“Stay Tuned…”: Whole Lotta WTF Goin’ On!

Because it needed to be said, right?

Okay. Let’s handle this by channels, starting with the more WTF of the two:

KLSK:

So, as it was first reported, KLSK now not only has audio, but also its first piece of video as well—and holy shit, it’s a weird one, or at least it’s been fiddled with in such a way that its weirdness has been cranked all the way Up To Eleven. Yekith was kind enough to upload to YouTube the clip as it is seen on the Transmissions page, and you can all view that here in whatever brightly-lit room you choose.

Robots! Doing stuff!

Lionsroar83 popped in last night to point out that the melody being played by the first robot is “Pomp and Circumstance” by Sir Edward Elgar. (Welcome to this corner of the Dangerverse!)

A number of you managed to do a lot better than I did in keeping your weird meters intact enough to find the original video clips, so thank you to everyone who submitted links on that, both in the comments and through the Submit link. :D

Violin Robot Video

Cleaning Robot Video

According to the (English) subtitles on the first video, the robot was designed to show how robots “could be widely used in homes, hospitals and factories” (0:21). The second one is about robots that can clear tables, wash dishes, and do the laundry. Both projects were funded either in part or completely by the Toyota company with the goal of showing how daily interactions with robots might not only be plausible but also beneficial to the improvement of one’s quality of life.

Which brings me around to Better Living Industries, a company name that seems to be Exactly What It Says On The Tin—a company devoted to improving the consumer’s quality of life. Naturally, all of these things carry cons or costs along with all the pros. And actually, this reminds me of today’s newest article on Cracked.com about why computers will always have glitches in them. Check that out when you have a minute.

Yekith had this to say about the KLSK video clips:

No idea why they used them, though, and on that channel which usually just has horse references. […] And it all relates to Japan, both videos and the voice at the end. Also no idea about that clock. And…we still have no idea who that channel belongs to, do we? What a mess. (Source)

I think I saw someone on the I’m Not Okay forums suggest that KLSK used to be News A Go Go’s channel and that it was taken over by Better Living Industries in the wake of doing away with the News. I’m not sure how I feel about it, yet, because News A Go Go has been decommissioned for a while and the song changes still reference horses…

Unless—going out on a slender limb—the people behind News A Go Go managed to book it and are hacking into the system. But that’s unlikely wishful thinking at best.

There’s something else that intrigues me, and it’s the title card at the end:

Click through the picture to see it in full, unsquished view.

Now, I haven’t taken an Asian-language course since my freshman year of college five years ago (when I tried for the second time to learn Japanese), but I’m pretty sure that’s the date in the upper-left corner. February 11th. (If you read Under the Van Gogh, you already know why that amuses me.) The time is 5:21, but there’s no way of determining whether that’s AM or PM. However, I’m currently looking at this page on the days of the week as they’re written out in Japanese. I remember that they tend to be written in Kanji, which is a writing system that was…borrowed? Inherited? from the Chinese. (If you’re a bit more knowledgeable about it than I am, please help me. Thank you.)

There is also this referential page which has not only the way you’d say and write each day of the month, but also how you’d say and write months themselves.

I think it was Nathy—way, way back when we were still trying to figure a lot of stuff out—who’d mentioned to me on Twitter something about all of the accounts being created on February 11th, but don’t hold me to that.

Also, can we get a confirmation on what language the woman at the end of the video is speaking? My brain says Japanese, but I’d feel more comfortable if someone more knowledgeable can help us out.

Also-also: Even though it’s blurred, I’m pretty sure the small text in the Better Living Industries box says, “The aftermath is secondary.”

BLND:

For those who don’t want to cycle through all the videos on BLND to get to it, Yekith uploaded the new clip to YouTube as well, and you can see it here. Again, if you’re prone to getting headaches from things like this, you’re probably better off not seeing it.

The clip is fairly short, only thirty seconds long, and begins with a woman’s voice saying the following as the image in the center slowly begins to spin:

“Please stare into the center of the moving shape!”

At seven seconds in, by which point the shape is spinning pretty quickly, the woman recites the following:

“I’m so happy to be alive. Everything is going to be fine. Did I take my medication today? Keep working hard to stay alive!”

Exactly at 0:27, the shape disappears and is replaced with this:

“Goodbye!”

Now, the first couple times I saw it, I thought it was the byproduct of an optical illusion trick, which left me wondering, “How the hell did they figure out the precise design to get this face to appear?”

And then, when I was playing/pausing/replaying the video so I could quote the voice, I realized that it wasn’t the byproduct of an optical illusion at all but only seems that way, especially since it’s only visible during the last three seconds in the video and easy to dismiss as an optical illusion because of its transparency.

Also, if you look at the spinning wheel at the beginning of the video (see the first screencap), it’s sitting on a white background. Compare that with the wheel twenty-three seconds in:

There is a noticeable color difference between it and the start of the video.

I’m assuming that between this and the medication they’re likely doling out to the citizens of Battery City—

Oh! Oh! Oh! I just thought of The Giver!

Sorry. Just kind of came out of nowhere. If you have yet to read The Giver, which is hard to imagine because it seems to be a middle school standard, then I expressly insist that you go out and read it. But I was just suddenly thinking about how, in the book, everybody is colorblind except for Jonas and the titular Giver (well, at least until the Giver gives all his color-seeing powers to Jonas) and everybody has to take these pills to suppress what they call Stirrings and what we know as sexual desire.

And then there’s Equilibrium, which I mentioned last night, which makes daily doses of Prozium mandatory for everybody because the people who came to power determined that human emotion was at the root of the conflict that led to a devastating Third World War. The only drawback is that, while Prozium suppresses negative feelings like rage and jealousy, it also suppresses positive ones like love and happiness and—it seems to be implied—artistic inspiration. There’s that whole scene where Preston—considered one of the best Clerics and who (by this point in the movie) is kind of skipping his doses—discovers that room with the record player and has himself a rather powerful introduction to emotions while listening to it.

Trying to remember where I was going with this… I can’t remember. :|

But you know what else it makes me think of? Thorazine.