Here are some videos I have come across recently. Surprise : only ONE is a TED talk!

First off, we have this charming clip of an adorable nerd girl and her amazing journey to complete a pretty daunting and impressive task.

Yes, she does impressions of all one hundred and fifty one of the original set of Pokemon. Now, I am only a little Pokemon literate. I have played the video games a fair bit (especially the Gameboy version of the Pokemon Collectable Card Game) and watched a bunch of the series, but it has never been more than a slight interest of mine and so I have no idea just how well she does her impressions.

I mean, they all seem pretty good to me, but what do I know? I never even learned the Poke-rap.

What I do know is that she is darned adorable doing them. I had a lot of fun watching this video. Not only is it just fun watching her make silly faces as she makes silly noises, but it was just cool to hear all of the Pokemon’s signature “the only thing I can say is my name if you are lucky” noises in a row. A lot of them I had never heard before.

Plus, of course, I adore people who puts a lot of time and effort and love into things that other people might think of as silly, pointless, childish, or inane.

In other words…. nerds. Know what I am saying?

Next up, a magnificent sign of the progress of gay rights : a very pro-gay anti-homophobia rap song.

But um, spoiler alert : bummer ending warning.

I sort of knew it would not end well when I watched it the first time. I just had a deep intuition that this would be a cautionary tale of just exactly how homophobia kills every single day.

I am really impressed with the level of social progress that a video like this represents. We are a long way from all that gangsta bullshit about hating faggots and beating up faggots and so on. Hip hop has had a seriously homophobic culture for twenty years or more, and it is good to see someone have the balls to confront that and tell a different side of the story.

Plus, I think the young actors do a very good job. I felt the love between our two principals. I felt Roderick’s deep, crazy pain. I understood how someone in that kind of profound conflict might do someone completely insane and wrong in order to resolve it.

I felt maybe the transition between what seems like it will be a happy ending, and when Roderick pulls out the gun, was a little too sharp. It did not totally feel real to me. Then again, the plot of the video has to follow the lyrics of the song. Not a lot of time to develop really solid, naturally flowing characterization in a five minute music video,.

Still, that shit was solid. Word.

Next up, we have a ten minute movie that is way better than 99 percent of the rehashed crap that Hollywood shits onto the screen in ninety minute grunts these days.

And it has a special treat at the end that if you are like me will absolutely blow your mind.

Now that is how you make a fan movie. I already loved the movie before that absolutely kick ass action scene at the end. The mood and the atmosphere had me mesmerized. Everything had that perfect clarity and texture of a really vivid dream. Realer than reality, in a way. Stylized only in ways that made it more awesome. That is serious craft.

And obviously, the action sequence did not come as a surprise. You just knew those evil motherfuckers were going down. And damn, did they go down good. I love how they handled the blood. Probably not very realistic, but it made it all the more satisfying.

(SPOILER ALERT) No, what blew my mind was the Punisher symbol on the shirt he gives the kid at the end. I saw that and my brain was frozen for just a heartbeat, like it could not contain my surprise and delight, and then I am all ‘HOLY SHIT! THAT WAS FRANK CASTLE! THAT WAS THE PUNISHER! HOOOOOLY SHIIIIT!”

And there was much rejoicing. I was pretty much incapacitated with nerd glee for like five minutes.

And that was something I just had to share with you, my beloved readers!

Finally, that TED Talk I mentioned earlier.

The guy speaks in a rumbling, rambling monotone, but stick with him, because he is quite hilarious and incredibly brilliant to boot.

This is the latest TED Talk I watched, and it just became more delightful as he went along. He has a marvelous dry sense of humour, with quite a wicked snap to it, and that would be enough to make his talk quite a lot of fun.,

But when he started talking about some of his group’s designs, I began to really take notice, and by the time he was talking about those cities he is designing in China, I was feeling someone like religious awe for this man who talked so much sense.

His cities sound absolutely brilliant, and for someone like me who hold efficiency as a primary virtue, the ability to create such a marvelously efficient system that optimizes all the important variables of human life, even to the point of making sure every street gets a fresh breeze and the town’s human waste creates natural gas for cooking!

I cannot sufficiently articulate how excited I am by such things. The cities of the future will be designed with the full human equation in mind. It will be designed to make us all as happy as we can be, and that includes keeping us cool with the environment.

And I love how he talked about not being anti-growth. Growth with happen no matter what.

The question is, what do we want to grow?