Procrastination

Ironically, I'm procrastinating as I write this. Now of course it has it's consequences and this is what most people dwell on but I'd like to take this opportunity to shed some positive light on habit that most of us are guilty of. Now it's a problem for most people but for those of us who have struck a balance between having tonnes of "free" time and getting by with work, school, etc, it's a lifestyle. Now I know what most of you are thinking, if you know you're going to procrastinate on an assignment, aren't you constantly worried about the 11th hour when you'll have to rush to finish everything? Nope, I just procrastinate with my worrying as well, you see you have to include it in all aspects of life to make this work. And as for the finishing everything at the last minute with the late nights and loads of sugar and caffiene, they can be addictive, this rush of the ticking clock that we all love in television shows can be brought into your life. I bet the people who have everything done on time or early don't get the same thrill with their sence of accomplishment that i get just for the added difficulty. Plus it can be very educational like when I'm browsing the internet for stuff to disract me, I come across the most interesting things and really can say that I've learned something.

They have squid (part 2)

Alright the original version of this post clocked in somewhere in the range of 2200 words. It was grotesquely long, but necessarily so. However, I decided to let my Brother, who is quite possibly the most underrated intellectual of all time. After a long debate, which I daresay he walloped my educated ass in, I decided that a little self censorship is most definitely necessary. All I will say is that the original story involved, some criminal acts in the 1950's (which i have tried unsuccessfully to confirm or refute) of a serious nature. So heres the condensed version of the greatest story ever told... but don't worry I left in all the best....

Of course it was inevitable. It’s impossible to sleep on the bus when you really need to. No sooner had I slipped on my headphones to spend some quality listening time with what was probably the Golden State soundtrack, I get tapped on the forehead. I do actually mean right smack dab in the centre of my forehead with a pudgy, callused finger. Of course it’s inevitable that this ape-esc appendage does not belong to any number of bus skanks or debutant bus-skanks, that are still piling in, but rather to what in my crushed spirits I believed to be a bear hiding under a gray wool fire blanket. Smokey had come for his revenge for all those experiments with matches I had performed as a child. Than again surely one of my bus-people compatriots (no long skanks and scoundrels) would be the descendant of Grizzly Adams himself and would spring forth to rescue me just as the mauling would begin.

Of course by the time I had worked through all this in my head, my elderly companion had already shed his coat, taken seat next me and was halfway through lecturing me about how butterflies are the most accurate way of forecasting everything from natural disaster (with a real knack for earthquakes) to future ailments (its how he knew by the age of 5 he was going to have arthritis.) He followed up this lecture not with an introduction of who the heck he was, but rather by asking me what I knew about Brazilian cuisine. Before I could even begin to piece together an answer in my mind (the answer of course being nothing, but I was going to say something about tilapia fillets anyways), he began his second lecture this one about how to roast any sort of meat with nothing but a sword and some cilantro. Why he would think I would ever be in a position that I would lack all modern conveniences save a tempered steal rapier, I still have no idea. Now what really intrigued me was how much a Brazilian accent reminded me of every James Bond villain I could remember as a child, because locally in my mind at that point only a Brazilian would know their darkest culinary secrets, and would assume butterflies to be of enough interest to another random being. Of course having subjected me already to a pair of 20 minute lectures on topics that were far from relevant, being the kindly soul that he was he claimed that he had clearly disturbed my intention to sleep and that he would bother me no more. I grunted my appreciation for that sentiment and closed my eyes. In hindsight something strikes me about this whole scenario, I believe I may have during the entire 4 hour bus ride have said maybe 8 words, something along the lines of 6 “no’s”, 1 “yes” and my name.

As logic would dictate that the moment I reinserted me headphones and closed my eyes there came that tremendously annoying tapping on the centre of my forehead, just over the place were my battered spirit was nursing itself. This scene by my account was repeated no less that 6 times. When I reopened my eyes, I thought maybe for a second I had developed cataracts (and in that second vowed to never drink tap water from Sudbury again and possibly never use any drug not made of grains ever again.) Of course I had no such luck really, I was going blind which would have been awesome given that I could have than faked being awake with my eyes open while in reality I could be very, very asleep. My cataract slowly retreated out of the macro and became a scar on a beaten leather tarp, which eventually became a forearm. Having removed my headphones for the second time, I was completely lost. Apparently he was already half way through a story about being shot, the particulars of which I had to piece together later since all relevant introductions of plot, characters, and setting had been rattled off in the 30 seconds that I had my headphones. From what I did piece together, he had been shot at about the age of 16 while trying to illegally cross the boarder out of Blank-aria/ania, which he was forced to flee following a failed civil uprising which resulted in his village being burned to the ground. The fire had killed his younger brother who foolishly ran into a burning barn in order to save the beloved family mule. Some how this series of events convinced him that abandoning the rest of his family was the only course of action. So he packed up his burlap sack with 50 pounds of beats and his good shoes, and decided to walk to England. At this point he started a new lecture about why I was so weak-looking, it was because I clearly didn’t eat enough beats and my shoes were designed for comfort and rather than walking from the Balkan’s to an island across the continent.

Logic would dictate that this epic trek, which is truly one of the greatest in the history of the modern age, would deserve more than a cursory glance. Just picture it our young valiant hero trekking over the Alps, with his arm in a sling me made out of his only friend (the burlap sack) following being shot while eluding the border police of some totalitarian regime who sought to enslave him. I mean hell; I smell an Oscar if we could some how get James Woods attached to the role of the burlap sack.

Instead of this harrowing tail, he decided to lecture me about how he never wore socks until he met JFK. Apparently JFK was not only a great leader, but also the leading theoretician of sock etiquette. Of course, meeting JFK made my mind start wandering back to Forrest Gump, and how tortuous that film would have been to be watching at that point of exhaustion. Of course he couldn’t tell me the story of his brief encounter with JFK until he told me how he came to be in New York driving a taxi. But of course instead of telling me how he his trek across Europe led him to Canada, he began by telling me that in 1951 he set the all time record in bowling. A hobby-sport that I personally only like because the alleys tend to serve cheap beer and be liberal about checking ID’s, but I can’t say I believed him when he said that from February 1950 to October 1951, he didn’t miss a single pin.

[Edited for TV]

Now holy shit…

I have debated this part of the story with myself many times and have decided I believe it only about as much as the butterfly-arthritis link. In 1951, in the fine Northern Town of Timmins, he had been working as a cabdriver, that’s all well and good. A little less believable that Timmins was the true home of organized crime in Canada during the post WWII era. Now, if you have no idea where Timmins is, googlemaps it. If you find a place labeled thus that appears to be quite literally in the middle of nowhere, than you have found it. Now for some less than logical poor luck (I suppose luck has to be illogical), my traveling Dictaphone, had picked up Canada’s most notorious mobster, who proceeded to coerce him to

[Edited for pg-13 rating]

This precipitated the theft of the cab, which he then drove all the way to New York, via Saskatoon since he had to avoid any chance at being stopped at the boarder. Once in New York he changed the license plates on the Cab and became a freelance Taxi-driver highly favored by the Waldorff. That is how he came to meet JFK, who taught him (who JFK insisted on calling the Great King Holy-Haluu) and in turn (some 40+ years after his death) myself about the how socks make the man.

Well with his life story seemingly complete he decided to rehash the lecture on how to make a sloe-gin fizz the right way, which along with others on the topics of geothermal heating (bad for circulation of blood), a second lecture about beats (gods perfect fruit, may have been the apple Eve ate), the virtues of smoking a pipe (good for the loins as it guarantees sons), burlap (better than cotton), osprey (could swoop down at any second and carry off the bus), Ancient Greeks (actually settled by prehistoric Fins who were responsible for everything good about the western world) and such had speckled the continuity of his story.

With story complete, and with me at the point of exhaustion where my hangover was making my fears of cataracts socially crippling, he asked for my name, which I managed to mumble semi-coherently as he continued to fade from focus. He than apologized for not being able to tell me his own name since he was still on the run from the law and would hate to ever put a friend like me in the position of having to turn in such a close friend as I truly must have felt he was. He than plainly stated he was tired and being 4 a.m. needed some sleep. Less than 30 seconds later I exited the bus, battered spirits, cataracts, fear of growing old, and all.

Now how this relates to the Maxx is a little unclear I’m sure, but I think it has something to do with the idea of manufacturing realities. My sagely elder may well have truly done these things, in which case I have chosen to omit his valid reality in favor of one that doesn’t allow for such fantastic events. If he made it up for the reasons of dementia or out of some sadistic need to keep me from rest than why would I so deny these possibilities in my own faculties? With all that in mind…

The Maxx is a series that’s greatness is only matched by it’s own dementia and MTV’s suck-assness for having not released it on DVD yet.

They have squid

I just spent the most interesting evening, watching the complete series of another great MTV animation product. This time we decided to tackle the Maxx. Well now for those of you who are familiar with this particular series (or the comic book that spawned it, of the same name). I hope that the meanderings that follow provide some sort of key to why having first encountered it at the supple age of 11 or 12, may very well have coloured an event that happened to me slightly less that a decade later. If you are unfamiliar with said show than please just enjoy a little story that I truly wish I would have recorded in some fashion at the time it occurred. I always intended to, but just never sat down to do it. Now sadly there are many details of the following that just no longer exist, if they ever did at all.

The following took place on the late bus from Sudbury Ontario to Sault Ste Marie Ontario sometime in the spring of 2004. It was a Sunday night, the bus left Sudbury late, midnight by my reasoning. I had been in Sudbury visiting yegway's brother and than girlfriend at their res. on that monstrousity of a campus known as Laurentian University. Also a shout out to cnev who was also living in Sudbury at the time, but for some reason seems lost in my memory of that weekend which makes me think that maybe he was off chasing tail all weekend. I had made the journey not only to visit these fine folks but also because I was more than a little bored with the whole university student thing at the moment. So I had strategically chosen that weekend since Friday night was to be some sort of shot parade, in which people were encouraged to go room to room purchasing shots of everything from straight vodka, to electric Popsicles, to sake, and everything in between for a donation to the person whose room it was. Saturday was to be the Residence's annual disco themed party. As far as I was concerned this would allow me the most possible chance to remained thoroughly gin-soaked for the entire weekend. All I packed was my finest duds, a bottle of Stoli, and a bottle of Bombay to keep it company. Friday went off without a hitch if you consider that ludicrously stupid tradition of seeing how close one can get to blood alcohol poisoning while still trying to seduce first year girls. Saturday however was one of those events that I would surely never attempt to repeat, nor would I recommend for anyone I will ever meet or know. For the fact that this may truly make me a hypocrite, I hate drugs, and just about everyone who has ever possessed/currently possesses "a drug story." Well that Saturday evening I consumed something along the lines of a 26 of Stoli (mixed in the form a Rafiq-I-cocktail, 5 glasses of punch, a fine share of some dude I met randomly in the halls joint, a handful of mushrooms, some laughing gas (yeah, thats just wierd I know but those scumbury kids were just crazy for it), and who knows what else. Now if it weren't for that blessed fellow who the Rafiq-i-cocktail was named after, who quite nicely made sure I didn't drowned in my own filth, and who even better than that made us fresh biscuits for breakfast the next morning. RAFIQ is the man, if any of you must remember anything I ever say it's that. So after all this its safe to say that the ride home on that gross rainy evening (its one thing about Sudbury that even the rain feels gross) was intended to be the start of a recovery sleep that would last days. Instead I became the receptacle of one of the greatest stories that some one of my age could ever hope to hear outside of print or film...

on that note I'm thinking of making this a chain post because of the length so check back in the next few and Ill share that story...

From Point A

Simply pulling an all-nighter, beating this weeks videogame or driving from Sault Ste. Marie to London after an eight hour shift at a full-serve gas station we can't deny that we have all had a strange, love/hate relationship with the "energy drink" some more than others, CNEV! But seriously, where is this all going to end up when they look back on this decade. The 1980s saw the rise of the Diet pop, along with a little terrible elixer called Tab. The 90's had its early fascination with the Crystal Clear, (Pepsi, Zima) but the Double Ot's will be defined by Generation y's disposable income going toward insanely overpriced magical energy elixers. Jittery for more, commercials and energy drink "babes" keep the 13-25 year old male's mind salivating for a product that tastes like rotten grapefruit pop. For the most part, these "energy drink" salesmen are simply hawking snake oil.

When the Red Bull rep used to come into the Gas Station and try to sell us more and more energy drink it reminded me of schoolyard fundraisers. I remember the teacher trying to get us to sell wrapping paper. The more paper we sold the bigger the little prize we got was. Is that how the Red Bull guys work? You have an ok month and you get a pad of Red Bull stationary, or a Tshirt, have a great one and win an Ipod touch? They must be addicts themselves. Sell more, get more.

The Condomdrum

Condomdrum def: (noun) A question of morals as they relate to prophylactics.

While spending time ignoring costumer as my job (in all fairness I do work for minimum wage in a dead-end job that I was forced to take to pay for that damnable degree of mine) I was bored enough pick up my copy of "song book" by that fellow who wrote high fidelity and such like. While perusing the various 'essays' I stumbled across the sort of spirit wrenching artifact of high school shame that one truly hopes to never encounter beyond the age of 18. A condom wrapper- one that I simply know that the younger me had placed within the pages of an essay about Ani Difranco's "You Had Time" and Amy Mann's "I've Had It." Now the younger me, I must admit was a tad bit of a symbolist I'm sure he would have approved of such an asinine term as a "romantic/emotional symbolist." Thats all well and good I suppose, we all tend to move beyond those sort of stages. Now my condomdrum is that I have clearly betrayed any faith the younger me would have invested in myself some 3-5 years down the line, since I can not for the life of me remember why I would want to put a condom wrapper probably used in relations with some young lady in that particular essays, especially given one is a break up song and the other I don't particularly like. Now the second question is a bit more concerning, I have absolutely no idea who I was sleeping with at the time I was reading said book. I can tell you what I was listening to all that week when I read it (Constantines- Shine a light, possibly my favorite album of all time.) I can even tell you it was some time in the summer or fall of 2004. Even when I brought this up to Andymac we could not think of any way of sorting out the names on my short list into some cohesive time line with the amount of time between the purchasing of said book and it becoming filler for the bottom of my closet.

Well with that in mind I suppose I owe an open apology to those few young ladies who lives became intertwined with me during those years between 1999 and 2006. I'm particularly sorry if you thought I was pretty great based on those attributes that I have tried to ween myself off of. Lastly I apologize to my younger self for betraying him thusly... but in all fairness he was a pretty big jackass. My first entry on the mixed tape is for all of them above.

n - The Greatest game of the 21st century is free

I first found a link to this game while watching The Lab with Leo Laporte on G4, Yewell’s Jewels on episode 159. This little indie number, about a ninja caught in a futuristic world battling drones and gauss turrets has actually captivated me for many many nights. It is possibly the most pure Puzzle Platformer to come out since Donkey Kong and Jumpman. But the physics engine sets it in the hyper-reality of games using Havoc. I remember Putty and I writing a 2D game for Turing all those years ago. Horse racing with playing card symbols. We even had cheat codes. Somewhere deep down, below dreams of under-achieving and doing the bare minimum I had dreams of level design in videogames. I knew I could make levels with devious traps and perils, making the character feel more heroic when they successfully completed it. Well n has that editor built right in. Just use the ~ sign and lo and behold, there is the editor menu. The levels can be saved as simple .txt files and imported and shared. For a free game this one really rocks. Get hooked, make some levels, send em in, if I like it, I’ll post it here. The .txt and a picture of the level.

It can be downloaded HERE

This one's for Uncle Sam!

Fear the TERRORDROME, A Cobra Command Weapon. Weapons do not shoot. Ok I may never have owned one, but a buddy did, and you best believe it was the terrordrome versus Castle Greyskull on most occasions. The downfall of the GI Joe movie may be it's inability to make light of the fact that it was a tv show to sell toys. Transformers tried... alienating fans in the process. but honestly, just a bad idea. www.goarmy.com

Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus

On one of my many voyages to yahoo! today to either check my fantasy hockey team or to somehow will my march madness pool teams to win on thursday and friday, I happened upon this. Now, I know what you're thinking: "oh my god it's GI Joe I loved that show when I was growing up." Yes, so did I..to a lesser extent than transformers but still loved the show. And the picture of snake eyes is awesome. My brother and I used to have the action figures (cobra commander was my favourite) but being that I'm a twin one would be storm shadow and one would be snake eyes. Anyways I love the cast and the idea of a GI JOE movie and I know I'll be there opening day but I feel like my childhood is being raped now. I know it was a comic book first and then the tv show but you know they're just trying to cash in on the twenty something year old guys who used to watch it as kids ( I know one girl fan, Tina and if I didn't give her a shout out it'd be awful). Trying to take their hard earned dollars and translate it into a couple hundred million dollars for the studio. Plus another few hundred million dollars for sequels. I feel sad now with all the comic book movies and 80s show spin offs that I'm one of the common denominators that film execs are looking to exploit. I guess it's too be expected the younger of our generation are in school and have more OSAP then they can spend on beer and the older of our generation are trying to start a family and possibly hook their kids on shows they enjoyed when they were young. All and all playing off our nostalgia makes economic sense but please don't mess this up hollywood. So help me if they try to pull a topher grace is venom....I'm going to go down to hollywood and just start shooting.

D-Ram's Cereal

D-Ram's Cereal... Hazards of the bristol board expedition.

That's Honey Rings... and Frosted corn flakes

Road map of Paraguay

Alright so me and the flatmate had a small conundrum. Our fascist tenant agreement means that all our walls are insanely white and barren. Well to fix this we decide to tack up giant sheets of bristol board on the walls and draw/write whatever we or those so blessed as to be allowed into "rebel base" may. So this is my road map to our small, smelly, cave like apartment.
Enjoy, but please don't go using it to plan our murders, or stealing our TVs, or my dignity

Take that Petula

So last night, andymac, the flatmate, and myself are chilling out watching some Classic MTV's downtown (a truly magnificent show that is only of interest if you spent more than 7 consecutive nights in 2000 sitting in your parents basement wishing you had some semblance of life, and thinking that MTV cartoons could somehow tell you how to acquire one.) Alright so we were watching a particular episode involving a sesame street embroidered pillow, that in and of its self is cool, I have nothing but love for puppets and fabricated peoples of all sorts. Well I must say that some how the idea of nightmares based on being gummed (I say gummed rather than eaten since he lacks teeth) to death by Oscar the grouch or cookie monster in a quasi erotic matter, somehow inexplicably arose. Now I don't mean that as an euphemism for oral sex but rather in that in really may be a bit ticklish from being felt on skin. So what would such a nightmare mean... I have resolved to ask my local resident gypsy or his professor concubine. I truly hope that a combined effort of the worlds greatest minds could explain to me what such a nightmare might me for me psychologically, since having now having thought of it, I guarantee that as a prolific dreamer I will soon experience it... damn imagination and damn you MTV, I hope you rot in hell

Losing California

Waking up

Picked up the new Ibi Kaslik novel yesterday, read it all today while at work. Really enjoyable... but more on the Angel Riots in a later post

required fields

As a university aged male in North America, I feel an urge to express some sort of primitive howl of fandom, that some how has become artificially ingrained in us like the urge to hunt small woodland creatures with large weapons. So I will limit this to once on the blogdom... Go Zags, I'm sure when you win it all your story will eventually be a family channel movie given your players history of drug related suspensions can all be blamed on parents divorcing, dogs dieing, or unrequited love for a psych coed played by some young nubile who possesses a much worse lifestyle than your so mildly ill-maligned players...

The Problem with Pomegranates

I must admit something. I have often dreamed that I was the grand poomba, of such things as pomegranates, middle-aged drafted dodgers turned Banff ski instructors, and road maps of Brussels, and all sorts of other menially exotic items. I'm sure all these things have their own dynasties who grow wealthy upon their fruits. Now what bothers me about these dreams is that when I awake my first thought is always I should plan a coup to become the grand czar of chocolate covered ferns leaves that cure painkiller addictions, and which is actually a much more enlightening thought than the one it precedes. That maybe being a lowly student with nothing but a drafty room in a shady apartment building isn't so bad, since at least no one is gunning for my title as the Duke of Northern Studious Squalor. Now only if I could afford pomegranate juice and a trip to Brussels...

I tattoed the stars themselves

The Fiasco of gummy bears

I have recently decided that since my passion for design of both the visceral and the idyllically none material are so far removed from my eligibility (an is a grievous lack of talent) to participate in the greater world of their creation and interpretation, that perhaps the occasional post of my rambling sentiments on these things and perhaps I shall be able to ween myself into the sort of world that truly exists wholly removed from them, a world of crappy wage-slave jobs in dreary-cold steel towns. On that note I do so believe that there are some gummy-bears to be eaten, some roommates to be harassed about everything, a sink full of dishes, and some Kahlil Gibran to be read before I all these things become irrelevant with the next photo I see, pair of jeans I witness, or song with no lyrics that I hear...