Sharon G. Flake (born December 24, 1955) is an American writer of young adult literature. She has lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her daughter for many years. She is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in English.
Her debut novel The Skin I'm In (1998) follows a young African American girl who has issues with people teasing her about the color of her skin and the way she dresses. She tries her best to fit in but it doesn't go too well. She learns that trying to fit in is not the best way to make people like you. Her works have won numerous awards. The Skin I'm In won the John Steptoe Award for New Talent in 1999 for new authors and garnered positive feedback from Booklist and School Library Journal. She has been a runner-up for two Coretta Scott King Awards.
Flake was born in Philadelphia. She is the second youngest child, with three brothers and two sisters, and grew up in an inner-city neighborhood. Her father worked for Philadelphia Gas Co., while her mother did days work and raised her children. Through their guidance, Flake and her siblings were encouraged to be themselves, learning about culture through music, TV, politics, and books. As a teenager, she attended Simon Gratz High School, where she was a member of the tennis team.She wrote many books.
"Bang" is a song and single by rapper/dancer Rye Rye featuring M.I.A.. It was recorded in 2008 and appears on the deluxe version of her 2012 album Go! Pop! Bang!. It was released in 2009 on N.E.E.T. Recordings and Interscope Records. The single was released first, followed by an EP of remixes, Bang – The Remixes, which includes remixes by Buraka Som Sistema and DJ Sega. The song appears in the films Fast & Furious and Step Up 3D and in the episode "The Sorkin Notes" of the TV-series Entourage.
The video features Rye Rye, M.I.A. and several Baltimore club dancers including Whyte Boi dancing in a dark, messy underground club setting. The video was directed by M.I.A. in Baltimore.
Bang! (also known as The Gun Game! amongst other variants) is a drama game, in which players stand in a circle and shoot each other with imaginary guns.
The objectives of the game include enhancing concentration skills and reaction time as well as helping groups of people remember each other's names.
The workshop leader/director or other nominated person does not join the circle. Each remaining player holds an imaginary gun in each hand, pointed at the adjacent player.
The leader will call out a player's name. If he/she calls "John" then John must duck to avoid being shot. The players on either side of John must shout "bang!" One of the following then occurs:
If someone accidentally ducks or shoots when they were not supposed to be doing so then they are also out.
Shift_JIS art is artwork created from characters within the Shift JIS character set, a Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) superset of ASCII intended for Japanese usage. Naturally there are many similarities between Shift_JIS artwork and ASCII art.
Shift_JIS has become very popular on web-based bulletin boards, notably 2channel, and has even made its way into mainstream media and commercial advertising in Japan.
Within the Japanese community, Shift_JIS art is sometimes abbreviated as SJIS art, but is most commonly referred to as "AA" meaning ASCII art, although it rarely restricts itself to the 95 printable characters within the ASCII standard.
As with ANSI art, SJIS art is sometimes used for animation. However, due to technical advances, SJIS art also appears in the form of Adobe Flash files and animated GIFs.
Unlike Western ASCII art, which is generally designed to be viewed with a monospaced font, Shift_JIS art is designed around the proportional-width (albeit CJK characters are always the same width) MS PGothic font supplied with Microsoft Windows, which is the default font for web sites in Japanese versions of Windows. This dependency has led to the development of the free Mona Font, in which each character is the same width as its counterpart in MS PGothic. This is useful on operating systems lacking the PGothic font, such as Linux.
The Wario (ワリオ) franchise comprises various video games created by Nintendo, starring the character Wario. The franchise began with Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, the first game to feature Wario as a playable character, and gained many further installments. The Wario series includes mostly platforming video games and minigame compilations, but also includes other genres. It is a spin-off of the Mario series.
The Wario Land series is a platforming series that started with Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, following Wario's first appearance in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins.
In Wario Land, Wario has a castle in Kitchen Island, and often journeys to find treasure. Its gameplay consists of platforming through levels, tossing enemies, breaking blocks and using other abilities.
Love You (also known as The Beach Boys Love You) is the 21st studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys, released on April 11, 1977. Originally conceived as a Brian Wilson solo album entitled Brian Loves You, the album is almost entirely written and performed by Wilson, with the other band members mainly serving as additional lead vocalists. Peaking at number 53 on US record charts, the album was received with a sharp divide between fans and critics. One single was issued from the album: "Honkin' Down the Highway" backed with "Solar System".
Penned during a process of mental and drug rehabilitation for Wilson, Love You has been praised by reviewers for the album's honest, unpretentious lyrics, and has been described as a portrait into his sense of self in 1977. Heavily reliant on 1970s analog synthesizers, the album has been recognized as an early work of synthpop, a forerunner to new wave experiments, and an idiosyncratic and creative oddity in the Beach Boys' canon. A followup album, Adult Child, was completed by the group, but left unreleased.