Second skin

Second skin may refer to:

Film and TV

Music

Other

Second Skin (novel)

Second Skin is a 1964 novel by John Hawkes.

Plot

The story is told by a 1st-person narrator, a fifty-nine-year-old ex-naval lieutenant whose name is Edward, though other characters usually call him Skipper or Papa Cue Ball (due to his baldness). Though the tone of the novel strives to be comic and optimistic, the narrator's life is beset by a series of tragic events: his father (a mortician), his wife, and his daughter Cassandra commit suicide; his son-in-law Fernandez is killed after he has left Cassandra to live with his gay lover; Skipper is beaten up and perhaps raped during a mutiny on board of U.S.S. Starfish, the ship he commands in W.W.II; he is harassed by a small clan of shady fishermen on the "black island" in north-Atlantic where he settles after leaving the US Navy. The narrator eventually finds shelter in a tropical island with his black mess boy, Sonny, and his lover Catalina Kate, though it is not clear if the scenes on the island, where Skipper works as an artificial inseminator, are real or simply imagined.

Second Skin (2008 film)

Second Skin is a 2008 American documentary film that follows the lives of seven people as they delve into the world of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). The film was directed by Juan Carlos Piñeiro Escoriaza and produced by Victor Piñeiro Escoriaza and Peter Brauer.

Second Skin premiered to positive reviews and sold-out crowds at the South by Southwest film festival in 2008. It become the No. 1 movie on online streaming site Hulu.com, before completing a limited theatrical run. The film was released on DVD August 25, 2009. It is frequently included in lists of the all-time best video game documentaries.

Summary

Plot

Second Skin examines people whose lives have been transformed by virtual worlds in online games such as World of Warcraft, EverQuest, EverQuest II and Second Life. The documentary follows a group of online gamers whose lives are intensely woven together inside and outside the virtual worlds, a couple whose lives have changed since meeting online, and an avid player whose life spins out of control due to his addiction to playing MMOs. It also presents disabled players who have been given voice and mobility in the virtual world and explores the controversial world of Chinese gold farming and presents facts about online gaming.

AQ

AQ, Aq, aQ, or aq may stand for or refer to:

Geography

Psychology

Science

Other

A-Q

Gilbert Bani (born August 1, 1986) better known by his stage name A-Q, is a prolific Nigerian rapper, recording artist, dancer, songwriter, and performer. A-Q started his music career at the age of 12 listening to other artiste and miming their songs. He was then advised to start writing his own lyrics by friends while in Kings College Lagos.

Early life

Born into a family of six as the last child, A-Q real name Gilbert Bani was raised in Surulere where he has lived for most of his life. Growing up in this environment exposed him to different social classes rich, middle class and poor, which has influenced his ability to socialise within any class he finds himself.

A-Q attended Fountain nursery and primary school, Kings College Lagos, and had his tertiary education at the University of Lagos. Being the last child of his family he caught up to hip-hop at a young age largely influenced from watching his elder siblings react to different genres of music. He started collecting hip-hop tracks, learning the lyrics and miming them and was soon able to mime almost any track out at that time. It didn’t take long before he started writing his own lyrics on advice from friends and thus his sojourn into entertainment. ”.

The True Story of Ah Q

The True Story of Ah Q is an episodic novella written by Lu Xun, first published as a serial between December 4, 1921 and February 12, 1922. It was later placed in his first short story collection Call to Arms (吶喊, Nàhǎn) in 1923 and is the longest of the stories in the collection. The piece is generally held to be a masterpiece of modern Chinese literature, since it is considered the first piece of work fully to use Vernacular Chinese after the 1919 May 4th Movement in China.

It was first published in the Beijing Morning News supplement as a serial. Originally Lu Xun wrote the story under the name "Ba Ren" ("crude fellow"), and so originally few people knew who wrote Ah Q. The first installment was published on December 4, 1921, and additional installments appeared weekly and/or fortnightly. The final installment was published on February 12, 1922. The story had nine chapters.

Synopsis

The story traces the "adventures" of Ah Q, a man from the rural peasant class with little education and no definite occupation. Ah Q is famous for "spiritual victories", Lu Xun's euphemism for self-talk and self-deception even when faced with extreme defeat or humiliation. Ah Q is a bully to the less fortunate but fearful of those who are above him in rank, strength, or power. He persuades himself mentally that he is spiritually "superior" to his oppressors even as he succumbs to their tyranny and suppression. Lu Xun exposes Ah Q's extreme faults as symptomatic of the Chinese national character of his time. The ending of the piece – when Ah Q is carted off to execution for a minor crime – is equally poignant and satirical.