism and start investigating some alternatives yet? Or is merely complaining enough for you?
It bothers me that you're allowed to write this kind of stuff, and I have yet to ever see you reply to a single comment posted to one of your stories. You constantly sing doom and gloom, and I have never seen you once offer any kind of solution for the countless situations you go on moaning about all the time. Bah.
Long work weeks have more of a negative effect than simply the personal lives of the worker working those hours. They also drive up unemployment by squeezing the most they can get out of each individual worker, and the unemployment turns around and lowers wages. When everyone works those 40-60 hour weeks, everyone suffers except those actually reaping the benefits of your labour (read: a very, VERY few people at the tip top of the chain).
YOU make the product that generates profit. YOU make sure YOU get what YOU deserve for it. There's nothing to brag about working 60 hours a week. There's nothing to brag about being exploited. If you aren't staying alert, you will be taken advantage of.
It lowers the standard of living for almost everyone and raises it for a couple of individuals. The best thing you can do right now is to join a union if one exists, or form one if there isn't one, and lobby your congressmen to push some kind of bill for a shorter work week. I believe most of Europe is on a 32 or 35 hour work week, and it does alot to stimulate employment and give the economy a boost.
Thanks for one of the most insightful comments I've seen on this site in quite awhile.
I don't necessarily think that it's just limited to tech support, either. The fact is that most phone based jobs (customer service, telemarketing, etc.) are extremely stressful jobs and they have to put up with a HUGE amount of abuse. It's extremely difficult to resolve things over the telephone, where there's a constant fear either by the salesman or the customer (depending on the nature of the call) of being disconnected. I can also imagine it's extremely frustrating to both the user and the employee not to know what exactly is wrong. ("Um, my computer isn't working.") Multiply that by 50 calls a day and why tech support (or customer service)gets pretty bad is obvious.
Myself, I worked as a telemarketer for about two months. It was awful. I made more at that job than anywhere else I've worked, but the stress it put me under was just not worth it. I've applied for other customer service and/or support jobs (not sales), but most of them these days give you some kind of psychological quiz before you interview, and I couldn't pass any of them. (Once when I was answering honestly, and once when I deliberately tried to fill in the "right" answers.) I guess they're looking for a certain personality type. My guess would be the kind that follows orders well and without question, and will take alot of abuse. (Neither of which describe me very well.) I'm a waiter now, and I like it. I can see the people who have a problem and I can fix it.:)
Yes, you're quite right, I should have said would have instead of did, respectively, however this is a mistake I made because I was irritated with the original comment I was replying to and didn't proofread closely enough. You have my apologies. Any literature about Marx, however, very plainly demonstrates that what occurred in China and the USSR were not what he intended nor what his writings put forward. Here's a nice short one that simply states the difference, but there is a large amount of his shorter letters and articles on the 'net that can be found with a simple search. I'd also like to point out that he was alive during the events going on in Poland and eastern Europe, as well as political unrest Russia, and commented on revolutions and many of the smaller events that did influence the later Russian Revolution or its participants. It's not as if it's something that just happened in one weekend. It had many factors involved, and while Karl Marx's writings were one of them, they were interpreted in ways I'm sure he did not intend or would have approved of.
(Whoever modded my comment:) Just because I make a mistake does not mean I am a troll. Why don't you just reply with a note that you don't like what I have to say, or send me some hate mail? I don't care if you disagree, but I'm getting rather sick of being called something I'm not. Not everyone who expresses an opinion other than your own does it out of spite.
The government in China is not socialist nor does it have much of anything in common with most of the ideas of Marx. Anyone from the World Socialist Movement would be able to tell you that. Please stop associating an abusive state capitalist China with the ideas and writings of Karl Marx. This is a misconception convieniently put forth by our lovely American government in the elementary and high schools to remind us how naughty socialism is and how wonderful capitalism is. I know the Libertarian ideals abound on this site full of well-fed IT professionals, but believe it or not, America is not so much better than China than it likes to pretend it is. The WSM put out literature during the Soviet and Chinese revolutions stating they were not socialists then, and their opinions are still true today. Likewise, Marx did not approve of the Soviet revolution at the time it occurred. Now you know better.
I feel exactly the same way...I really don't mind people printing things out, hanging it up on the wall, or making copies of my artwork for friends...it's the idea of someone bastardizing something I've done to sell or promote something I probably don't agree with that bothers me. Even setting the "making money off my creativity" aside, it's a disturbing situation that really would make me hole up all my work and not want to show a thing to anyone else (not being able to put my foot down and keep it from being used for things I don't want it associated with.)
They (Radio Shack) really wouldn't let you buy it at all without giving them something? I've bought things there before with my boyfriend, and they gave us hassle but eventually caved in after a few minutes of arguing. I bought a phone cord from one a couple of months ago, and all I had to do was tell him no and he easily finished the sale without it. (Maybe he could tell I was going to be a pain and just didn't bother...) Although it is certainly irritating that they ask in the first place. Best Buy asks for your ZIP code, I'm pretty sure Circuit City asks for personal information too. (Is this an electronics store thing?) I worked at an Eckerd Drugs for awhile, and also Michael's Arts & Crafts, and they both tried the asking for ZIP codes bit. About one in every ten people will give you a hassle, in which case we'd just enter the ZIP code where the store was located. This skewed whatever information they were trying to collect, I'm sure...needless to say the policies didn't last very long. I questioned the usefulness of it to begin with.
Odd that you had to make up info before they'd let you buy it. I'd say the salesmen are probably instructed to TELL you the computer won't complete the sale w/out filling it in, but in reality it's totally capable of completing it blank. Whenever a sales drone tells you something that sounds illogical like that, it's usually script. I've worked alot of retail jobs, and that's usually the case. Like when you ask if there are extra of something in the back, and someone says, "Sorry, everything we have is out on the shelves," what that really means is "Our stockroom is such a disorganized mess that we'd never find it in a million years if we DID have it, and I'm definately not going back there and digging around half an hour for you."
Here this whole time I've been trying to sell paintings and drawings done the old way, and all I had to do was hang a bunch of multi-coloured business cards on some hooks on the wall. Peachy.
The dot-com world may have been forced to come to its senses, but apparently the modern art world is just as clueless as ever.
To address your concerns...the "naked" pictures are cartoons and/or artwork...I wouldn't say there's anything inadvertantly sexual about them. The nudity in my artwork usually has little to actually do with sex, except from maybe being a commentary on some aspect of it. Of course the "Hookah" picture you mentioned is indeed a drawing of my glorious butt...but it was a gift for my boyfriend...might I point out that I scrawled his name very plainly on the most "exciting" aspect of the picture.:) As for the butt-button...that was only to compliment the boob button, which I deliberately put on a link that will eventually go to a very serious collection of essays on religion, society, and politics I am working on. So that was an act of deliberately being misleading. I suppose it would be equivalent to finding the work of an established scientist hidden behind a bunch of unusually interesting pr0n pics. Never expect anything an artist does to be simple or what it initially looks like. I'm glad you liked my page though.;)
Not that I'm unwilling to take pictures in my scanties...but I have been getting lewd comments for as long as I've been on the internet, and they very seldom have anything to do with the amount of clothing I am or am not wearing. Of course, I've been mostly ignoring those messages just as long, so it's all the same to me. Besides, it gives me lots of ways to vent pent up anger.:)
Baring yourself isn't always necessary...there's about 40 pictures of me on my homepage and all but about 5 of them you can't even see more skin than my hands and face. And I still get piles of lewd messages/e-mails! So sorry if I never felt the need to post a picture of myself in a bikini on AmIHotOrNot.com. I was happy enough to get voted down on AmIGothOrNot.com. I wish more people would agree with the users of that site and quit calling me that!
And you're right...no one needs to get in a circle and "protect" the delicate little women. Unfortunately, there are women whose egos were probably slightly wounded by a voter or two. If you ask me, though, a person's got to be a masochist to post some of the embarrassing and/or tacky photos I've witnessed on those sites. So these women probably had alot of problems to begin with. I don't think AmIHotOrNot.com is going to make that big a difference.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh wow, this is so cool, just like Star Trek and stuff!! I bet next thing you know, they'll be beaming people all over the place and making William Shatner actually not suck at acting! I'm sure glad to be living in the twenty-first century! Now if they can just find a way to keep my black jeans from fading after being washed three times.
I have been in love with the Final Fantasy series for nearly the entire second half of my life. These games all follow a very traditional, "hero, evil villain, save the world," type format, and I would EXPECT the movie to follow the same general theme as the video games. To have done anything otherwise would have been betraying and insulting the fans.
To even suggest this movie could have been done with anything other than CGI is insulting in itself. No live actor could ever accurately portray the darkness or surreality of some of the characters in these games. The name of the movie/game is Final Fantasy because it is precisely that -- a fantasy. The apocalyptic worlds and circumstances these characters exist in could just never be done justice any other way than completely out of the artist's imagination -- either with traditional artwork (the Amano FF illustrations), or CG. (I still remember crying when Celes threw herself off the cliff in FF3/6, while the opera house theme played...)
That being said, I think they did the best they could with the time and technology available. I am personally a bit disappointed they went more for photo-realistic, and didn't give the characters more of an anime-look, as in FF7. If you can't appreciate this movie for what it is -- a tribute to a long line of video games and a more in-depth rendering of the kind of "action sequences" its fans have been imagining for years, and watch it with that in mind, then I think you have no business reviewing it. I usually read your reviews and I often wonder just what criteria makes a movie good to you, since you seem to have some critical problem with everything.
Even Roger Ebert gave it three and a half stars, you big grumpus.
I think some of it may have to do with the nature of the information and the site... alot of sites like k5 or /. might have a harder time getting support because there are other similar sites which would charge less or be free. (I saw this morning that k5 has got up an ad-free "subscription" right now, and I paid $30 for six months of ad-free use of the message board on my site.)
I personally have had a fairly positive experience with getting donations/selling things for my site, but then again if anyone wants to see my drawings, I'm the only place they can get them. I'm also very up-front about what the money goes towards -- paying off my debts so that I can work less hours and create more content (photos, writing, art, whatever...). I think it helps when the site's visitors have a more personal interest in the success or failure of the site. It's easier to send $5.00 to someone when you know a bit more about them, and actually want to help them, than a faceless organization just asking to be sent money.
I'm thinking about subscribing to k5, but it's only because I use their "diary" feature to mirror my Journal on. I personally don't feel the quality of articles there is worth paying for (even their bandwidth), but the personal use I get out of it could be worth that $5.00/month.
I agree. The original comic he did felt almost insulting at the time, particularly since I've (and I'm sure many others) had the ability to make donations to me on my site for quite awhile. The thing is that a very very minute portion of traffic actually pays anything! Most of the artists online aren't fortunate enough to have the benefit of an offline source of revenue from their work.
Here, let me open up my e-mail from Dr.So-and-So who really likes my artwork and saw my site on the way to a business meeting, then eat my toast and butter for dinner for the third night in a row. Yeah...
And for those of us working "day jobs," it's extremely depressing, disheartening, and frustrating to work miserable jobs every day and get treated like crap by customers then come home and read fanmail. :p
Any online artists wanna get with me and organize a "boycott the public" week where all the online comics and art sites become unavailable?
I guess I'll be obsolete soon. At least computers can't dress up and black and sit around in coffee shops, while making strange faces at the people that walk by. Yet. :(
Of course, on printers (which is what most people would have access to) the best this program can do is create the illusion of depth and paint texture. The printed surface would still be flat. Van Gogh's paintings are very thick and textured... he would sometimes even use his fingers to paint because the brush wouldn't hold enough to satisfy him. Or are they working on a solution for this problem too?
There is more to a painting than just the image. There's the warmth of the medium it was created on (wood, canvas, clay, etc.) and the media used to create it. Oil paints have a certain shine, texture, scent, and even behaviour as they crack and dry out over time.
Why don't we just build a robot to paint for us, so we don't have to waste our valuable brain power any more doing things like being creative or actually having ideas? Then we can build robots to appreciate the robotic art, because we'll all be sitting in front of the TV watching Friends every night. Why even bother being human to begin with? :(
I am a more traditional visual artist (I work primarily in coloured pencils, pen and ink, and oils), but I have done some digital work, ranging from completely Photoshop creations, to hybrid hand-drawn/digital pieces. (Shameless self-promotion: If you're interested, the URL is www.jinwicked.com/portfolio/ for a quick glance at my stuff.)
I think it's difficult to distinguish whether computer-created graphics are artwork or not. The main problem here is that so many powerful visual-creation tools (particularly filters) exist for programs like Photoshop, that anyone (even me) can sit down and with a minimal amount of practice learn to create sophisticated and impressive-looking digital imagery. I think the detail to remember is that just like much traditional imagery is not considered art by the establishment, much computer generated imagery will not either. I think the content, method of creation, motivation, and any possible meaning will have more of a say than just the fact that it happens to be digital. There are many photographers and artists creating "digital" work that is collage and enhanced photography on computers, and it is not only beautiful but can be quite popular. These are blends of purely digital work, hard photography, drawing, painting, and more.
I am interested to see the long-term effects of computers on the art world. I myself tend to blend machinery and digital themes into my images, expressing the interaction between technology and humans as individuals. My web graphics have also historically been either Photoshopped photography or altered artwork. (I consider my sites to be functional art.) I don't really care for strictly computer-generated images because they tend to sometimes have a blocky, cold feel to them that lacks emotion, but I'm sure with the growing power of personal computers, eventually someone will be able to duplicate the textures and warmer feel of physical media.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Come on now, just because this story was on the other site doesn't mean it should be voted down. After all, some of us here don't read that other site.
So, Jon, is it time to stop complaining about capitalism and start investigating some alternatives yet? Or is merely complaining enough for you?
It bothers me that you're allowed to write this kind of stuff, and I have yet to ever see you reply to a single comment posted to one of your stories. You constantly sing doom and gloom, and I have never seen you once offer any kind of solution for the countless situations you go on moaning about all the time. Bah.
Yes, please correct it, flesh out your points in a bit more depth, and resubmit it to the queue...oh, wait. I forgot this is Slashdot and not k5.
Sorry, my mistake. The differences seem to be slowly eroding away.
Long work weeks have more of a negative effect than simply the personal lives of the worker working those hours. They also drive up unemployment by squeezing the most they can get out of each individual worker, and the unemployment turns around and lowers wages. When everyone works those 40-60 hour weeks, everyone suffers except those actually reaping the benefits of your labour (read: a very, VERY few people at the tip top of the chain).
YOU make the product that generates profit. YOU make sure YOU get what YOU deserve for it. There's nothing to brag about working 60 hours a week. There's nothing to brag about being exploited. If you aren't staying alert, you will be taken advantage of.
It lowers the standard of living for almost everyone and raises it for a couple of individuals. The best thing you can do right now is to join a union if one exists, or form one if there isn't one, and lobby your congressmen to push some kind of bill for a shorter work week. I believe most of Europe is on a 32 or 35 hour work week, and it does alot to stimulate employment and give the economy a boost.
Thanks for one of the most insightful comments I've seen on this site in quite awhile.
I don't necessarily think that it's just limited to tech support, either. The fact is that most phone based jobs (customer service, telemarketing, etc.) are extremely stressful jobs and they have to put up with a HUGE amount of abuse. It's extremely difficult to resolve things over the telephone, where there's a constant fear either by the salesman or the customer (depending on the nature of the call) of being disconnected. I can also imagine it's extremely frustrating to both the user and the employee not to know what exactly is wrong. ("Um, my computer isn't working.") Multiply that by 50 calls a day and why tech support (or customer service)gets pretty bad is obvious.
Myself, I worked as a telemarketer for about two months. It was awful. I made more at that job than anywhere else I've worked, but the stress it put me under was just not worth it. I've applied for other customer service and/or support jobs (not sales), but most of them these days give you some kind of psychological quiz before you interview, and I couldn't pass any of them. (Once when I was answering honestly, and once when I deliberately tried to fill in the "right" answers.) I guess they're looking for a certain personality type. My guess would be the kind that follows orders well and without question, and will take alot of abuse. (Neither of which describe me very well.) I'm a waiter now, and I like it. I can see the people who have a problem and I can fix it. :)
Yes, you're quite right, I should have said would have instead of did, respectively, however this is a mistake I made because I was irritated with the original comment I was replying to and didn't proofread closely enough. You have my apologies. Any literature about Marx, however, very plainly demonstrates that what occurred in China and the USSR were not what he intended nor what his writings put forward. Here's a nice short one that simply states the difference, but there is a large amount of his shorter letters and articles on the 'net that can be found with a simple search. I'd also like to point out that he was alive during the events going on in Poland and eastern Europe, as well as political unrest Russia, and commented on revolutions and many of the smaller events that did influence the later Russian Revolution or its participants. It's not as if it's something that just happened in one weekend. It had many factors involved, and while Karl Marx's writings were one of them, they were interpreted in ways I'm sure he did not intend or would have approved of.
(Whoever modded my comment:) Just because I make a mistake does not mean I am a troll. Why don't you just reply with a note that you don't like what I have to say, or send me some hate mail? I don't care if you disagree, but I'm getting rather sick of being called something I'm not. Not everyone who expresses an opinion other than your own does it out of spite.
The government in China is not socialist nor does it have much of anything in common with most of the ideas of Marx. Anyone from the World Socialist Movement would be able to tell you that. Please stop associating an abusive state capitalist China with the ideas and writings of Karl Marx. This is a misconception convieniently put forth by our lovely American government in the elementary and high schools to remind us how naughty socialism is and how wonderful capitalism is. I know the Libertarian ideals abound on this site full of well-fed IT professionals, but believe it or not, America is not so much better than China than it likes to pretend it is. The WSM put out literature during the Soviet and Chinese revolutions stating they were not socialists then, and their opinions are still true today. Likewise, Marx did not approve of the Soviet revolution at the time it occurred. Now you know better.
Thank you, and carry on.
--a hot communist chick
I guess everyone is allowed to make jokes except me. Figures. :p
Now I finally have a good excuse when everyone complains that I won't leave the house until I've dressed up and put all my makeup on.
"But they're taking PICTURES of me..."
I feel exactly the same way...I really don't mind people printing things out, hanging it up on the wall, or making copies of my artwork for friends...it's the idea of someone bastardizing something I've done to sell or promote something I probably don't agree with that bothers me. Even setting the "making money off my creativity" aside, it's a disturbing situation that really would make me hole up all my work and not want to show a thing to anyone else (not being able to put my foot down and keep it from being used for things I don't want it associated with.)
A webcam as security might go a long way towards gaining traffic for my site.
Oh, and please e-mail me if you happen to notice someone wearing a stocking over their face and wielding a baseball bat behind me. Thanks!
They (Radio Shack) really wouldn't let you buy it at all without giving them something? I've bought things there before with my boyfriend, and they gave us hassle but eventually caved in after a few minutes of arguing. I bought a phone cord from one a couple of months ago, and all I had to do was tell him no and he easily finished the sale without it. (Maybe he could tell I was going to be a pain and just didn't bother...) Although it is certainly irritating that they ask in the first place. Best Buy asks for your ZIP code, I'm pretty sure Circuit City asks for personal information too. (Is this an electronics store thing?) I worked at an Eckerd Drugs for awhile, and also Michael's Arts & Crafts, and they both tried the asking for ZIP codes bit. About one in every ten people will give you a hassle, in which case we'd just enter the ZIP code where the store was located. This skewed whatever information they were trying to collect, I'm sure...needless to say the policies didn't last very long. I questioned the usefulness of it to begin with.
Odd that you had to make up info before they'd let you buy it. I'd say the salesmen are probably instructed to TELL you the computer won't complete the sale w/out filling it in, but in reality it's totally capable of completing it blank. Whenever a sales drone tells you something that sounds illogical like that, it's usually script. I've worked alot of retail jobs, and that's usually the case. Like when you ask if there are extra of something in the back, and someone says, "Sorry, everything we have is out on the shelves," what that really means is "Our stockroom is such a disorganized mess that we'd never find it in a million years if we DID have it, and I'm definately not going back there and digging around half an hour for you."
Here this whole time I've been trying to sell paintings and drawings done the old way, and all I had to do was hang a bunch of multi-coloured business cards on some hooks on the wall. Peachy.
The dot-com world may have been forced to come to its senses, but apparently the modern art world is just as clueless as ever.
To address your concerns...the "naked" pictures are cartoons and/or artwork...I wouldn't say there's anything inadvertantly sexual about them. The nudity in my artwork usually has little to actually do with sex, except from maybe being a commentary on some aspect of it. Of course the "Hookah" picture you mentioned is indeed a drawing of my glorious butt...but it was a gift for my boyfriend...might I point out that I scrawled his name very plainly on the most "exciting" aspect of the picture. :) As for the butt-button...that was only to compliment the boob button, which I deliberately put on a link that will eventually go to a very serious collection of essays on religion, society, and politics I am working on. So that was an act of deliberately being misleading. I suppose it would be equivalent to finding the work of an established scientist hidden behind a bunch of unusually interesting pr0n pics. Never expect anything an artist does to be simple or what it initially looks like. I'm glad you liked my page though. ;)
Not that I'm unwilling to take pictures in my scanties...but I have been getting lewd comments for as long as I've been on the internet, and they very seldom have anything to do with the amount of clothing I am or am not wearing. Of course, I've been mostly ignoring those messages just as long, so it's all the same to me. Besides, it gives me lots of ways to vent pent up anger. :)
Baring yourself isn't always necessary...there's about 40 pictures of me on my homepage and all but about 5 of them you can't even see more skin than my hands and face. And I still get piles of lewd messages/e-mails! So sorry if I never felt the need to post a picture of myself in a bikini on AmIHotOrNot.com. I was happy enough to get voted down on AmIGothOrNot.com. I wish more people would agree with the users of that site and quit calling me that!
And you're right...no one needs to get in a circle and "protect" the delicate little women. Unfortunately, there are women whose egos were probably slightly wounded by a voter or two. If you ask me, though, a person's got to be a masochist to post some of the embarrassing and/or tacky photos I've witnessed on those sites. So these women probably had alot of problems to begin with. I don't think AmIHotOrNot.com is going to make that big a difference. :)
I e-mailed him the other day and he answered within three hours, and his reply was several paragraphs long. I think he reads his e-mail.
What's funny?