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I am a blogger who specializes in using blogs to blog.

Monday, October 05, 2009

My Favorite Awesome Random Internet Stuff

Ah, the internet. The single greatest time sucking, attention-span-deteriorating information highway on the face of the earth. Who doesn’t love it? Kind of. At least, a little bit.

As someone who keeps a blog, I am obviously completely addicted to the internet. If I'm not in class or at rehearsal, there's about a 90% chance I'm online. It's sad, I know, but it's something I can't avoid. The internet is a vast source of not just information, but entertainment. It's not just movies, shows, and television anymore. The internet has opened up a completely new medium for people to explore and experiment with. There's a ridiculous amount of creativity online, almost all of it done by completely random people who just happen to have a lot of really random talent. People say that the internet is turning us into zombies. How can it be? Zombies can't speak, or create something captivating. If anything the internet is helping to make us less like zombies, by allowing us a new medium with which to express ourselves.

That being said, this is why I love the internet. Most bloggers at some point in their lives write out a list of their favorite websites, many without really explaining what they are or why they love them. Rather than just throwing a bunch of links to random sites on a page, I figured I'd actually write about a few things I love that I found online. Some are websites, some are just videos, but all of them are suitably awesome and should definitely be checked out if you're into random internet awesomeness.

So, without further ado, I present Nelly's Favorite Awesome Random Internet Stuff, my favorite stuff to do when I'm online and should be writing a paper.
  1. Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series (http://www.youtube.com/user/CardGamesFTW) This was shown to me by my cousins one weekend when I was in Maine, and as someone with a totally random fixation with Yu-Gi-Oh this series is awesome. Even if you're not and never have been into Yu-Gi-Oh, this series is awesome. It's done by a guy called LittleKuriboh, who basically just chops up every episode of Yu-Gi-Oh and re-dubs them with his own dialogue. What's impressive about the series is not just the quality of the writing and dialogue (which is ridiculously well done for something found on YouTube) but also the quality of the voice acting. With the exception of three minor characters, LittleKuriboh voices every single character himself, making each of his million voices unique and fitting for the characters, many of which he makes frighteningly similar to the voices on the original show. It's clever, well put together, and never once fails to make you laugh. Also check out his "Episode One Live" video, in which he stands on a random street corner and performs the entire first episode himself, switching seamlessly in and out of every voice on the spot. It's ridiculous, in a beyond awesome way.
  2. Sailor Moon Abridged (http://www.youtube.com/user/Megami33) Once Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged came out, a lot of people tried to make their own versions, with various degrees of success. A lot of them are awful, but a few of them are awesome. This is one of the awesome ones. It does the same thing that Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged does, chops ups episodes and parodies them, but instead of only using one voice actor, it uses a team of college students, and abridges Sailor Moon. Though occasionally not as well put together as it's inspiration, it's still unbeleivably clever and funny, and manages to put it's own spin on not just Sailor Moon, but on the entire Abridged Series genre. I recently bumped into the creator of this series, Megami33, at an anime convention in the city last weekend. Unfortunately for me, I didn't realize it was her until she was walking away, so all I got to say was how much I liked her costume. Go figure.
  3. That Guy With The Glasses (http://www.thatguywiththeglasses.com/) This is a great site. It's basically a video hosting site for a bunch of different internet reviewers, the most famous of which is probably The Nostolgia Critic. It's basically people reviewing old movies, TV shows, video games and assorted other geeky-type things, in a ridiculously entertaining and comedic way. There's a lot of talent on the site, a lot of different shows and reviewers, but my favorites are the aforementioned Nostolgia Critic, who reviews TV shows and movies from the late 80's and early 90's, the Nostolgia Chick, who reviews TV shows and movies from the late 80's and early 90's from a somewhat funnier female prospective, Marzgurl, who reviews and discusses animation, and Linkara, who reviews comic books. Also on the site is a show called "Fanfiction Masterpeice Theater" which features dramatic readings of bad fanfictions, and "Bad Movie Beatdown" in which a random British guy who doesn't look much older than me basically just beats down really bad movies. The site is packed with all sorts of different characters and perspectives, and apart from most of them being ridiculously funny, they also offer some really well done reviews of things that wouldn't normally get reviewed.
  4. Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog (http://www.hulu.com/dr-horribles-sing-along-blog) If you hang out on the internet a lot, and you haven't heard of this, you're clearly not online as much as you think. This is a work of art. It's bizarre, it's funny, it's dark, it's bright, it's pretty much everything that defines awesome rolled into one convenient package. This is a 42-minute, three part film series thingy done by Joss Whedon (of Buffy and Firefly fame) and his brothers during the writer's strike. It stars Neil Patrick Harris as a wannabe supervillian, Dr. Horrible, desperately trying to get accepted into the Evil League of Evil while simultaneously trying to win the heart of Penny, played by Felcia Day, from his arch-nemesis Captain Hammer, played hilariously by Nathan Fillion from Firefly. It's your basic tongue-and-cheek parody of superhero comic books...except, it's a musical. Yeah. It's a musical. A ridiculously good musical with some pretty impressive music for something done independently with virtually no budget. It sounds like something that shouldn't have any hope of working, but because it's Joss Whedon, it just does. Spectacularly.
  5. TV Tropes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage) This site is addicting. Like, literally addicting. It's a wiki that goes through and takes apart all the things common to TV shows and gives them names. For example, in a TV show, a "Heroic BSOD" or "Heroic Blue Screen of Death" is when the hero gets really angsty about something to the point of not responding. The page then lists examples of Heroic BSOD moments in all sorts of different genres including, but not limited to, TV shows. I found this while researching messiah figures for a Comparative Religions project last year. Go figure. Be wary of this site though, it can eat your life.
  6. The Guild (http://www.youtube.com/user/watchtheguild) This is an actual show done exclusivly online, primarily for YouTube. It's written and starred by Felicia Day of Dr. Horrible fame, and is the story of a group of online gamers and how they interact on and offline. This is a hysterical show. Felicia Day herself was apparently addicted to online gaming, so she knows exactly what it's like when gaming takes over your life, and thus, the show is not only funny, but clearly knows what it's talking about. The first two seasons are out on DVD, but pretty much every episode is up on YouTube. They also came out with a music video called "Do You Want To Date My Avatar?" which is pretty awesome. It's a really well done, really well written series that manages to be awesome even if you're not addicted to online gaming.
Those are the stand out internet spots. There's so much more out there, on YouTube, on Facebook, on Google, Wikipedia. You never know what you're going to find. It's one of the greatest things about the internet, and one of the many reasons I'm not exactly worried about my near addiction to the internet. I firmly believe that the internet is not under and circumstances destroying society, and yes, I am using these stupid little web series to prove it. Creativity is still alive and well, and even with the internet becoming more and more of a presence in our lives, I'm pretty sure it's not going to die anytime soon.

That's my piece, I'm off to write a paper on Christian allegories in the play Everyman.

Wish me luck,

*Nelly*