finals.

Hey everyone, finals are bad! I want you all to break something in honor of finals as traumatic as they are.

By the way, the blues album (working title My Guitar Sings My Troubles) is on indefinite hiatus since I do not have the 4-track or a microphone in my posession at the moment. Any complaints can be emailed to Chad.

Here's a drawing that changes daily.


Yeah, Manet sucks.

maintaining the alligator farm.

I fixed the archives, so now you can go back and read old posts from this eblo. That's what I've been doing. But it's a shame the old templates don't come up anymore. Those retro old days when there was burgundy and dark green and blue...

By the way, here's a link back by popular demand. Behold!

video pic of the week.

Recently I saw the films Elephant and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Elephant is good. Very well made. It makes you think, but that seemed to be its weakness; the viewer is left to mentally fill in the holes, and there are a lot. I think the theatrical preview (included on the DVD) gave as much information and story as the entire film itself, and that's not saying that the preview was long or informative. But I did see Kyle Warren. Way to go, Kyle- you're in a movie where you probably get shot.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is great. I recommend it. Y'all should see it.


Elephant


Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Oooohh, satellite!

Hey, all you midgets check out Andy's new eblo. It's FRESH. Also, there is a new song on my music page that you should enjoy. More fun with Sesame Street.

Last night I watched Zardoz with Andy and Chad. Quite a movie. The other day we were brainstorming a list of Movies for Us (stupid/genius movies that you must see if you want to be...well, us.) That list went something like this:
Zardoz
Flash Gordon
Bejond the Valley of the Dolls
The Wicker Man
maybe Equinox, and maybe The Dark At the Top of the Stairs

These are movies so bad/confusing/senseless that they are heelarious and worth watching again and again. Check them out from your local library.

fish system: more fun with web translation.

This new blogger design will take some getting used to. In the meantime, let's see what Emi Necozawa has been writing in her web diary:

"How thinking, forgetting the composition of the assignment which the cod sure enough, with special care you do in the house, it attends class."

"When the man where in the underpants your own name have entered with the magic you know each other, whether just a little good impression. (How probably will be?)"

"There being the tomato boiling of the squid in the present menu, you eat. It is tasty? Fish system is tasty after all."

"So when it does, the mummy taking in the mummy. You found with the travelling bag corner of 2 F. Very, you use, the appealing Boston bag of the selfishness."

"Because bean jam ball you are bad, the extent which changed the wallet. Lose 4 time cards at half year and fold, the professional of procedure it became. It is quick, it is quick."

Man, she must lead an interesting life. Thanks, Babelfish!

can't spell "friends" without 'crap'.

I'm not going to write about the last episode of Friends. I'm going to write about a stupid television show which didn't understand that adding heaping amounts of sappy drama to a sitcom completely sucks the comedy out of it. Not that there was much comedy to begin with; every joke could be seen from a mile away, and even through binoculars they were not funny in the least. But now the thing is over, and a whole generation of girls are panicking becouse they have nothing idiotic to talk about with their real-life friends anymore. I never watched the damn show. I heard there was a "plot twist" at the end, probably having to do with a goddam baby or someone else's baby or some baby that they found on the street, and that's not much of a twist because a baby is a classic cliche "twist" to add to any story. I would have only been satisfied if the twist was something like "it turned out Crandler was dead the whole time!" or "it turns out Nomica was the one who bombed the building and sabotaged the train!" or how about "it turns out Jonny realized that his friends were a bunch of annoying retards and so he dawned a predator mask and tore out their skulls and spines!"

In other news, school has been putting me in a clinically bad mood.
I will get you you will pay I hope you know. I am a vampire to you. I will sneak up to you. I am bad bad bad

how to get and stay famous.

Yesterday Joel, Alexio and I attended a multi-cultural free food extravaganza on the OSU campus. The day included eating free tamales, drinking free soda, Alexio playing air guitar on an empty stage, eating more free tamales, crude remarks by all, drinking more free soda, and Alexio entering a bush with his face.

I had an idea for getting famous, inspired by William Hung. Apparently the American recording industry has enough money lying around that they can take some talentless kid and give him a couple thousand dollars to perpetuate his reputation as a national idiot. I know plenty people who actually do have talent who could use that record deal, but I guess they're not as ethnic and easy to ridicule. So here's my new plan: I will go to the next American Idol auditions and sing "Kiss" by Prince through a kazoo while wearing a vintage baseball uniform. I'll have to make them think that I am completely serious about my talents, so I will act really confident and then genuinely confused when the English guy, the fat guy, and the has-been pop star tell me that I suck. Then, to ensure that my failure video will be shown again and again, I will do something completely outrageous like releasing a live hamster and chasing it around the studio with a mallet. Then I'll tell the English guy to change his shirt and get escorted off the premises by security. 3 months later, I will be a star.

jabs at casual homoeroticism, for the sake of journalism.

Today in the forum section of The Barometer there was a drawing of two young men playing frisbee, with one saying "I just had an idea for improving frisbee! Let's take our shirts off!"

The cartoon was drawn by me, as I am now officially a cartoonist for the newspaper. I just went in for a little informal interview yesterday (I submitted a handful of cartoons a week ago), so I was happy to see them using me so soon. I'm $10 richer for every 'work' published, and if the other cartoonists submit crap, I may get published more than once a week. Kaloo kalay!

Now I must go study in vain for a History midterm tomorrow.

"There's a robot there."

That's something I said about a year ago in reference to a barbeque on my neighbor's doorstep. I have the quote on video. It always sounded so awkward.

Everybody go to my music site! Cody has put the new pages up and they match my vision perfectly! He gets a gold star. I still need to upload a new song on the Caws Pobi page, but today my internet did not work AT ALL. Something must be done. Yes indeedee. Related story, Caws is playing with the blues. He is not a blues musician, which makes it all the more fun. A happy blipping blues album would make the babies smile!!

the passion of the clay.

I had a dream that everyone was pressuring me to see The Passion of the Christ. I didn't want to see it because watching extreme violence in a movie theater makes me feel faint, but eventually I ended up in a theater watching the thing. I was surprised to find out that the movie was entirely clay animation, with most of the movie consisting of a clay Jesus, already crucified, being paraded through town on a float while he sprayed clay blood onto the crowd. After seeing the movie I realized that the only reason people were upset over the violence was because it involved Jesus.

I don't know what provoked this dream, as I have not seen The Passion nor have I talked or heard about it lately. My weekend was not about bloody clay Jesuses at all; I went home and practiced/recorded with the (remaining) band, and yesterday we had a barbeque and went to river park. The weather seems to be getting nice, which leads to hot, which will not be nice after a few weeks.

The ice-cream-bike-woman just rode by outside. I wrote before about how adding a megaphone to the bike only made her sound like a jerk, but you know what she's got now? A percussion track on the ice cream music. Now the ice cream tune sounds like it was produced by P.Diddy. I figure next she'll add some hydrolics and make the bike hop.


The Jesus in my dream wasn't doing the splits.

picture book reading rainbow.

"Change for a dollar? Change? Change for the blind?"
I was just thinking of the confused Yoda quote yetserday, and it was making me laugh.

I recently looked at some cool books. First, there is the one I found late last night here at the Valley Library entitled America's Forgotten Folk Arts. It's basically all about the sometimes wierd, sometimes garish, sometimes creepy but always cool folky style of the early 20th century. Think old carousels and hommade toys and clowns with pointy hats and pointy chins and pointy noses.

The other book I found, in the OSU bookstore, was Fashion Illustration Now. I don't care what anyone says, the artists in this book are some of the best in the world today. And wouldn't you know, I can't remember the names of any of my favorites right now, except Kiraz, because he did the artwork for a Fantastic Plastic Machine album.

If you like cool pictures and art things, you should read these buks. *ba-dam bamp!*


Look out, Joes! A Carousel-Viper!

we'll have ourselves a knife fight.

First off, I finally saw Kill Bill Vol. 1, and I urge you all to see it if you haven't. It's good to know that movies like that can be made, and so well. Also, after viewing it we were lucky enough to catch Beyond the Valley of the Dolls on IFC, a film written by Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert. Ha. Ha ha. You have to see it to get the joke.

I hope you all enjoy the Sesame Street/Wu-Tang solution. In case you're wondering, Andy (Captain A) gave me a CD of Sesame Street songs to listen to and play with. I don't know which I will manipulate next, maybe one with Johnny Cash. I've been meaning to do more Caws Pobi stuff, but I've been busy with this damn school. FYI, I hate my Japanese class, and the fact that I keep missing it because of illness or forgetting to turn on my alarm (this morning) doesn't help. Actually, Caws has been working on an interpretation of a song by a local Corvallis musician. I will post it as soon as I have time.

no ideas today.


America the beautiful...

Sesame Street was all about the ghetto.

Sesame Street vs. The Wu-Tang Clan - 8 Pinky Rings
available for download

This Spring's hottest single.

the poem.

Here at Oregon State there is a "student art and literary magazine" called Prism which comes out every term. Needless to say, it isn't very impressive. It is about 80% poetry, because writing poems is cheap and for some reason there is apparently no standard for bad poetry. The rest of the thing is usually photography, with subjects ranging from nature to children to old people to...nature again. Most of the photos are black and white because a color photograph must not count as "art".
As I was wading through the pretentious, awkwardly sexual poetry in last term's Winter issue, I noticed that a couple poets kept popping up again and again. This led me to think "I guess they don't get many submissions." This further led me to think "maybe I should submit something. If they put in five works by this girl, they can put in one work by me."
Seeing as how the Prism peeps loved poetry so much, I decided to play their game and write a poem. My friend pointed out that pretty much every poem in the magazine was about sex, and she was quite right. Page after page of waking up next to someone and admiring their eyes and then feeling their heat from the inside out and oh my god I don't want to know any more. So my poem had to be fresh. None of this sexual symbolism or personal catharsis; my poem had to be whimsical and colorful, a parade of words. The only way to intrigue people these days is to first confuse them, so goes my theory on bad art (which I will discuss on a later date). Somewhat inspired by the speech of disorganized schizophrenics, which I was learning about in abnormal psychology, I wrote my poem and submitted it to Prism to be used in their Fall issue. A few days later they emailed me a rejection. Here is the poem:

Generous, pt. II: the Streams of Formalism

Georgie old boy, hand me the summit
Of Artemis.
Cheeky and flat, radiates feeling that
Solely resides in a crumb.

High above anything bubbly
Here comes the hot rod to sing
"We'll be making our way past the bronze doors,
We'll be making our way without guilt."
Fools
I'll still be drinking my lemonade roller blade scotch.
When the time comes, and the lights go down
Ear-shear party with Bosch!

Later at the bridge she'll drink a Coke
And recite twenty lines of poetry
While he wishes she was stupider.
All of his friends wear space helmets
And we fish down at the streams
And we wade in formal waters
And we sell our vulgarities.

Diamond gardens enjoy fledgling pink trumpets,
A peanut knife hidden in a box of salt.

Let the kids abuse themselves
Let the kids amuse themselves
Let the kids cast off the wet sugar ropes
That you got from your forefathers' attic.
Because when we get crazy we like to be pretty
When we get pretty we wind up in gutters...

...Until we wake up in Tokyo land,
and we wait for the fuzzy plastic beast to
take us back to Laforet in his warm arms.

I can't say I am disappointed. Hell, looking back I can't believe that I actually thought they would accept it. But it is a bit of a shame.

(by the way: Laforet)

reinvention!

Jesus Christ!! What the hell happened to my eblo?? It's all different! This goddamn... Or no, wait. I did it. That's right.

I don't drive.

In America, is that supposed to mean I am inferior? I've already learned that people only trust your age in this country if you can drive ("valid ID"). Do people think I am less of a human because I don't operate a motor vehicle? Discuss.

best blog post ever.

Good morning kids. Today I went to the good ol' Google image search and typed in "best picture ever". What came up was a whole slew of 'best ever' pictures, and here I present to you the best of the best:

best picture ever

(runner-up) best picture ever

best nipples ever (some Russian poster)

best mailbox ever

best sign ever

best graffiti ever

he's gonna smash that head!

Today I found this great little Chris Ware animation on the web. Chris Ware is a damn good comic book artist. I'd like him to design album covers for me someday.

everybody draw!

So yesterday I was in a drawing class for about 15 minutes. I was hoping I would be able to squeeze into the already full class, but when the instructor came in she gave some little spiel about how she can only teach 20 kids and the class had 23 and for some reason there was 26 in the room. So when she went to make some copies I snuck out.

I haven't taken a drawing class in a long time. Hell, I haven't taken a hands-on art class in a long time, not since high school. Frankly, drawing is the only art class I have interest in taking anymore, because drawing is awesome. Painting is highly overrated, and design has become a computer-dominated market. The best designer in the world today? Photoshop!

"Art classes bored me with such projects as making linoleum cuts or doing watercolors of flowers. What I really wanted to do was draw." -Charles Schulz

And Mr. Schulz was right. Art classes suck. Fortunately for him, in his day they offered illustration classes in high school, a concept which probably would have put me in my rightful place if it still existed today. But alas, in high school drawing classes they just have you do a bunch of still lifes. 'Draw this watering can, then draw the person next to you, then draw something else with dynamic shading. Maybe then you'll be ready to start painting, or better yet, take a shop class so you can get a real job someday.'

A lot of you people know I like to draw cartoons, but let me introduce you to some of my favorite cartoonists working today:

Bruce Eric Kaplan - He draws cartoons for The New Yorker, and he's also a co-producer of the show Six Feet Under. Before that, he was a writer for Seinfeld. I like his cartoons because not only are they clever, but the art itself is interesting. He likes to have a lot of negative space. Plus, he still does cartoons by hand, which is great.

David Rees - To my understanding he contributes cartoons to Rolling Stone, but I know him because of his books and his website. When I discovered his book My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable at the OSU bookstore I felt like telling everybody there to buy it. It does bother me that a lot of cartoonists these days just use computers, but Rees and a few others, which are also on this list, are really making great stuff. Oh yeah; this guy has a new book. Check it out.

Friend Bear! - I don't know the name of the guy, but he makes the best web-cartoons around. And the site is so addicting thanks to the random cartoon button.

Max Cannon - Red Meat is a great comic. That's all I have to say.

Then there are all my old favorites, like Schulz and Thurber and Watterson and Larson and Barsotti. Wait, Larson still makes cartoons, doesn't he? Anyway...

In a related story, I am going to submit some of my stuff to the OSU's newspaper The Barometer. We'll see if they get the joke.

"Don't you lay a bullet on those martians."

Classes and such begin again. That's all I will say about that.

Yesterday was a good day, full of things. Captain A and the Sounds of B took some fantastic pictures for a website that y'all may be seeing soon. Then myself and the Andy made a movie about martians and Snake Eyeses, and a short feature about what the moon astronauts will do all day (featuring me in a helmet).

And last night I saw Liars at the WOW Hall, a band which became one of my very favorites when I saw them perform two years ago. Since then they have lost their bassist and replaced their drummer, and actually sound quite different, but not in a bad way. They're still just a group of guys making great noisy noise. I was also pleased to read that their new album is a concept album about witch folklore, and I love concept albums. I was further pleased to read that lead singer Angus was somewhat inspired by the sounds of Matmos, an electronic group I enjoy, while he was hanging around on the Bjork tour. And I was even further pleased by this quote from Angus about the band's evolution: "It's not like the next record is going to be scary and weird...We could easily make a Japanese pop record next time." I love how everything in my music world ties together so well.
After last night's show I shook Angus's hand and then talked about the city of Eugene with Aaron the guitarist, Chad, some guy in a grey sweatshirt, and a guy who called himself "black unicorn". Yes, we all laughed at him.

"It's called master exploder!"

I finally managed to upload Noah was a Trackstar on my music page. My computer's connection capabilities still SUCK, and I still have no idea why, but I did that. Actually, I had a whole post written today about ice cream bike vendors with megaphones, but when I went to post it - gasp! - my connection up and died. AGAIN. So that post is gone forever.

In other news, I saw School of Rock over the weekend. If you haven't seen it, I recommend renting the Digital Video Disc. If you do that, I further recommend watching the bonus video diary of Jack Black, as well as his plead to Led Zeppelin. Good stuff, that.

finals over.

I thought I'd write about eye-glasses today, and how I love them. I do not wear any kind of prescription glasses, but I've always wanted at least a pair of reading glasses that I could put on every now and then when I wanted to change my look.

Why do I love glasses? I don't know. I guess because they carry so much background. They can be interpreted so many ways, and leave so many different impressions. A pair of glasses can completely alter how someone looks, and change how others percieve them. Just look at Superman - he puts on a pair of glasses and immediately he transforms from a dashing, extroverted hero into a sensitive, introverted businessman.

Glasses have as much subconscious image power as a cigarette, but most would assume that the two have the opposite effect. So what happens when you mix the two seemingly polar symbols? You get the "Luke Wardlaw", a style that is soft-spoken and intelligent yet sharp and rebellious. I recall the image of Max Fischer from Rushmore when he becomes depressed and isolated. His glasses retain the nerdy, attempted-overachiever look, but that look is bent by the cigarette into the image of a nerdy, attempted over-achiever who has been slugged by life.

But I'm not promoting cigarettes here. I'm promoting the glasses. Part of what makes them great is that you can mix them with different fashions and styles and create something new. Take Elvis Costello: put glasses on punk and you get new wave (or use goggles if you're Mark Mothersbaugh). Tom Cruise wore those stylish frames in the first Mission Impossible, and they somehow made him more of a badass. Just imagine, readers at home, putting glasses on a cowboy, or a commando, or a spaceman, or a boxer...which may be a tad unrealistic, but it's still interesting!

Glasses were integral to Elton John's early rock persona, and apparently he actually became nearsighted as a result of wearing his reading glasses too often. I read that he started wearing glasses because he wanted to be like Buddy Holly, whose trademark was his specs and who once told his mother "If people are going to like me, they’re going to have to like me with my glasses on."

Girls look great in glasses. A pair of glasses can give a beautiful girl a sense of modesty, and a charm that comes from a sense of hidden beauty (which isn't really hidden at all- it's just the slight extra prominence given to the girl's eyes). Two of the girls I've dated have worn glasses; another one had a pair of reading glasses, and I literally did a backflip when I found out, but she refused to wear them. When will modern women learn to reject the standards of beauty and love their glasses? I do!

Maybe this post has given those of you who wear glasses a little self-esteem boost, and good for that. As for standard news, my finals are finished and my spring break has officially begun. Not that I have any spans. ...That is a genuine misspelling of 'plans'. .... ..I have nothing more to say.

computers are the worst way to access the internet.

Captain A and the Sounds of B have a new supplemental song that we recorded over the weekend, but I cannot upload it because my modem has become quite catatonic. I didn't know it was possible for modems to simply get old and stop working properly, but that seems to be the problem; if it were something else, I'm SURE my user-friendly PC would let me know, right? Right???

Anyway, as soon as (if) I get it uploaded I will post word.

finals continue.

"Let's go get some tacos."

Last night I watched The Doors with Jose. I doubt the movie would have been anything if Oliver stone hadn't been behind it. Because only Oliver Stone could do that desert sequence, and that desert sequence makes the movie. "Ride the snake."

The weather is nice. Guys wearing flip flops break out the frisbees on the library lawn and see how close they can come to wacking some passerby (me) in the face with them. Yetsreday...yes, yetsreday I saw a couple guys playing a paddle-ball game. Each guy had a big wooden paddle, and they smacked a rubber ball back and forth. You can't get much simpler than that.

Sorry I haven't put up any music for a while. I've been busy with this damn thing called school, and I haven't been having a lot of grand ideas lately. Once I create something that I feel is "single" material, I'll put it up for your consumption.

"the camel that stroke the baw's rack."

That title is something I said today in an attempt to say "straw that broke the camel's back." I corrected myself by saying "I mean the camel that broke the straw's back." I was still laughing after everyone else had stopped.

Finals approach. Some are already here. Tomorrow I have my Japanese oral final, and I think my body has been conditioned to react in a negative way for the 48 hours surrounding the 5-minute conversation. And people wonder why my hair is thinning.

I am thinking of creating a children's book, something about a knight and a dragon and Jesus. Then I'll publish it and get a Caldecott medal. I love children's books, especially ones written by children. I think I talked about this before. But yes, that whole area is my main source inspiration.
Speaking of inspiration, there was a great art exhibit at OSU's Fairbanks hall this past month. I just caught its last day yesterday; Kay French had a series entitled "the plants of paradise", and it was a bunch of field drawings of plants and insects with random lists of numbers, symbols and stamps stuck on the canvases, which were painted in soft blue, brown and green color fields. The artist had written about how it was all inspired by early 20th-century field manuals, and that she was attempting to find the aesthetic of some ideal, utopian garden. I just thought it was a great combination of technical, commercial and fine art. I think technical art, diagrams and graphs and such, has a lot of potential in the fine art world, and it was good to see an artist play with that idea. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything about Kay French on the web, but I did find this:


Mars missions can wait.

familiarity in place of comprehension theory.

Here is an interesting site: blather

Some kind of experiment with random words and random text and journal entries. I don't understand it, but that's what makes it great. The best sites are the one's I don't quite understand, like Futura 2000's (see if you can find the page all about Boba Fett). This also goes for movies, books, music, and people. The key is to not get discouraged with not understanding. It is instinct to simply back out of something you do not understand, but if you continue to expose yourself to the website or thing and continue to explore it you find an understanding of not understanding. Your exposure to it brings a sense of familiarity which replaces the need to understand. You understand its ever-changing potential for interpretation. Now go click the links.

"why wouldn't you do it that way?"

Last Saturday I attended a music show in Eugene by Deerhoof. It was a very healthy experience for me. I haven't been going to any concerts recently because, simply, there aren't many good bands around nowadays. At least, no one I have a desire to see. I heard about Deerhoof sometime last year and downloaded some of their work and I was very pleased as punch with their sound, so when I saw that they were coming to town I decided they would be worth seeing.

Deerhoof have given me hope for rock and roll. Naturally I couldn't fully appreciate what they were trying to do until I saw them do it right before my eyes, but now I understand their significance. Behind the bloated alternative rock scene inhabited by bands like Jet and The Darkness, Deerhoof is taking the destructiveness of bands like Lightning Bolt and Arab on Radar, replacing the nihilism with a sense of melody, and replacing the screams with softly-sung, abstract children's book poetry.

This is what needs to be done! Rock and roll must be destroyed and reassembled to be saved!! Change tempo and tune mid-song! Let the drummer bang away as if he were a jazz drummer seeking a heart attack! Replace the archetypal rock and roll singer with a tiny, childish Japanese woman who comes off as the Yoda to Karen O's Luke Skywalker! Write lyrics about bugs and pandas rather than sex and drugs!

On a completely unrelated note, I am ill this week. It's not fun.

I haven't posted since last Tuesday, which is a long time. I been busy. I don't have time to write anything right now, either. But I do have things to address, so stay tuned.

Until then, I give you nano guitar.

Grey Tuesday

The thing is, I don't exactly have the connection or the time required to download the whole album and post it here, and I'm not a big enough fan to go through the trouble of making my site grey for a day and then changing it back. BUT, I urge you all to go here and see what I'm talking about.

By the way, I listened to the Grey Album on the internet and it is quite awesome. If I had the chance of buying it, I probably would. DJ Danger Mouse manages to put Jay-Z in a likable context that transcends the commercial rap world, but I think the record is really aimed at people who know and love the White Album. You can download the songs here.

so fresh and so clean clean

Thank you for the kind words, Cody, but what is up with that creepy picture? The ghost of Brett Smith, captured on film! He looks so restless...

I am listening to a compilation by 1980, aka Wes Medina, aka my cousin. Wes lives in LA where he works, makes music, and DJs at parties. He makes his music with mostly real hardware, not that computer nonsense.

1980's sound is smooth, atmospheric, and 'clean'. It seems to me that most 'clean' electronic artists today are a bit dull, but Wes keeps you interested with his close attention to melody and song structure. Even his messier tracks hold together as if every little sound is exactly where it should be. He knows that something clean and smooth is going to be examined up close, touched and felt. The slightest imperfection or annoyance will be distracting and glaring to the song's texture. He is able to back up the smoothness of the sound with songs that are interesting and emotional, that progress and change like a superb soundtrack. The music seems like the accompaniment to some kind of wordless narrative, like a (smoother) Brothers Quay film. I could imagine the odyssey of an animated character shuffling about a Charles Sheeler metropolitan world, meeting bizarre beings and encountering lots of tangible symbolism. Brian's Midnite Adventure, as the title of one song.

I don't think my music is as clean or as smooth, and most of the time that is intentional. I like adding electronic dust and garbage, like the fuzz/static effect in Bottle of Kids or the broken, disjointed latter half of Batteryfly (which I did under my old name Playgrounds and which I will make available for download as soon as I manage to record it again. Damn computer…). I feel like if I tried to make truly 'clean' music I would not be able to support it with such grace as 1980, but I'm glad he is there to make clean cool.

if you find yourself in an international CD store...

...you should pick up some goodness by Shiina Ringo (or Shena, or Sheena, or 363*#/2). I just had to do a little post about her, as she is probably my favorite musician to come out of Japan since Cornelius. Considering Japan's often bland, unoriginal popular music scene (besides the accasional Kahimi Karie) it's great to see an artist with actual chops have a brush with popularity and still keep her mind on the music. Apparently Ringo comes from a family of musicians, and studied piano and ballet as a child. She then moved on to writing music for school plays (awesome) and rock bands, eventually getting noticed by a label. I've heard from a few of my friends "she used to be popular. Not so much anymore." This is understandable; her last couple albums have been gloriously innovative and stellar in production, not as 'hip' and 'mainstream' as her earlier alternative rock projects. I read that 50 instruments from around the world went into making her last album, stuff like samisens (through effects pedals) and harpsichords (manipulated with computers). And she still writes and composes all of her music. Long live neo-classical Japanese prog rock!

That mole is strangely familiar...

newsic.

I finally managed to upload a couple Captain A and the Sounds of B songs. Go here to find Bottle of Kids and Victoria's Dance Party.

I also added a constant link to my OSU web space, for easy anytime access to the music.

wear a tall hat like a druid in the old days.

I had a dream last night that Marc Bolan and I lived in a cabin in bayou country. We sat around writing songs all day. Then all my friends showed up and we all went out to eat lobster in a restaurant modeled like a cave. Best dream ever.

great digital meltdown.

I've been having more trouble with my home internet connection, concerning it's tendency to NOT WORK (damn OSU), so I haven't been able to upload any of those Captain A and the Sounds of B songs. I will keep trying. Keep tuning in.

"I'm a computer!"

Another reason to be glad the internet exists. Gloriously butchered G.I. Joe PSAs. If you've got the downloading time, you've got to watch.
This site was introduced to my world by a young man named Aaron Ross. He's a funny man, yes. Oooooooooooooh! (G.I. Joe!)

for Socks

an emerging elf and a glowing mule.

I fixed a link, so now the Stinger picture in my last post works. Check it out if you haven't yet.

Yesterday saw music making. Captain A and the Sounds of B met at my 'retirement home' studio to produce 11 songs for a little 22-minute album. It turned out quite well. The tracks (I will upload a song or two later, so check back for links):
Day of Departure
Bottle of Kids
David Coppafeel interlude
Dog & Chicken
The Escape (blew up!)
The Gregarious Greeks
Bogart's Report
Victoria's Dance party
The 3rd Movement
Chocolate Factory
EIR

Homemade post-modernism! Unrestrained by thoughts of decency or music theory! Senseless words put to a senseless tune! Background noise of an insinuated dirigable! Overlapping butchered stories from the New Yorker! Fake video game music! Randall Cunningham! A song inspired by Russian politics with mostly jibberish lyrics (and the unintentional dog-kicking sound)! Dancing! All in good fun!

dude, this game is like, real but not real at all!

Hope you all like the neu song. It ain't much, but it came out perfect, only slightly retarded.

I've been thinking a lot about NES games, how good they were, and how carefree they were in terms of making sense. When I read an article in Wired magazine about how the creative team for the Atari 2600 would sit around doing drugs and writing down ideas, I thought "of course they did! And I'll bet the programmers for some Nintendo games did the same thing." So here I present to you a list: my top 5 most psychedelic NES games.

5. Super Mario Bros.
I had to include this gaming cornerstone, because when you think about it, what the hell was this game about? The princess of a kingdom of mushroom people has been kidnapped by the leader of turtle monsters. It's up to an Italian American plumber to run and jump his way through a landscape that features lightbulb trees. And aside from the underlying drug references (magic mushrooms make you big, a pipe is a gateway to another world), what were the goombas? And why were they called goombas?

4. Thrilla's Surfari
Yes, I know it was the product of a surf t-shirt company, but did anybody else out there play through the whole game?
Did you make it to the purple jungle, with giant skulls and flying dinosaur-birds? Did you fight the huge, winged, push-me pull-you rhinoceros? Did you skateboard through the baby-blue desert, where a pink elephant head tries to knock you off your board? Did you get to the end and battle the big lava head thing? ...Cause you should if you want to know where I'm comin from.

3. Maniac Mansion
I'll be honest, this one just came to me while I was sitting here. While this game did have an actual story that was semi-believable, its normal-ness is deceptive. In the game you meet: a family of psychos, a talking severed tentacle that wants to be a rock star, a mummified body in a bathtub, an evil talking meteor, an intergalactic police officer...In fact, forget what I said. This game isn't believable in the least. But it did have the bestest game secret ever: find the secret control pad in the wallpaper, type a few buttons, and the house explodes!! Game over!! You shouldn't have messed!!

Hell, looks like my family.

2. Totally Rad
Oooh man. I only played this game once, back in middle school, but I remember vividly how messed up it was. I don't even remember the story. All I can remember is that you control a white boy with an afro who can shoot plasma from his hands and do a white boy dance that transforms him into a fishman, a birdman, a tigerman, etc. Then there were the bosses. These guys visualized the term "bad trip". I think the first boss was a gigantic corn rock star. The rest of the game is just totally rad, man. Totally rad, man, YEAH! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha....uuuughh.

That tatoo makes him look like a weirdo.

1. Stinger
Yep, this one beats 'em all. Story? A scientist gets abducted by aliens, so you must fly a cute little spaceship around Earth (maybe) and shoot dangerous enemies like closet hangers, TVs, oranges, strawberry faces, and many more random nouns. When you die, you have the opportunity to catch your ascending angel for bonus points. I have never reached the end of this game. I'm sure the ending reveals something profoundly significant, but I just can't handle all the insanity. Play at your own risk.

The churches won't protect your secret lab from falling radishes.

secret agent man's spycraft.

Look at this guy's pictures.

god played nintendo.

intentionally dusty blues. for y'all.

rock music! pop music! pock rop music!

This weekend I met with me mates after a long period of inactivity to play some more band music. I learned that a group of young people getting together to use musical instruments does not necessarily mean that music will happen. However, it was a lot of fun, and who cares if we sound like an amplified train wreck as long as it's fun?

On a more hopeful note, Captain A and the Sounds of B are planning on recording some more happy tunes as soon as I get some equipment back. And on a slightly bitter note, I was going to upload a new Caws Pobi song yesterday but my internet was being a bitchy child and wouldn't let me. I will try again this week.

whale fish, whale fish, wh-BOOM!

Honestly, what is it with exploding whales these days? It seems like just yesterday some people blew the whale out of a dead beached whale because they "couldn't stand the smell" (we know why they really did it- because they knew it would be awesome). Then there's something about exploding whales in Sweden...

And now this Taiwan whale. The funny thing about this one is that nobody blew it up. It just up and exploded. Gee whiz, folks! You don't need to dynamite 'em, after all! They're self-disposing mammals! Leave a dead whale lying around for a few days, and KABOOM! I love the Taiwan story because the whale was just sitting in the middle of a city street. I guess the truck driver stopped to get a cofee or something. The story probably would've been funnier if the truck was in heavy traffic when it happened, but hey, this is funny enough. I can just imagine a mom driving her kids to kindergarten, reviewing the alphabet, when suddenly a bunch of blood and entrails explode all over the windshield. "It's all over, kids! Judgement day! Repent now!!"

I'll bet the one marine biologist in town was just sitting on a bench nearby waiting for it to happen. Then when it did he probably shouted "I told you so, you sonsabitches!" and fell down laughing.

But wait, there's more to this story! It says that this particular dead whale was very impressive because of its huge member:
"More than 100 Tainan city residents, mostly men, have reportedly gone to see the corpse to 'experience' the size of its penis."


Wipe that grin off your face, you well-endowed explosive sea-mammal!

music news.

Andre 3000 is trying hard to break the thick, idiotic, manufactured shell that covers Hip-Hop City, but he is meeting opposition from 50cent. The two were last seen hovering in the skies above the city shooting fireballs at each other.

The band Jet recently starved to death after accidentaly locking themselves in a dull, old-fashioned garage. Why they chose to hang out in a lousy garage is unknown, although it is hypothosized that they saw other bands doing it and wanted to be like them.

A spaceship from the distant planet of Krap landed last month in England. The aliens that emerged from the vessel called themselves The Darkness, and have since flaunted their otherworldly ability to suck. The leader of the group was quoted as saying "We're like a big black hole- we never stop sucking, and...that's all."

I'm the real Michael Jackson!

Check this out, kids. Here's what Michael Jackson would look like if he was still black... and not a complete fruitcake:

Gimme your wallet!

some things.

Click here to see what was going on in Tokyo on my birthday. If you have a fast connection, I recommend checking out all of them.

So I printed out a picture of a Gain detergeant box and coloured it with water colors (- the water). I presented it to my interpersonal communications class today as my personal coat of arms. I'm proud of myself.

I think Adult Swim is the best thing on television. I watch little else. I watch the Daily Show when I can catch it, I watch Conan O'brian every now and then, I sometimes leave James Bond movies on while I eat or do dishes. The Adult Swim programming is just plain good Brett TV. I like Space Ghost, I like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, I like Sealab, I like The Big O, and I like Futurama. I promote Adult Swim.

helltrack.

I'm back in Corvallis, back to the school, back to getting pissed off at the library printers. Which printer is printing? Why won't it print both sides?? Where the hell is the stapler?? Most importantly, why should we be expected to print the damn notes ourselves when the school printers don't work properly??

Anyway, California is good. Just so you know. Tomorrow I am turning in a short paper on fashion evolution, that is, if I can find the school yearbooks. I've looked twice at this library and haven't yet located them. They must be here somewhere. I was told by natsuki that don't need to use students, that I can use something else. Had this been true I could have just done rock'n'roll fashion and cranked it out lickety-split. But I checked THE SHEET and it specifically said 'students'. So my mission this evening is to find the lost yearbooks and then write about the fashion evolution of the dullest students in the country. I am also giving a 3-minute presentation tomorrow in which I must show my interpersonal communication class who I am or something. I could just go up and make silly noises like I did when I was 4. Everyone would get the picture.

drive the worm around.

Apparently I'm off to California again for the weekend, so I won't be reporting for a few days. Don't think I'm dead. We all know what kind of trouble that can lead to, eh? Eh??

I found a great book at the OSU library. It's a children's book written and illustrated by a 1979 elementary school class. The stories are great; they start out simple, then get slightly redundant, then stop making any sense whatsoever. I wish all books were written by elementary school students. No more of this mundane John Grisham or Stephen King. If the story get's boring, just change the story entirely! Don't take 40 pages trying to turn it around. The dog ate too much, the dog got fat, the dog couldn't leave the house...then everything in the house suddenly broke and the dog got really small for no reason at all! Now that's compelling!

The illustrations are magnificent as well. In one, you can really see the determination on a hunter's face as he shoots a bear, somehow without a gun. In another, a boy's cat is depicted as a huge dinosaur-esque mass, perhaps an abstract expression of the cat being...huge and...deformed. But don't take my word for it. Go check out this buk from your local library today. *ba-dap bap!*

rudder field: more fun with web-translation.

Here are some recent highlights from Emi Necozawa's web diary:

"If the air is attached, because it has been time, school several hours later, without dropping either the make-up, that way you faint..."

"Returning to the house, washing the face, I faint. Evening ハッ, with occurring, it starts another deadline manuscript."

"The tobacco inhaling, it enters into the bed. Various ones like the animal to scamper in the head..."

"Even in absence electricity from rudder field. Evening exchanging is done. Today, John Phillip to - the sun and the boiled rice you eat the rudder field, passing. It is good?"

Mars.

So NASA has sent a new little robot to Mars to take some pictures, and what they got back is astounding. Here are the new Mars photos that have the world in awe of the red planet all over again.







My god.

take your hat, boy.

what I did this afternoon:
new solo song (new solo name)

hey, are you blacklisted?

NRA's scowling list of anti-gun celebrities and organizations

Go see if your favorite celebrities are hated by the NRA! I couldn't believe that Mase made the list. First off, is he even around anymore? Secondly, I KNOW he's rapped about capping some asses. And I noticed Steven Segal isn't on the list. That guy probably keeps a glock in his underpants. I like how everyone's field is specified except for all those Zappas at the end. Who knows what they do, right? They probably wouldn't even be celebrities if their name wasn't Zappa.

I heard Dustin Hoffman actually called up the NRA and said "what gives, dog? Put my name on that mutha." If it's that easy, I'm gonna call them up and have my name put on the list. I want the NRA to know that they hate me.

OSU is finally conquered by the elements.

Last night it snowed more. A lot. Then it rained a little. The result was a thick white layer of frozen snow covering all of Corvallis, and OSU had to close its doors and cancel its classes for the day. But I'm not scared of snow. With coffee cup in hand, I set out this morning on an expedition around campus. I thought it a shame that most students were just sitting in their rooms, scared of the "deadly snow" outside that would eat their flesh away and kill their motor cars. Everything was clean white, and the frozen snow cracked and broke beneath my feet like...I don't know...tortilla chips. Some guys were skiing down the street behind the library. Myself and some other curious explorers stopped and watched. "Feel Flows" by the Beach Boys played on my keen new MP3 walkman. "Whether whiteness whisks soft shadows away." Whatever that means.

So I went to the bookstore and bought some books for school. I began reading Culture Jam by Kalle Lasn, and it's pretty funny. "A culture that keeps hyping people to consume more is not cool. America is not cool. And the people who fall for the hype are the worst kind of uncool: They're suckers."

Maybe tomorrow classes will be cancelled again. If so, I will probably just sleep all day.

Dusty Vindictive Dobermans

Over the break I watched some keen DVDs on my keen new DVD player. First, I viewed some grand films from a Studio Ghibli collection I borrowed. Studio Ghibli is the home of Hayao Miyazaki, one of the smartest and most inventive filmmakers alive today. I was finally able to watch a subtitled version of Porco Rosso, which is one of my favorite Miyazaki movies. Tis a shame it hasn't been domestically released in America; it's required viewing for anyone who reads this site!! Hopefully it will show up in the States soon, seeing how Ghibli stuff is gaining popularity over here.


When pigs fly!! Ha ha...No, that's too obvious.

The other DVD I viewed was one with both The Street Fighter and Return of the Street Fighter . I can sum up the plots of both movies in one sentence: Sonny Chiba plays a badass karate master who goes around killing gangsters with incredible moves. Those moves include punching guys in the stomach, punching guys in the face, whacking a guy's head with a steel pipe, and punching a guy in the back of the head so hard that his eyes pop out. These movies are hilarious. Sonny Chiba discovered the secret to competing with Bruce Lee films: just add a bunch of ridiculous violence.

I will, pa. I will.

back at skolliwoll.

School has begun, and so has snow. Everything is icy. I saw a kid fall on his face in the street while riding his bike. Somebody yelled out "Man down!"

Now there is a couch in my apartment. The great open space that amazed me when I moved in is now slightly filled. My roommate also brought in a nice lamp, which is something that we needed. A home is growing!

snow backwards is "wons".

I'm back in the Leb and today it snowed. A lot. So me and my boyz built a snow-Tristan in a snow-chair, and Andy tackled him. Then we went sledding on Tristan's car floormat sled and had a grand time until it began raining and Jack Frost started eating our flesh away.

Damn you, Keaton! Stay away from my nose!!

And the new year happened. We celebrated the changing from '03 to '04 by spinning walnuts on my kitchen table and watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Good times.

the New Year.


Turtle soup!!

in Cali.

I'm in California because I'm a jerk. Well, actually I didn't know we were going this year. But Chad wanted to. And then my mom realized that we needed to deliver our gifts to people. And we needed to trade some stuff with cousin Wesley. So on Christmas day someone told me "We're going to California tomorrow. We'll be back Monday." So here I am.

We were going to leave today and go halfway but then people started getting all huffy and saying 'It's snowing in the pass which means instant death so you must stay here.' So I will be back in Leb tomorrow evening. We started a new post-Guns Behind Brett series, one in which Jack and Alex chase each other, and Chad and Wes and Brian and Elaine and Connor all have parts in the struggle. The movie turned out quite good. They call it "Old School Style".

No more for now.

on his way, in the night, Saigon hero pistol light.

Last night I had a dream that George Dubya Stupid was trying to set up missile-launching bases here in Oregon. He set up one, and people found it and protested, so he closed it up and then set up another base which we found again. Then in part two of the dream I was driving to Portland with my friend who was a bizarre mixture of Andy and David Villenueve. In the car we were talking about A.R.E. Weapons. Along the way we stopped and met up with his girlfriend, who was a complete figment of my imagination. She was not based on anyone. I find it fascinating that when I'm not even in control of my brain it can create an entire person, with distinct physical traits and personality. She was nice.

I'm using the computer of mon mere et pere, and it sucks. Sure, it has DSL, but it has fallen victim to the scoundrels of the internet. Some people say "ah, what's so bad about pop-up ads?" What's bad is when they infect your PC with a virus and then completely take it over. I am assaulted with ads every minute or so. The homepage is always automatically set to some "daily offers" page that sets off a chain of pop-ups when you get on the web. Some sites are inaccessible because "this computer has been hacked. File error 556TTTG7,,[ 99--hjh3ASSH*&Y6677. Go download this stuff." Just now the computer froze up for a good 20 seconds as if it was processing something. Then it stopped and nothing happened.

I know the Davey picture didn't work. That's because I can't get onto the Google image search to find any pictures. The page won't work. So I must use the Yahoo image search, which is far inferior. Jeremiah on a horse to Mexico!!

So that's what's up. I have yet to write about Christmas. But it's comin.

art imitating life? or just crap?

I have conquered Daydreamin' Davey. For those of you not in the know, DD was a poorly made game for the NES from the HAL company, the same people who brought you...I have no idea what else (but according to the end credits, DD is "another fine product from the HAL company", which sounds strangely sarcastic).

In the game you take control of Davey, a young ADD victim with the tendency to drift off into dangerous dream worlds while attending school. During the first part of the game there is some setup for each level, like a teacher saying "now we will talk about the middle ages" or "let's watch a video about the old west", which thus sends Davey into the Daydreams of his namesake. But as the game goes on, things stop making sense, and at one point Davey simply runs out of the school and falls into delusion right on the front lawn.

The daydreams are all based in history, which leads one to believe that the character Davey is either a super-nerd or that the game was made as a final project in someone's world history class. Throughout the game Davey visits the middle ages, the old west, ancient Greece, the middle ages, the old west, ancient Greece...and then the middle ages, the old west, and ancient Greece again. And every time each world is laid out the same, which means Davey must have a very uncreative imagination. The worlds start overlapping near the end of the game as a hole in the ground of the old west suddenly leads to Hades, and a bridge in the middle ages leads to "the dark forest" which is just a green Hades where arabian sultans shoot magic at you. Maybe Davey has some creativity after all, or maybe he's just been poppin' too many pills.


Every school has it's "special" students...

The game ends with Davey awaking in class after shooting some cowboys in his dream world. A girl sitting next to Davey asks him if he would like to study with her sometime, because apparently she is very impressed with his ability to sleep through class but still know how the shootout at the O.K. Corral went down (because he was there, of course). But I guess Davey prefers living in his dream world, because he exclaims "I'm outta here!" to the girl and proceeds to run out the front doors of the school. The end.

So what did Daydreamin' Davey teach me? That it's okay to spend $10 on a nintendo game if it keeps you occupied for a few days and leaves you with a sense of accomplishment after you complete it. I'm outta here.

brain-exploding breaking news.

"Saddam, with a thick, graying beard and bushy, disheveled hair, was seen as doctor examined him, feeling his scalp and holding his mouth open with a tongue depressor. Saddam blinked and touched his beard during the exam."

You're kidding!!!! He blinked??? And then proceeded to TOUCH his BEARD?? This is the most mind-blowing report I've ever read!! I peed my pants twice while reading it! I couldn't ever, in my wildest fantasy science-fiction dreams, imagine an Iraqi dictator blinking and touching his beard. That's enough to make old men drop dead from disbelief. I have to hand it to those reporters for giving the American people just what they want to hear.

I hear that CBS is already planning a prime time movie about the event. They must find the right actor who knows how to blink well on camera and touch a beard with authentic fervor. Maybe Sir Richard Attenborough?

Christopher Lee's goth wig!

Momus meets The Wicker Man.

'The Wicker Man' is a movie I watched with Tristan at the Wells Manor a while back. Not since Zardoz had I seen such a bizarre, head-scratching, confused-laugh-inducing piece of 70s cinema failure. Maybe I wrote about it on my site before. It's one of those films that really isn't very good, but for some reason you remember it for the rest of your life. Kind of like Flash Gordon.

Something I found interesting was that according to the video's box the movie is terrifying and disturbing, "a totally corrupt shocker". But the actual film isn't standard movie horror. It's more like conservative-Christian horror, the kind of "nightmare tale" that bible-beating parents would tell their kids on Halloween (but they would probably change the ending and have Jesus nuke the island like in Jurassic Park). To a modern college student, the movie is just wonderfully wierd and funny. Anyway, Momus apparently took more from it than I ever could, but at least he recognised the same basic things Tristan and I did. Rent it today, kids!

"Hobbits UNITE!"

lame
adj. lam�er, lam�est

1. Disabled so that movement, especially walking, is difficult or impossible: Lame from the accident, he walked with a cane. A lame wing kept the bird from flying.

2. Marked by pain or rigidness: a lame back.

3. Weak and ineffectual; unsatisfactory: a lame attempt to apologize; lame excuses for not arriving on time.

4. Leonard Nimoy singing a song about a hobbit amidst a bunch of women born without dignity: Now hobbits are peace-loving folks, you know; they're never in a hurry and they take things slow.

amazing developments.

Way to go Tristan for figuring out how to make pictures happen! Now I can do this!

listening to Japanese new wave.

So last night I had a dream in which Chad and I downloaded a home video of Paul McCartney singing his lost song about the Hamburglar. The last few minutes of the video were just his kids drawing pictures of war, with little stick figures getting shot. In the dream I was laughing so hard I was crying.

I hear ya, Tristan.

"Y'know, college is a lot like a disease."

"Because if you live through it you become stronger?"

"No, because it sucks."

Continue on for 2 more new posts.

...in other news, the Grammys still suck.

Oh boy! The Grammys! You know what that means?

Beyonce and her boyfriend, Jay-Z, were contenders for record of the year for their summer anthem "Crazy in Love."

Not only that, but Evanescense and Justin Timberlake and 50 Cent all got nominated! Isn't that great?? It's wonderful that such talented artists are getting nods, but what about that song in the McDonalds commercials? I thought for sure that would be up for record of the year.

God, I hate the Grammys. They get worse by the year. My first gripe with the 'awards' was back in high school when I realized that there were awards for best classical album, best modern Christan album, best Caribbean dance album, best Bulgarian goth album, best interplanetary polka album, and best album recorded by a household pet, but there was NO category for electronic or DJ. Sure, there is a 'dance' category, but the nominees are always FM radio hot-mixes of pop songs. I remember when they threw William Orbit in with the 'instrumental pop' category and swept Moby into 'alternative'. The latter category seems to be where they put all the music they didn't see on MTV.
"Have you heard of these guys The Beta Band? I hear their album's good."
"Who? Just put 'em in alternative."

The good news is that Outkast and The White Stripes are nominated for album of the year. The bad news is that so are those people I mentioned earlier. It's a sad world in which Justin Timberlake's "Justified" and The White Stripes' "Elephant" get nominated for the same award. Sadder still is the fact that Justin has a much better chance of winning. I feel like the Grammys should just ignore good albums altogether. Last year they didn't even mention Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and I was okay with that because it's obvious that they specialize in awarding shallow, financially successful pop records. They should just stick to that. They should never consider Radiohead, or Wilco, or The White Stripes, or The Strokes, or The Flaming Lips, or even Beck. They should just continue throwing awards at new R&B "geniuses" and showing nostalgic pity for acts like Steely Dan and Willy Nelson. But I guess then people might notice that the Grammys are the same as the Billboard Music awards and that both are just evil schemes concocted by the big record companies to increase sales (and I think Cobra may be involved, too).

So what do I think was the best music of this past year? Follow this link and click the picture.

Send down the birds.

"People thought I was dead but I was just directing The A Team."

Here's to David Hemmings.

Doom: thoughts and meditations.

I'm going to talk a little about video games. The Doom series to be precise. If you don't know Doom, you just won't know what I'm talking about. So go home.

Doom 3 is coming out soon. If y'all remember, Doom I and II pretty much defined the first-person shooter genre as well as the PC gaming scene when they were released back in the mid-90s. So now the long awaited 3rd is about to be dropped, and some information and screenshots have been released. The new game is apparently intended to be darker and scarier, more twisted and macabre, and more realistic. The monsters have all been redesigned to look nightmarish and horror-like, and the people at id software say Doom 3 is going to be more about creeping around and being scared than just shooting everything.

And this all makes sense. If you look at the current state of action and first-person shooter games you will see that the scary, disturbing motif has become quite popular, and it isn't very surprising to see the Doom franchise making an attempt to become part of that crowd rather than remain a nostalgic inspiration. It's kind of like how Vanilla Ice tried to make a comeback as a rap-metal act, or how Ozzy Osborne tries to stay potent in the shock-rock world that he created long ago.

I was playing Doom II the other day on the old family computer in Lebanon. The PC hadn't even been turned on in a year or so, but I started her up and had some fun in the Doom world in which I used to play every day after school. I put in the codes - God mode, happy ammo, no clipping - and shuffled around the halls of hell, turning big exaggerated demons into piles of pasta. As I played, I thought about the new Doom, and the scare factor, and the disturbing imagery, and I figured "to hell with it" (excuse the pun). It hit me that all that horror stuff isn't what Doom was all about. It wasn't about being scared, or being immersed in a dark story of survival and terror. It was about shooting monsters. It was about getting a bigger gun and saying "hell yeah" the first time you use it. Back in the era of the older games, the first-person shooter was a young medium that people were just starting to enjoy. Now that a game engine had been created that allowed players to simulate first-person killing sprees, the only variables were who to shoot and where to shoot them. First, id made Wolfenstein 3D which let you walk around a castle shooting Nazis. Nazis, of course! Everybody hates Nazis! What better way to utilize this first-person shooter stuff than give everybody the chance to gun down such a widely hated villian? After the success of Wolfenstein, the Doom games used the same template and just plugged in the idea of demon-martians in hell. Brilliant! Demons and martians! They're even more basic human enemies than the Nazis!

It is obvious when playing Doom II that the purpose of the game is good ol' fashioned blowing stuff away. There's an underlying element of fun, a hint of camp, that makes the game a joy. It's the way your character's face at the bottom of the screen is slightly comic; the square jawed, confident everyman that is stuck in this horrible environment but maintains a sense of arrogance. It's the darkly-comic hidden Wolfenstein levels that throw blond, blue-eyed Nazis in with hungry monsters that will eat them as soon as you. It's what "BFG" really stands for. These are the things that made Doom what it was, and it's that very same "don't give a shit" attitude that later resurrected Duke Nukem to take the genre to new depraved heights.

Doom 3 will come soon and a new generation will sit, frightened and disturbed, in front of their computers. But when I think of the imp, I will always picture a little brown guy who shot fireballs at me before my BFG turned him into stew.

news.

There's a new song. Well, it's from last week, but I didn't get around to putting it up until today. It's right here.

"whinny whinny...horse sounds, horse sounds"

What do you think of the new Hotmail?? Comment below to start a flaming controversy!! Biggins!

I meant to talk about this a while back in response to Trickstan, but I didn't. Now it comes.
I made a movie way back in the day called From the Earth to the Moon part XXVII, and it starred a bunch of G.I. Joes and animal toys and various action figures. It was an epic, two parts even, about an evil Space Nazi and the noble idiot Captain Tommy. I can't remember the whole story. Something about Tommy and his crew getting captured because they stopped to get some drinks, and then all hell breaks loose and such. The action scenes were spectacular; one featured a giant ...talking crab and another focused on a battle between a dinosaur pinata and a friendly Gobot mobile fortress. The movie also featured an unforgettable robot character named Probe-Bot, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his brilliant line delivery ("Now I will proceed with the probing of your anus" and "I am dead now, you bastard"). If any of you haven't seen it, remind me next time you're at my house. Your head will explode upon viewing!

this internet makes no sense.

Hey, kids! Here's a tip:
If my site doesn't show up, go to the address bar and either add or remove the 'www.' This usually works for me. I don't know why, or what's wrong with the address, but that's how it works.

My day of Thanksgiving was a good day. I ate things. Over the weekend I also viewed the second Lord of the Rings film, and I enjoyed it. Magic midgets and tree people. Those tree people sure kicked some ass. I think everybody in the movie should have asked the tree people a long time ago to wipe the floor with the bad guys, because that's apparently what the tree people do best.

Also, I didn't mention that I bought a guitar last week. It is certainly a nice one for $100. I would provide a link to a picture of it, but I couldn't fine any pictures of anything like it on the web. It's from a company called Lyle which apparently specializes in hollow-bodied blues guitars, yet mine is just a standard electric. Anyhoo, I like it.

...and placed in the care of an old eternal bachelor.

Momus's family.
...How 'bout that?

thankgiving.

So Thanksgiving is coming tomorrow. Turkey time in the vegimime.

The very first Thanksgiving was a long time ago when the the Spanish conquistadores visited North America. They had a big feast where the Spanish ate a bunch of indian food and the indians ate a bunch of sword and disease.

So then later the colonists came and set up shop and the the indians were uneasy about these new white people but the Europeans said "Don't worry about us. If we have any problems, we'll just kill you." So then they started trading and had a big super happy Thanksgiving feast and the indians were feeling pretty good until the colonists wanted to expand their settlements and had to sweep away some indian tribes.

So after a while the colonists just told the indians to beat feet out west and play with the western indians. This wasn't such a good idea, however, as the different tribes didn't get along very well.

Anyway, sooner or later people started getting together and having big thankful dinners and calling the day Thanksgiving and attributing it to the pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock. And that's why stuffing tastes good with turkey.

ha. ...ha ha ha ha.

Harry Potter is Evil.

Dr. Brett's comment:

No parents, it is not okay to let your children enrich their minds by reading the Harry Potter novels. They are evil, dealing with supernatural subjects and magic spells. However, it is okay to force your children to read a book about a murdered man who rises from the dead to become an all-powerful space ghost and condemns mankind to an eternity of pain and anguish.

the music of the devil.

If you've been to Tristan's site, you've probably found the link to the first 'song' from the project Andy and I are working on. I was going to wait until we had more songs up before posting a link, but what the hell. The song is here.

Captain A and the Sounds of B present an exercise in music and absurd narrative. Coming soon. We haven't decided on an album title yet.

Oh, and I may be posting some live Momus songs on that there site for a nice gentleman in Berlin. Just so you know.

a bit of importance.

For some reason or another Qwest has disconnected my phone line. I pay the bills and everything, but the other day I found that my apartment was cut off from the outside world. So if I don't respond to any emails right away or return any calls, now you know why. I have to come to this damn crowded library to use the internet.

late birthday spirits.

You're the birthday
You're the birthday
You're the birthday
Boy or Girl

Hey Tristan have fun with good birthdy! You've come so long from your behind years of small! I hope things are there that are your happiest thing!

Happy day, Tristan. If you were here, I would take you you water cow hunting. I can only imagine what you're doing over there at Goshen.

Super beans!

to the Peacock: a thieving, frat boy odyssey.

Being 21, I am now mature enough to delve into the immature world of bars. So last weekend a couple o' me mates took me to the most popular bar in town, the Peacock. It only cost me 3 dollars at the door and my jacket.

The first floor is the standard pool hall, where all the older guys in denim jackets with long goatees hang out. The real 'spectacle' is upstairs, where apparently half the population of OSU goes every Thursday. At around 12 everyone gathers on a big dancefloor and attempts to dance to the most obnoxious, offensive hop-hop the charts have to offer. It didn't take long for me to figure out that this place was all about sex. The guys show up to drink enough liquid arrogance in order to go out on the dancefloor and try to attract some drunk sorority girls, whom the guys hope will stumble back to their rooms with them at the end of the night. The girls show up to drink enough so that they no longer object to some intoxicated ass with a backwards hat bumping up against them on the dancefloor. Why? Because it's their role. If they weren't there for the drunken asses to take home, the bar would lose its business and the fraternity institution would cease to exist. Without fraternities, sororities would seem rather pointless and sexist, and they would go extinct as well. Without sororities, the rich girls with bleached hair would be forced to live in dorms, apartments, or other environments that don't deem them as "special", and that would be, like, totally unfair. SO, for their own well-being, these girls must put on short skirts, tube tops and (a certain kind of) boots every weekend and go drink themselves senseless at the Peacock.

Anyway, when I was ready to retire for the evening, I found that my jacket was no longer on the back of the chair where I had placed it. My mate's sweatshirt was gone as well. We stuck around searching for them, even after the bar closed and the lights came on, but to no avail. The bartenders were no help; I don't think they can actually see what goes on outside of the bar.

So that's that. I have other jackets, but I liked that one. It was old and it was warm. And now some other guy's got it. And that's just not good. The end.

things fall apart.

This computer's getting sassy. I think I need to defragment it or kick it or something.

And the damn old messenger won't move out. I downloaded the new version, but the old one won't pack up his things and go. I removed his program from my system and even deleted his shortcut, but he still won't leave. Everytime I get online he starts up on his own and pushes the new messenger out of the way. I always have to sign out on him and sign in on the other, and it's a genuine pain in the ass. The most frustrating thing is that I can't exit him. I try to exit and my computer tells me "Duuuuh, you're using other applications that are, like, using his features." (This, of course, is not true; I think the old messenger pays my computer to say that.) It's like he refuses to go to bed. He just sits on my desktop all the time with a little 'x' in front of him. I wouldn't be surprised if he's actually a little software spy sent by Bill Gates. Damn nerd! Take your little instant messenger away! He's not wanted here!!

And the radio station screwed me over. I did the apprenticing, I took the test and found a spot for my show, like I was told to, and waited for the people to contact me and tell me what week I start. They never contacted me. One night I went by the station and looked at the big schedule board, and some other guy has my spot now. ALL the spots are taken. I have no show. It was nice of them to email me and tell me, which they didn't.
The lesson I learned from all this is that it is better to do your brother's radio show illegaly than to go through all the training to get your own.

Anyhoo, more news later.

Bill Cosby does another picture page with you.

I took this picture. They're cups.

Does anybody remember that show Picture Pages? Bill cosby would draw stuff on the 'picture pages' with a super amazing future pen that made queer sounds when used. That's all I remenber about the show. I just spelled remember wrong. I like it better the other way.

Well gee, kids, here is a site about Picture Pages. It turns out the pen had a name, Mortimer Ichabod Marker, which is quite possibly the coolest name I've ever heard. What's also cool is that Bill Cosby apparently wore a bunch of t-shirts with drawings of himself on them. This show was the definition of rock & roll.

only Louis and Clarck know.

Something has been driving me downright looney. Do this: go to the google image search. Type in "bear attack" for the keyword. Search. Look at the very first image. What the hell is that??? The link is broken! You can't go to the site, because IT DOESN'T EXIST! The picture seems to be the remnants of a website that documented a bizarre alternate world of Lewis and Clark, which I have dubbed the Louis and Clarck World of Intrigue and Foreboding. In this alternate dimension, the two adventurers look like scarecrows and they trek across a smooth, featureless landscape, tirelessly pursued by a large, akward man in a bear-dog suit. And what's more, apparently postcards existed of the journey, but I sure wouldn't want such a strange image on my fridge.

Anyway, just thought I'd share that with you. If you further investigate the search results you will find this image, which is equally disturbing.

them ugly banana nut bread.

Look, Tristan! It's your other site! Gee, I didn't know you were taking a film class.

So I had this disturbing dream the other night. In the future, ugly people have realized they are getting the short end of the stick in areas like employment, dating, showbusiness, etc. (this idea may have sprung from what I learned in sociology recently). So the country is divided between ugly people and non-ugly people, kind of like a racial difference. But in my dream, something about accepting the fact that they are ugly has made the people evolve into especially ugly-looking people, with oversized heads and dwarfish bodies. So suddenly the ugly people start rebelling all over across America, attacking non-ugly people and destroying property. I knew something was up when I was riding with Chad and Joel in a car and we drove by a woman in the road yelling at us. When we slowed down a little she tried to pull the car door open, but we sped off. The we noticed there were riots breaking out everywhere. I remember some kind of "action sequence" in which we were in an apartment building fighting for our lives against a bunch of big-headed ugly people, hitting them with chairs and pushing them out of windows. I guess it was kind of unconsciously arrogant of me to automatically see myself and my group of friends as non-ugly people. But you should've seen the people; they were pretty scary.

And here is Friend Bear!

Halloween.

Guess what! I just wrote a whole post about Halloween, but it got lost! You know why?? Because computers suck!! They suck, kids! For many, many reasons!!

Anyway, I saw a Japanese guy dressed as Adolf Hitler and a little kid dressed as an olive, and Andy and I wore creepy animal masks while we drove from Albany to Corvallis. A little girl in a suburban thought it was fantastic.

I don't feel like writing it all over again. I will just say this; Elks clubs are funny.

21 crazy fists.

This is my birthday post! In celebration, I give you some fun birthday links! Enjoy!

birthday fun #1!

birthday fun #2!

and birthday fun #3!

birthdays and laws and celebrations and halloweens and tests.

Man, there's just too much going on this week. I feel like it might explode. Weeks can only hold so much.

I forgot (and I'm kicking myself...really!) that Oct 24 was the one-year-hoopla of this very eblo. That's right; the Cloy Harlequin is one year old. I want you all to celebrate by saying "I'll be damned!" wherever you are right now. Or just post a comment; that thing's gathering cobwebs.

Then there's my birthday, coming up here in about 2.5 hours. I should enjoy this last bit of being 20, even though I know I cannot because I have to study for my Japanese final tomorrow. Being 20 doesn't get enough recognition, just because it is the year before 21, which is when an American becomes magically able to drink responsibly (see my sarcasm-soaked birthday post from last year). I feel like if 21 wasn't such a big deal, 20 would be like the new millenium of birthdays, signifying one's departure from the teenage years and all that is carefree into a world of expectations and responsibility. Everyone would celebrate that and go crazy and such. But no, 21 is when you get to drink, because no one ever drinks before they are 21. Whutevr.

Then there's good ol Halloween, but I will wait to address that on Friday. Ta for now.

God isn't an apple...is he?

People are standing. Just standing, waiting for someone to get off a computer. Or maybe they are trying to make people feel guity so that they will say "I'm sorry you have to stand. Here; have this one." I chose a computer in the back of the room thinking that all the vulture people would circle the front and leave me alone, but sure enough, right now there is a girl just standing a couple feet away. She walked all the way to the back of the room just to stand next to me and make me feel uncomfortable. There's a whole damn room! There could be a guy right over there who's done! Go away, dammit!!

So yesterday I defeated some Christians. There were 3 girls in front of the library who were nice enough keep me from entering the library and studying because they wanted to guilt-trip me into joining their religion. I gave them 2 minutes to give some reasons why their God is the best (immediately after which I said "whoop, time's up!"). But before I left one of them presented me with an analogy. She was so confident; it was almost cute. It went something like this:

her: Do you believe in gravity?
me: I suppose I believe in the theory of gravity.
her: So say I have an apple here in my hand. What's gonna happen if I drop it?
me: I suppose it's going to fall and hit the ground.
her: But how do you know that for sure?
me: Because I've dropped things before and seen it happen.
her: ...But, just play along; What if you've never done it before, how do you know gravity exists? You have faith in it, right?
me: Well, before I believed in gravity I would have to test it by dropping the apple a couple times. Then, after witnessing it, I would have reason based on my experience to believe that it will happen...
her: Well, c'mon, you know what I'm...okay, bad example.

At that point I started to walk away and, seeing that they'd been defeated, one of them just said "Well, think about it!" I did, girls. I did think about it.

beanbag war syndrome.

I just thought I'd comment on the subject of how Andy, Tristan and I used to beat each other with bean bags and pillows and such, in response to them posting about it on their respective sites.

So Tristan would scare us sometimes. When he put on that blindfold and picked up the beanbag, he would transform. He would exorcise his inner demons through the large bag of beans. Sometimes, while Andy and I would be consistently uttering things like "who's over here?" and "take this...no, wait...AAUUGH!", Tristan would just be silent, waiting for the time to strike. I pictured him - since I had a blindfold on I couldn't see, right? - anyway, I always pictured him sitting perfectly still, feeling the vibrations and honing in on the sounds, and maybe rubbing mud on his face like war paint.

There's the time he broke Andy's shelf while in one of his berserker rages. We have it on film. You see me, crawling to avoid the swinging bean bag as it gets closer and closer. I get cornered by the shelf and just try to shield my head from the impending blow. Tristan swings and swings and gets closer and closer. Then he swings and there is a "CRASH", and items from the shelf as well as pieces of the shelf itself are seen flying through the air. Then I yell out in terror, thinking that I am next (luckily the battle was put on hold due to the damaged furniture and Andy's mom wondering what the noise was). Thinking back, I kind of look like a Vietnam POW in the video, cowering in the corner with a blindfold on.

Sometimes I have flashbacks when I'm in the middle of class, and I fall on the floor yelling "No! No! Tristan, you're still a man, you ain't no animal!! Andy's dead, man! Don't kill me!!" Well, maybe. Maybe I just made that up.

"I am not afraid to die..."

Strange. Just this morning I had a song called "In the Lost and Found" stuck in my head, a song I haven't heard for probably a year or two. The catchy piano just started playing, over and over.

So they say Elliot Smith stabbed himself in the heart today. Jeez, man; too bad you're not still around to write a song about your own suicide. I guess the material for his album-in-the-works got to him. He always did stick to mopey, quietly pissed off kind of songs, but dammit, he was the best at it.

still nothing to write.

It was all right
the band was all together
It was all right
the song went on forever
it was all right
really quite out of sight
and he sang all night
all night long

a view of the background.

mint tea puzzle drinking, and fun with translators.

I translated some of Emi Necozawa's web diary using one of those online translators. Here are some highlights of the results:

"Making the tea drink, you nap. When lavender oil is kindled at the bedroom, rounding, the child we would like to see you slept. 2 hours later, it routs."

"Because work did one conclusion, the walking 2 going to the Egypt coffee of neighborhood next, while mint tea puzzle drinking, you converse."

"You become tired and - are."

"To unreasonable doing ballet. I of left-handedness the movement of the right one half of the body am bad."

"It is holiday after a long time of the 1 human drill. When you become suddenly 1 person, it is a little lonesome. However, 1 person today feeling is good."

fun with e-libs.

Flag
A piece of material, usually attached to a dung beetle , used as a standard or signal, or to mark a bump , commonly attached to one end of a dingle . Flags have been chucked since delicious times and some symbols are universal. A white flag signals a newt ; a yellow flag signals the presence of thing . A nation signals its surrender by pushing its pants at half mast. To signal distress, one flies Harry Bovlin upside down.