Summer Movie Preview... part one

Even seeing still images of this computer generated nightmare is causing mild seizures. Man I love hollywood, and I love movies. Someday someone will realize that people want a movie which they can become lost in through storytelling AND convincing special effects until then I guess we are settling on one or the other. Speed Racer... chances are neither.

Siege Engine Summer Project

Hopefully this bad boy will be up and running by the May long weekend or the likes. Its gonna be a challenge, but if the other fictional characters are behind us... We can move ahead. So, submitted for approval, Design # 1!

We Hardly Knew Ye!

The words on the picture pretty much sum up my thoughts on the man. Cool guy, scruffy and hard, like a classic hollywood actor should be. Those eyebrows, like caterpillars, and that jaw, like Iron. Of course I am writing this because today he passed on, at the ripe old age of 84. Hell of a long run for an NRA spokesman. He won an Oscar in 1959 for Ben Hur, a Christmas day staple, when someone forgets the copy of Jason and the Argonauts. Of course the role of his most dominant in my mind is Planet of the Apes, I know the movie is pure cheese by modern standards but I still love it, shoes that Markey Mark didn't even come close to filling. In our age of antiheros we will likely never see a powerful figure like the one Heston was every day of his life. May god rest his soul.

p.s. With all our 3 hour movies about hobbits and Oil barrons becoming the norm, Go out and rent one of Heston's kick ass epics They'll put hair on your ass!

The Gypsy said Dance

last night, it was my profound pleasure to play monkey to a very talented friend. He asked me to read a part in a short play he had wrote for some poetry night at the university. It was a really weird sort of night, I mean there was cheap jack daniels, but at the same time alot of moody poetry. I dare say, of course speaking with the understanding that I know nothing of poetry, that the beatnics killed poetry. It may not have been the beatnics, it may have been some other group that my lack of historical understanding prevents me from identifying. what ever happened to poems about trees, or paintings of people, or even these things that are of these things but not about them. I half suspect in our generation shall be the "est" generation, or so we will claim. Richest, Smartest, Sexiest, we will also wish to be the saddest, oppress-est, deepest,, we will in the end up of course the weakest, the lamest. I sincerely hope that we as a generation succeed in merely being passable, I think that the sort of goal we should be shooting for.

Ok, so back from rambling. The Gypsy is one hell of a writer, nay of a thinker, in the most honest meaning of the idea. I truly hope that at some point he decides to get some of those ideas out there for all you internesters and better still that other side of you that may occasionally read a book. Until than you are stuck with me and my hate of Jackson Pollock and Robert Pinsky and all...

Ok thats a lie, I really love Robert Pinsky and Jackson Pollock, they are fabulous even if their works represent what my generation is peddling as its own sincerity...

and anymac even spread a little language like marmalade, hopefully he decides to share with you all..

peace,
MK

Photo transfers

Am I Retarded?

yes yes i am...

tonight while at work, not working, in fact doing the thing i do best at work, listening to the CBC. I had the most retarded idea. It started because the cbc program was talking to a guy who is spending the rest of his life on the shore of Loch Ness watching. Now at some point in the conversation the interviewer said "This mythical creature most people don't believe exists..." I may very well have blurted out "What the hell is wrong with these people" I was actually offended, it seemed for an instant in my pitiful little mind like they were denying the existence of gravity or dinosaurs. "Of course she exists" by now the costumer who was a rather good looking young lady seemed to think that I must be about to jump over the counter and attempt to eat her face. of course by now I had started to realize the futility of my argument "given she doesn't really exist."

Also my darling, let me know the little known fact that either nessy is a female, or a 42 year old balding male hairstylist with a lisp who's defining characteristic is they are asexual...

wiggity wham wham wazzle

Mckelvie Photo from the archive

Aluminum Salad and Women's Army Issue Panties

Tom Selleck wants you to go RVing! There is this thing about the three of us, Mckelvie, The Flatmate and me, some sort of strange virtual black hole of intelligence. Smarts seem to go in reverse, but somehow, not really. Things do come out of the barrage of insults hurled at the TV. Most is just crap, some goes on the wall, most just gets lost. "Holy $#!T, did you see that Dodge Viper harpoon that dude on the motorcycle!" or "Kick her in the face with your, ENERGY LEGS!"
Good times... Good times...

D-Rams II : Revenge of the $1 Cereal

we have a new addition to the d-rams family of budget cereal

what the hell is a loquacious

Dear Sault Ste. Marie,

loquacious- not shutting up

Today for some reason that was not my problem. Which is odd because I can be one hell of a yappy jerk, pretty much obnoxiously so. Sometimes I talk about things that I don't know anything about. I'm pretty sure I've lectured my brother about the finer points of cricket instead of answering his simple question of what to get our mother for mothers day. Whats worse is that I quite often talk with out even realizing it and its never interesting or intellegent, which basically decides who I have consistent human relations with. Since it takes a very peculiar person to listen to me ramble on with conviction and sincerity about for instance which is better blue or yellow fin tuna, only to stop mid-sentence and look bewildered at them when they ask "but which tastes best?" At this point in the exchange I tend to just ignore them until they suspect that I'm an jerk, or possibly retarded. Possibly I am, both, or maybe a sociopath but not a fun Batman-esc superhero kind of sociopath but rather someone who has sniffed too much silver polish, and has a bad tendency to yell at the top of his lungs inches from your face while you are trying to correct their use of the word "tenacious"... back to my original point about today. Today I didn't want to speak, I was all hushed up like so many puppies. I was quite content to not make a sound at all. Not because I was sad, or didn't have anything to say, more like I was just kinda quiet and was really enjoying it. Too bad I had to work and apparently costumers don't like the silent treatment, which makes me question my intelligence since they quite often criticize my inappropriate work place banter about Charlie Sheen's wang. So it is with sad recognition that I acknowledge the fact that this may have been the only day in my life when I would have not offended/critically annoyed someone, possibly cured me for all time of my psychological imbalances.
Well you all had your chance to enjoy my presence without the inane rambling, and you ruined it. So who really is the jerk in this dichotomy?

sincerely,
McKelvie

P.S.- you smell but I still like you

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