in alethian’s wake

For those of you who haven’t seen it, The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello is an Oscar nominated Australia short film using steam-punk silhouette animation that tells the story of Jasper Morello, an airship navigator haunted by memories of a crewman who died because of an error on his part.  It’s a amazingly brilliant movie and features the voice talent of the Go-Go Mobile ads guy.

The reason I bring the movie up is that Monster Distributions have uploaded the whole thing onto YouTube.

I just love the Macabre art style which is prevalent in some of my favorite animated films like The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride.  Watch it, enjoy it and then go and buy the DVD so they get around to making more of them.

The duality of philosophies

A man in meditation
graced with illumination

A woman in contemplation
shadowed with earthly light

Both lost in private reverie,

each falling
into each others grip.

- Alethian

being, pertaining to, or resembling an obsession:

an obsessive fear of illness

I’ve been busy the past few days, finishing up the last little bit of work I have at the real estate firm I work for. Did I tell you I own a house now and I’m renting it out for $2,500 a month? I’ll talk about that at a later time but I’ll say this; get into real estate now as slow as it is! I predict than in ten year the housing market will pick up some speed. If not, soon (:

I also like to thank everyone who commented on my last post. I never dreamed it would garner so much discussion so it was definitely enlightening and enjoyable to read through all the comments. I haven’t had time to respond on the rest of the comments (only half sadly) but hopefully I’ll get to them at the end of the week.

Well, unless I start listening to NPR again.

If for some particular you don’t know what NPR is it stands for National Public Radio, a non-profit syndicated radio station in the U.S. And it’s the best thing since Ryan Seacrest’s syndicated radio talk-show hit Star 100.7 FM (I kid I kid I hate the fool).

It’s kind of sad but I have fond memories of NPR. I first started listening to it in seventh grade when my sister would drive me home from school. Personally, I initially thought it to be kind of boring. When you’ve just turned thirteen, you could care less about listening to boring old people talk about boring things like new species of turtles in the Galapagos or some author reading pages from his new, award-winning novel. Why listen to the radio when I can hang out with my friends, play video games, or laze around and watch television?

But then this one segment in NPR called This American Life changed my life. I was sitting in the passenger seat as my sister was driving us home and the segment was about people who carry childhood misunderstandings to adulthood. There was this one woman who, for some reason, didn’t realize that unicorns weren’t real, and she asked in front of her group of friends (yes, they’re adults) whether unicorns were an endangered species.

I sat there shocked; stunned in silence. I couldn’t believe it. Unicorns weren’t real?

I was never the same since.

NOTE:  Read the greatest unicorn comic strip here.