30mins photoshop

To say that December 2008 was a bloodbath for the advertising agency is an understatement. It was a pre-christmas week that saw many tears, sacrificed 401K’s and retirements, and many a paranoid programmer such as myself waking up clutching the next hot programming langage’s manual to his chest for fear of soon going obsolete. A 1500 page book of code doesn’t seem so heavy after you watch more than 200 people in your companies’ North American drop like flies just 2 weeks after a first round of layoffs and less than a week before christmas.

With word of Q1 2009 being even worse, my previously trip planned to Asia for Christmas / New Year’s didn’t seem like such a good idea. After a number of weather delays, it seems that I’m grounded permanently, but what better time to improve my skill set.

… entering 2009 with a cautious spirit.

Did anyone else see this ad on Facebook? I grew a six-pack from laughing so hard. Not to call anyone out but how pathetic do you have to be to download this application in order to have a virtual relationship with a virtual Mr. Right…that you created yourself! According to the application page, your virtual Mr. Right will “keep you cozy on all those lonely nights.” How? Virtual warmth? And not to be anal but that phrase just sounds funny. Grammar check please.

When thinking of my recently revived addiction to video games, I cannot help the urge to ponder the evolutionary function of addictions in general. Fish have fins to swim, birds wings to fly, and almost all humans have addictions or at least the proclivity for them.  But why?  Taking much of Darwin’s theories of natural & sexual selection into account, trying to extract the survival function ( morality here is also seen as a function of survival ) of humanity’s inclination towards addictions can be insightful.

I believe the source of addiction is to be found in architecture, more specifically architectural spaces, and even more specifically, in the grammars of these spaces that govern our respective places.  I am not suggesting that, for example, a boy who grows up in the Catholic church will become addicted to religion and like a robot mimic the actions of Jesus by virtue of existing within the architectural space or ideological grammar of the church.  That would be preposterous.  In fact, history has shown us quite the opposite.  The leaders and nations most addicted to religion have often been the most destructive and ruthless.

But how does addiction inform our species’ survival?  Moreover, how does a nation’s mourning the loss of 13 students in a school massacre on one day, but in the very next day ignoring the massacring of an entire school of elementary children in another nation, inform the perpetuation or destruction of humanity?  The answer lies in the space-time grammar distortion of addiction.

A human’s ability to distort their space-time grammar is called that person’s imagination.  Imagination, when seen as a function of species survival, explains why humans are a particularly versatile species when it comes to surviving.  The more creative species, able to survive in more environments and defend against predators will survive longer and better than a species that cannot do these things particularly well.  When speaking intra-species, the more creative the specimen, the more likely that specimen is to pass on its genes by utilizing more creative and diverse courting methods.

The parenting of addiction by imagination is entirely plausible.  Addiction is nothing more than a dependency on an imagined state.  More importantly, what evolutionary gain does a specimen glean from being dependent upon an imagined state?

None.  Specimens that have more intense addictions are less prepared to survive than those who do not, so why have addiction in the first place?  They are a side-effect of a few million years of evolution paired with a few thousand years of human society.  The same is the case with moths.  They were designed to follow the moon for navigational purposes, because a million or so years ago the moon was the dominant light source in the sky at nighttime.  This aided their survival then, but now, the same genetic traits that were evolved to help the moth survive, instead draws them to an untimely death.  That’s because biological evolution is a lot slower than social evolution.

The same is the case with humans.  The architecture of our various societies has warped our spatial grammar such that the same urge rooted in jealousy and sperm competition that our ancestors once felt a few million years ago with spears and stones, our present day leaders feel but now they have missiles and atomic weapons. 

In short, the various social and biological mechanisms that we once used for survival dominate those mechanisms that would “make for a better world”.  It is hard for a religion or an ideology to stand in the face of millions of years of evolution.  By extension, addiction is simply the result of an imbalance between societal evolution and human evolution.  It is the inability of the mind to distinguish between the warping of the mind’s space-time grammars and the mind’s evolutionary obligations.  The two fuse and become one.

And as I stare down at my glowing controller, I can’t help but to feel like the moth flying dangerously close to the flame, humanity drawn dangerously close to extinction unable to compensate biologically for the existence of current technologies.  

And then I just stop thinking and start playing halo… 

The scent of their pages just weren’t enough.  Seeing the shinyness of a cover or rubbing the texture of beveled paper ads and truly appreciating the simplicity just didn’t cut it for me.  Even following the tutorials of some and receiving praise and even making money from the product could not satisfy me.

For months I indulged my addiction to magazines.  I spent hundreds of dollars at a time on foreign fashion magazines- most of which I couldn’t read and never intended to.  But it was the combination of different images and layouts that attracted me to them the most.  The mixture of stories reminded me much of the diversity found in a city, but an imaginary city.  The magazine as a design medium became to me like an urban center- the traffic laws consisting of fonts, repetition, variance, flow and form.  Each issue was a bustling city center of ideas for me and as I collected them my view of the world became as warped as a page from a shoot in YRB.

“What if they could move?” I asked myself one night.

That was the only thing missing from my small city centers was animation.  They were full of life and movement, but they were static, they did not evolve by themselves.  How I longed to see the magazine breathe and interact with me…

We’re proud to announce that we’ve begun a project code-named “bunny” that will create a living breathing magazine.

Stay tuned!

The Boyfriend and I went to see “The Battle in Seattle” this Saturday at the Anjelika Film Center. Here’s the synopsis:

“In 1999, five days rocked the world as tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Seattle in protest of the World Trade Organization. Among them are Django (Andre Benjamin), Sam (Jennifer Carpenter), Lou (Michelle Rodriguez) and Jay (Martin Henderson). United in their desire to be heard and to make a difference, for these protesters, this is very personal and the stakes are higher than mere politics. A peaceful demonstration to stop the WTO talks quickly escalates into a full-scale riot and an eventual State of Emergency results. The streets are mayhem, the WTO is paralyzed”

Thought provoking movies only provoke those who know how to think. There’s a reason why a movie like this is only playing in one indie theater in the entire city. There’s a reason why this movie is not force fed down your throat in marketing gimmicks screaming, “Watch me!” This is the government’s facade of democracy. They want you to think, but not too much. They give you free speech, but tell you to turn down the volume. They want you to feel like you are being heard, but they only listen when its convenient. Isn’t that what the electoral college is for?

Why the hypocrisy? Because it’s easier to control mindless robots. That’s how the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. But the movie is deeper than all this. And if you agree with my post, watch it. And after you watch it, you’ll be thinking. And if you’re not, then shame on you. Freedom is fragile. But too few see it. Until they lose it.

Click to check out the movie and showtimes.

Palo Mamajuana is having a tasting this Thursday October 9th at La Pregunta on 1528 Amsterdam Avenue between 135th & 136th streets.  Come out and also experience the Afro-Latin Drums of the World.

The drink itself originated in Dominican Republic and has a natural and invigorating taste.

Palo Mamajuana
The First Herbal Beverage made from REAL Mamajuana

Mamajuana is a combination of rare and potent tree bark, roots and herbs that were first consumed by the indigenous Taino Indians of the Dominican Republic and Greater Antilles. It is widely believed that Mamajuana was originally cultivated by the Tainos as a tonic to increase strength and endurance.

Though many of the traditional remedies of the Taino Indians have been lost over generations, Mamajuana managed to survive and today is consumed throughout the Dominican Republic and worldwide.

Come out and support!

*evite & flyer layouts done by alonecuzzo.

The alonecuzzo animation studio has officially opened!  Run cycles for wong & cuzzo characters are now being worked on.  We’re all pretty excited to see how they’ll shape up.  Wong is being animated first and her special attacks & moves are being closely guarded by the studio’s security team.

Stay tuned to see how they turn out.