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.