Buzz Guide: Massive Attack, The New Weird, and We Are Na’ Vi

It’s our job to be on the internet all day, the least we can do is share its treasures with you, right? Yes, your friendly Buzz Guides will sift through news, gossip, memes and whatever else is floating around out there and pluck from the chaos the stuff that hooks us. This week, El Rich listens to things on the internet that aren’t available yet as well as the Children of Mother Earth.

MUSIC

Massive Attack – Heligoland

Flat of the Blade feat. Guy Garvey

Massive Attack wrapped up production for the new album Heligoland last month. Due out February 8, this album promises to be chalk full of the dark, other-worldly soundscapes that Massive Attack have come to be known for. Massive Attack have been dubbed the creators of the “trip hop” genre, a label that the group says pigeon holes the unique sound that they have come to produce. Massive Attack often work with any given number of guest vocalists on much of their work. Their sound is truly ecclectic in every sense of the word. They are known to create very dark atmospheres with very sweeping instrumentation that rings throughout. If you are ever in the mood for something really speshul, Massive Attack probably has something for you.

MOVIE

Avatar

What happens when James Cameron invents a new camera, plays a bunch of Halo, and watches Dances With Pocahontas In Fern Gully? You get Avatar, a movie full of blue Jar Jar Binks characters and enough “Boo to imperialistic terd people” that would make you loose your popcorn if it weren’t for the 3D.

That isn’t to say that this movie doesn’t whisk you away to some other world and immerse you into a magical CGI fest. It does all of that while telling the age old story of some mighty power trying to take over some tiny land, rich with natural resources for its own greedy purposes, while some dude feels bad for the indiginous and decides to become their leader to help them out. I mean, how awesome is that? Thanks, guy, for leading this incapable bunch because surely there is no person to lead them other than you.

Please enjoy the following stills –

LoLwUt

Speaking of all things Avatar, this brings me to my next section:

INTERNET

If you saw Avatar and have since then been depressed because you cannot go and put your weird braid thingy on the Soul Tree, I have the place for you to voice your woes: Avatar Forums. Apparently, many people that have watched Avatar have decided that they now hate their own species and the capitalistic ways of the world in which they live. Thank goodness for the internet and its ability to bring people together. Now, people that are feeling Na’Vi Blue can come together and discuss coping methods for their sad times. These remedies include but are not limited to watching the movie over and over again, listening to the soundtrack, reconnecting with your Earth Mother and giving the old Leonopteryx a try. If you ask me, those coping methods sound more like the tactics of a very internet savvy ad executive. BUY BUY BUY!

Not only did all of these shenanigans make it all the way to CNN, you can also find The Home Tree on LiveJournal. I mean, what isn’t there on LJ? Mostly it’s just people trolling, but what else is new. It’s for the LuLz. Happy reading!

BOOKS

The New Weird – Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

This book is a collection of short stories from writers of the Weird genre. This genre takes elements from horror, fantasy, sci-fi, mystery and fantasy. These stories are then set in very dark landscapes with very unique characters. There is an abundant use of advance technology used during a advance time. It kind of reminds me of Steampunk but saying that this is what weird is would be an understatement.

The varied writing styles of each of the authors only complements the next story, as each author’s tale herein seems to out do the previous

iPhone

A few months ago, I decided to join the ranks of those in the here and now by getting a iPhone. It is the biggest waster of time ever. It trumps the time when Sudoko players started taking extra long in the work bathroom to solve their last column. I don’t even need a computer anymore because I can do everything on my phone. Yup, I can hack the gibson while I ride home on the bus.

The magic of the iPhone isn’t that it’s the internet in your pocket, its all the cool applications (apps). There is pretty much an app for everything. The iPhone is going to make everyone dumb because it does everything for you. I am o.k with that because I am inherently lazy and dumb. Yay technology! There are apps for calculating tips, seeing how drunk you are, meeting singles by telling you how far away from you they are, etc. etc. JSYK, I was gone for about 20 minutes. I was in the bathroom playing Peggle.

Another thing that makes the iPhone all magical is “Jailbreaking.” This allows you to customize the F out of your iPhone. You can also add themes for your phone (like Hello Kitty) icons and what not that make your phone look all awesome. You are a speshul snowflake and you will not be happy with the stock app on your phone. You can hide all the apps you don’t use and even put your apps into folders to keep everything all awesome looking. I love it.

My phone looks like this –

The second half of that screen is my only page of app folders. Inside each of those upper 8 catergories lies all of my stuff. I stole a bunch of icons from the Buuf 2 theme and used them for my own personalized theme. It’s totally nerd time when I am renaming my files in my phone just to make my slider to say “poop.”

Some of my fave apps are:

Flickr – Upload straight from you phone to your flickr account.

Echofon – Twitter from your phone. The interface is pretty and stuff. I like pretty.

Shazaam – Hold your phone up to the speaker of whatever song you can’t figure out and it does it for you. It doesn’t work on music they play at Quinceneras. Trust me, I’ve tried it.

PS Mobile – its a mini photoshop app that lets you crop photos, set your exposure, saturation, and add effects.

CameraBag – This is my fave effects for photos app. You get make your photos look like this –

It’s not life changing but you should’ve seen the photo before hand. There are tons more apps out there. Do you have any favorites?

That’s all I have this week. Hopefully I return with more shocking things from the internet in my next write up. Oh and I’ll look for fluffy kittens or something happy-tastic.