It is pointless.

I made it to accommodate updates, but then quickly realized that people didn’t care.
Then it was for a Podcast, but now I find it more fun to make videos so I can’t be bothered with that now…

What do you mean, “Do I want some Cheese with this Whine?”

There are two things that have mega-annoyed me and caused me to slump a bit…

1) If I died… NOW (waaaaait… Nope, not yet.) there is only one thing in writing terms that I could even vaguely feel that made an impact in any way. It is This (click the words dummy).
It isn’t even very well written.
It’s about Snoop Dogg or Lion or Badger or whatever he is now and the porno film he once made.
It is an honest appreciation of the film as a creative whole, played for the lulz noting the predominance of men in a film made as wank fodder for heterosexual males and the odd mix of documentary-film and pornography.
It gets a lot of hits every single day.

Often a spike in hits on Space Giraffe (?!) means that in that particular hour a tonne of people decided to fulfill their curiosity about “that Snoop Dogg porn film.”
They are among you, these people: Men and women, all over the world… Let them near a search engine and they’ll be scoping out Snoop’s balls in half a second.

I kind of, sort of, hate them for it. I write other things. Read those things instead. PLEASE.

I make nothing from writing and the way things are going I never will; not that payment is my reason for writing at all!

What I get out of writing is the satisfaction of personal exploration and the fun of playing with words, mixed with the satisfaction that I have made somebody somewhere think, smile, laugh, cry, or happy that they’ve been noticed.

I don’t want “Snoop Dogg Porn” to be my crowning glory. It must NOT be my crowning glory.

2) I mentioned Mai Shiranui’s breasts on this blog.
I did it to point out the idiocy of males in and around the gaming industry.

I was proved right.

Since MENTIONING A FICTIONAL CHARACTER’S BREASTS on this blog, it has had hits.
I now have the pleasure of reading search history such as “Mai Shiranui’s creamy tits” and “Shiranui fuck” that led people to this pointless waste of internet real-estate and I’m done.
I am not some smut vendor. I AM AN ARTISSSSSTE DAMNIT. *swish hair*

I overplayed that previous line for laughs because I realize how absurd this might look for someone who is outside of my brain right now, but it was a lie.
Inside, I really do take it that seriously. I really really want people to take what I write seriously… I understand that this is a silly thing to desire as I only write about what amounts to Toys and Entertainment, things that are by their very nature not supposed to be taken seriously at all but Enjoyed, Played With and ultimately forgotten as they are Not Important.

So this is today’s artistic hissy-fit. Today’s crisis. Today’s whatever.

…

BUT HEY, XBOX ONE AY?!

WHAT’S UP WITH THAAAAAAAAAT?!!?

via #2 – Ramble On – Credits.

Here is all the valuable information behind Episode #2!

The full information is being put on a separate post to avoid ITunes description issues, so stay tuned for that.

Download

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Does anyone else feel like doing this sometimes?

I thought the computer was going to break at one point after playing the keyboard like a piano for about a minute. Then I watched the letters catch up with themselves.

Catharsis.

Anyway, sorry. Hope you enjoyed Rayman on the other side.
I’m pretty happy with that one; wrote it last week.

Love ya.

x

Direct Podcast Download Link

Oh look!
I did a thing!

Here is Episode #1 of State of The Giraffe (?!) a Podcast about a Website about Stuff and Things.

Keeping it simple, I just quickly threw together a bunch of cool music that I’ve been listening to lately and nervously stumbled around it all with my dulcet vocal tones.

Here is all the music I played during the show and links of where you can listen/buy/download:

1. Sugar by Mmdelai
- Facebook

2. Iridescent by Pink Elephants
- Facebook
- Soundcloud

3. Optimistic by Morphlexis
- Facebook

4. Be A Rainbow by Lingvisto x George Soul x Jo Twist
- Label (Urban Waves Records)

5. Awesome Oxygen by Thallus
- Facebook
- Soundcloud

6. Enjoy The Ride More by Infinite Third
- Website
- Facebook

7. Arboreal by Bija
- Label (Plastik Sound UK)
- Facebook

8. Little Leviathan by Caveman The Wise
- Soundcloud

I hope to make one of these every two weeks or so… it all depends on Real Life as usual.
I’m gonna see about interviews or something like that to put on these podcasts to make it a little bit more interesting.
We’ll see.

Thanks again to Acres, which is an excellent music blog that I name-check during this episode. You should check them out because they are cool.

Click These Words to go to Acres.

Check Space Giraffe (?!) for new content every weekday and make sure to support the artists I featured on this podcast, because they are all lovely Real people who make music for the love of music more than anything else and they deserve your support for it.

This should be available on ITunes to subscribe to pretty soon.
I’ll make a post to let you know when that happens.

I’m really looking forward to the coming weeks as I’ve got lots of cool creative things planned and I hope you’ll join me in enjoying them too.

Any questions, recommendations or comments, leave them here or e-mail me!

I love you!

Space Giraffe (?!)

Please go and read United We Game.

Click These Words

These Words Contain Their Facebook Page

Also Twitter

Why?

It seems like a force for “good” if such a thing can even exist in the world of blogging.
The idea is to connect the gaming blogs from across the interwebs in one big virtual love-in. Connecting the hearts and minds of possibly millions of fun interesting people from around the world.

I foresee problems:

1) People always secretly want to be famous and get paid lots for writing.
Shut up, you know you do. You can be honest here, I’m not judging you for it.

UWG isn’t about making people famous and isn’t going to pay you, so why bother writing for them?
Why not just start your own gaming blog and make obscene hand-gestures in their direction from your own personal corner of the internet?
The appeal to me is the “Community” aspect, which is something I am seriously missing from my own “Real” life.
It’s good to talk, said Bob Hoskins in that BT advert from the 90s.

Sorry, lost my train of thought…

…

… Oh yeah. You could totally make new friends and stuff while writing about things that you love, but it’s kind of a mystery as to whether people will sign up for just that reason. I am firmly in the positive thinking camp that says you should totes sign up if you want to write about games, because chances are your generic review of Bioshock Infinite would look better on there than on your own blog.

Or something.

2) There aren’t any cats featured on the website.

This is an issue. Cats are the foundation that the internet stands upon. Look up Maru if you disagree. Srsly.

3) Erm… actually there was only really one problem.

Yeah. People are greedy and could just start up their own blogs for free… Same point as the first one really.

***

And so, I’m really interested to see if it will work; a gaming blog commune. Lovely.

Again, Click On The Words and see what I’m going on about.

State Of The Giraffe #1 Podcast is nearly done. I’m editing it together now.

I keep looking at this site and Space Giraffe (?!) and panicking because it isn’t being updated… as if magical elves come to write on it or something rather than Me, Myself.
I have been doing lots of fun creative things behind the scenes, but they take more time than writing as they combine writing with other skills like editing and production.

Anyway, I imagine it will be on ITunes by the end of the week but I’ll make sure there are lots of fun and exciting ways that you can listen to the podcast which I have a lot of fun plans for.

Probably the most exciting thing I announce in the podcast is that I’ve made a blog schedule… It doesn’t sound very exciting to you? Well to me, the idea of being organized in any tiny way is a huge event. Check the main site at the weekend for a schedule which will go into play the following week.

I will just put this out there again:

Does anybody like writing about Films? Video Games? Computer Games? TV? Music?

I can’t pay you – yet* – but I can promise you total freedom to write what you want, when you want to write it about any subject you desire as long as it falls under the enormous umbrella of “Culture”.

If you like creative freedom, good times, free grog, long e-mails telling you wonderful you are and want the chance to get your writing out there… drop me a line in one of the following ways and we can have a nice chat and a cup of Internet Tea:

E-Mail: iamspacegiraffe@gmail.com

Facebook: facebook.com/SpaceGiraffe

Twitter: twitter.com/iamspacegiraffe

I’m also on Steam under the name – you guessed it… – Space Giraffe.
Add me there if you want to!

Finally:

When I made my “triumphant return” a couple of months ago, I got a lot of interest and e-mails from various bands/pr companies/record labels looking for me to write about their work.

I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN YOU.

Sorry for taking so long.

If I didn’t feel that the music you sent fit with the site, you should be receiving an e-mail apologizing and some reasons why… otherwise, I’ll e-mail you when the articles are finished.

Big smiles!

Hugs!

Love you!

Alex

x

I’m up pretty late and you’ll be glad to know it’s because I’m working on Blog Stuff again.
I haven’t written much about Video Games for a while except that little bit about Super Hexagon a million years ago, but I’m still following the news a bit and playing Dem Games when I have the time.

One person that has been on my mind a lot of late is Anita Sarkeesian – the one woman attack on the phalocentric, tits-in-yer-face, I’m-wearing-a-suit-and-have-a-penis Gaming Industry – who’s Tropes Vs Women In Video Games Kickstarter grabbed the internet by the balls attracted a lot of attention last summer.

For those that missed the big hoo-ha last summer, Anita Sarkeesian has been making YouTube videos for a while under the name Feminist Frequency which deal with gender issues in a number of popular works of film and fiction.

Tropes Vs. Women In Video Games was shaping up to be her opus; a series of twelve epic exposés of the evils that come from an industry who still believe they are only selling toys to thirteen year old boys, rather than a rainbow of people of differing ages, genders and sexuality.

Hooray.
Good.
Sold.
Sign me up Sarkeesian.

(Sadly) Unsurprisingly, the Kickstarter campaign attracted a massive amount of bile, ignorance and hatred from an internet that clearly loved Mai Shiranui’s boobs too much to let go of them so soon.

Thankfully the insane amount of hatred, death threats and rape threats soon garnered a counterattack of sorts from well-meaning and sensible internet users who can be respectful to one another* which resulted in the Kickstarter being a tremendous success.

A tremendous success to the value of $158,922.

$158,922 to spend on making twelve YouTube videos.

$158,922.

I do hope the more cynical among you out there are now raising your eyebrows skeptically, which is exactly what I did when I saw this figure in relation to the promised product at the end of it: A bunch of YouTube videos.

Still, the figure also represented a massive victory for free-speech and the backlash against the disgusting hate-comments that flowed stream-like from the internet’s bowels was amazing and gave me a nice warm feeling that perhaps humanity wasn’t as disgusting as it is sometimes made out to be.

We could at least expect a huge upsurge in the quality of these videos right? Right?! RIGHT?!

Here is a video Anita made about Lego from January 2012:

… Ok, it already looks pretty professional and high quality. I can’t wait to see Part 1 of Tropes Vs Women In Video Games! Imagine the improvement that $158,922 will make!

On March 7th 2013, the video materialized:

Well, erm…

Just… erm… Well…

$158,922 was spent on producing… more of the same thing that was being produced before apparently.
Oh dear.

I won’t attack Anita Sarkeesian’s views – They are her own and she is entitled to them – MORE ON THAT LATER.

What I feel that I must comment on is that Comments and Ratings are disabled on the video.
What was the point of all this?
A lot of comments and opinions are expressed here, surely this is to promote discussion or criticism?
Apparently not because sensible people are being disallowed the ability to comment about this video.

The reason for this that Anita has given for the censorship is pasted here:

“ABOUT COMMENTS
A vocal minority of abusive commenters have unfortunately made constructive conversation impossible here on YouTube.”

1) Doesn’t “minority” suggest that the majority of commenters were good?

2) The entire reason that the Kickstarter was funded was not because people wanted to watch a series of videos about sexism in video games but because of the hatred that Sarkeesian was receiving in response to it. It was people’s disgust at the comments and threats she was receiving that was inciting people to action and Raising Awareness which should have been the point of this project in the first place.

Without the bile, the rape comments, the photoshopped images of Sarkeesian being abused** by internet trolls and the terrifying itch at the back of your brain that says, “Yes, most of these people are just trying to get a rise out of her… but what if one of them actually means what they’re typing?” honestly what was the appeal of supporting the Kickstarter? All you were promised from the deal was some videos of a person expressing their opinions.

Wouldn’t it have been great if the video had sparked some more controversy? Challenged people? Caused people to question their own opinions on gender and video games?
It would have done if under the video on YouTube there was a bubbling sea of disgusting, hateful comments for people to gawp in horror at.
As it stands it is just a video of a person expressing their opinion. A video that caused people to pledge $158,922 to make.

In terms of the opinions expressed in the video: If you actually NEED a video, a blogger, a Twitter feed or a Facebook status to tell you that the video game industry is sexist in its attitudes and demographic targeting, then you are beyond help.

Other people replied to the video directly with videos of their own.
The majority of these videos devolve into personal attacks on Sarkeesian pretty swiftly, with use of demented made up words like “Feminazi” or simply saying the word “FEMINIST” with too much emphasis as if it’s a swear-word. They are also mostly reactionary and poorly thought out with little understanding of Sarkeesian’s views and opinion which lead me to believe that the problem they have may not be with the opinion itself but that a Woman is Expressing that Opinion.

Thankfully I found a couple of sensible responses that I would like to share here:

Thank you Inuitinua! Your eyebrows are as magnificent and well-structured as your response!

Next reaction!

Thank you KiteTales! Your closing comments were superb!

I’d like to close this rambling mess by quoting the top comment from KiteTales‘ video by a YouTube user going by the name of ‘DrakeDarkHunter‘ which I think proves that intelligent discussion can be achieved under a YouTube video:

“This was in incredibly mature, well thought out respectful, informative and postive video that honestly warmed my heart and serves as a beacon in a sea of ugly comments and tasteless personal attacks.
It’s clear that you feel strongly about what you say and have great justification for doing so, and yet you avoid turning this into a personal attack on any level.
You have my respect and gratitude for making this video, thank you for building not burning bridges with people you disagree with.“

Thank you for reading and don’t believe the hype.

***

* Yes, they do exist! This Kickstarter proved it!

** No, I shall not link to any of these. This was not a joke or sarcasm. People actually took time out of their day to make pornographic posters to attack Anita Sarkeesian. Really.

I miss you blog.

I miss your eyes, the smell of your hair in the morning and the way you make coffee with just a little bit too much milk in it.

Thankfully I’m writing on you again.

If things go smoothly this week, then I will be writing on you regularly forever, if not then I may not be able to write on you for a very long time.

Yours forever,

Alex

xxx

It’s an update blog about Space Giraffe (?!)
If you want to know what’s new and what’s going to happen, you’ll find it here.

I’ll also post silly little blog-style updates here to keep the main site nice and professional.

Also, new crudely drawn art!

It’s me! Writing! In Space! Wearing glasses!

Yes, that’s a PEN not a sharpened stick for stabbing.

Anyway, watch this space and all that jazz.