RoBlog

Branded to Kill (Day 2: Favourite Movie)

2009-12-17T13:51:00.000-08:00

The success of a director like Seijun Suzuki shouldn't happen. Imagine what would happen if one of the directors from the straight to DVD cheese factory Asylum decided instead of making a souless rip off of GI Joe and instead decided to make an all out gonzo art film instead. It's Antichrist for the z-fare audience. That's who Suzuki was, back in the 60s. Working for Nikatsu Studios he was tasked with making low rent crime and sexploitation movies. Sleaze and cheese. Bored with making cinematic meat for his employers, he decided to create avant-garde crime cinema. Branded To Kill is the last in what unofficially consider to be the last part of his Yakuza Pop Trilogy (the first two are Youth of the Beast and Tokyo Drifter), a movie so stylized and so weird that it caused him to be fired from Nikatsu and be blacklisted from the biz for over a decade.

Branded to Kill plays to Suzuki's strengths, having scene after scene of well framed action sequences as well as a protagonist with a twisted sense of sexuality. This is the only movie outside of a director like Miike or Cronenburg who could have a protagonist who needs the scent of a warm bowl of rice as a sexual aid.

The set pieces are brilliant as well. Two of Ghost Dog's assassinations are lifted whole sale from this movie, including the famous butterfly sniper scene that Matt Fraction acknowledges in the back matter of Casanova as being an influence on his work.

Branded To Kill, like most of my favourite movies, sticks with me for sheer audacity and willingness to buck conventional structure. Check it out.

Day 1: Favourite Song

2009-12-16T10:04:00.000-08:00

Pixies-U-Mass

If I'm to believe my last.fm account (http://www.last.fm/user/kungfucowboy) my favourite song of the last 5 odd years is LCD Soundsystem's 45:33. But last.fm is trapdoor spider, filling you with false hope before it eats you alive. The only reason that it tops my list with an elegant 100 plays is that it's part of an album of the same name, a nike+ mix. It's 8 songs long, all dedicated to getting the blood traveling as fast as your feet. The downside to this is that all of the songs share the same title. It sucks for stat tracking. I'd divide this number by 8, do some weird rounding somewhere along the way.

So that leaves me with stuff like Dan Deacon's Build Voice, easily my favourite track this year next to the Animal Collective's My Girls, which is a sexy shower made of sound. But is it my favourite song of all time? Probably not! Last.fm doesn't take into account my whole entire life as a music listening entity. So instead of tunneling deep within myself and narrowing it down to my favourite song of all time, I'm just going to narrow it down to a couple of songs that I really dig.

First up is the Pixies' U-Mass. Nirvana once said that when they made Nevermind that it was theme doing their best attempt at a Pixies' album. If you listen to U-Mass you'll see that it's pretty close. The beginning riff is suspiciously close to Smells Like Teen Spirit, while the structure of the quiet then loud was aped by grunge wannabes. This is my favourite Pixies song.

30 Days

2009-12-16T09:56:00.000-08:00

This is getting cross posted from my other blog. Same shit, just different site!

A chick I once dated runs a tiny blog on livejournal that she and a small fistful of friends can access. This is just as well seeing as she’s just become a teacher. When she’s not writing about her husband or the trials and tribulations of being a teach, she does some fun memes. Normally I’m not one to follow them, (blaze my own trail, mother fuckers!) but this one has some good ideas and I’ll force me to try to exercise my writing muscles for the next 30 days.

Here’s the list.

Day 1: My favorite song

Day 2: My favorite movie

Day 3: My favorite television program

Day 4: My favorite book

Day 5: My favorite quote

Day 6: My biggest pet peeve

Day 7: A photo that makes me happy

Day 8: A photo that makes me angry or sad

Day 9: A photo I took

Day 10: A photo of me taken over ten years ago

Day 11: A photo of me taken recently Day 12: Whatever tickles my fancy Day 13: A fictional book

Day 14: A non-fictional book

Day 15: A fanatic

Day 16: A song that makes me cry

Day 17: An art piece

Day 18: Whatever tickles my fancy

Day 19: A talent of mine Day

20: A hobby of mine Day

21: A recipe Day

22: A website

Day 23: A You Tube video

Day 24: Whatever tickles my fancy

Day 25: My day, in great detail

Day 26: My week, in great detail

Day 27: My month, in great detail

Day 28: My year, in great detail

Day 29: Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days

Day 30: Whatever tickles my fancy

The Coachella Breakdown

2008-04-22T18:32:00.000-07:00

With the Coachella set times hitting the internet, I've managed to create my tenative short list for the festival. AS of right now, things are looking like this.

Friday

noon-2:00 DJ Mehdi

I'm choosing this guy to go to first since there isn't that many options once the doors are open. I figure that an Ed Banger DJ should be a good way to open the festival

2:00-2:50 the Midnight Juggernauts

This is one of the big reasons that I'm heading to Coachella and I'm pretty happy that I get to see them pretty early on in the show. Dollars to donuts that they're gonna set the energy bar high for the rest of the day.

3:10-4:00 Les Savy Favs

I barely know anything about these guys, but KEXP says that they do kickass live shows, so I'm totally down with that

4:00-4:50 Dan Deacon

I've listened to his album a couple times at the gym now. He's an electronica artist, but he's not that accessible as far as I'm concerned. Exclaim reviewed one of his concerts and said that there's a lot of great visual stuff that goes along with his music, so who knows? Maybe it'll turn out to be badass.

5:00-5:50 the Breeders

If I had a magical wand, I'd use it and turn this into Pixies. The truth is that I DO NOT!

5:50-6:30 Vampire Weekend

It was inbetween these guys and Tegan and Sara, the first major conflict of the today. How was this resolved? If I saw Tegan and Sara it would mean that I'd have to miss the Nation. As much as I love indie-styled ghost-ploitation songs, I love the National much more. Settled.

6:55-7:45 the National

These guys are the cat's meow. One of the big reasons that I'm heading to the concert. That said, checking them out means that I'm gonna be missing Diplo, whose contributions on Aralur were pretty damn awesome.

7:45-8:35 Santogold

This is another pretty big deal for me, but with the National ending at the same time, I'm not sure that I'll be able to do the full set. If she ends up sucking in person, it'll make the pain easier. Or better yet, maybe she'll improve and turn into an awesome musical goddess when I appear.

9:00-9:45 Datarock

Some more dance rock to end the evening.

10:45-whenever Fatboy Slim

This is pretty much a no brainer since I have two testicals and a penis. I think that checking out Jack Johnson would ultimately undo that.

Saturday

12:30-1:10 the Bird and the Bee

I'd love to trade this with the Bees, or possibly the Birds, but the beginning of the day is slim picking. That, and I'm gonna be checking out Institubes on Sunday

1:30-2:20 Uffie

My brother Chritopher is a proponent of Uffie and only because she does the whole "ready to fuck" part of that Justice song. Is the song turns literal it shall make for a thrilling and frightening concert going experience. Stay hot, Uffie!

2:30--3:15 Man Man

There might be a conflict going on here since the posse I'll be with seems to be hot on Kavinsky, but I do dig the Man Man, so, to me, it seems like Man Man's gonna take precedence. Sorry 80s electro, weirdass horns and screms beat you everytime.

3:25-4:30

Exclaim claims that these guys suck live, but I do that Time to Pretend song.

5:00-6:00 Erol Alkan

I have no idea about this guy. I think that Christopher gave him some props?

6:35-7:20 Cinematic Orchestra

If they go fullbore with this and have their full entire orchestra there, I know that this show is gonna be amazing.

7:20-8:10 Rilo Kiley

Gonna be a little late for this one, and baby, that's bad news.

8:20-9:10 M.I.A.

This here's the real deal. I'm totally looking forward to this one.

9:30-10:20 Yelle

Starlet of the French Tecktonik scene is either gonna be the cat's meow, or the cat's ass. I'm crossing my fingers for a bunch of Americans trying to ape the dance stylings of the French.

10:45-end Prince

Because I really don't have that much choice

Sunday

12:00-2:00 Institubes

Two hours of dance. I have no idea if they're any good.

2:00-2:40 Cool Kids

I think that this'll be the first and only time that I'll be checking out a hip hop act at the concert. Rolling Stone says that these are one of the "bands to watch". I plan on taking their advice literally, in this cae.

2:50-3:35 Holy Fuck

Holy Fuck, they're Canadian, and apperently a decent live band. I just like saying holy fuck. That's the real reason people are going to check them out, I'm sure

3:45-4:35 Manchester Orchestra

Not so sure about these guys, but I gotta kill time somewhere along the way

5:30-6:20 Gogol Bordello

I've been told my many people that these guys are utterly amazing live. Stephen, Mike, these guys better be as awesome as you claim

6:20-7:20 Kid Sister

So I lied, it looks like I'm gonna be checking out another hip hop act at the festival

8:30-11:00 Roger Waters

I'm totally conflicted by this one. On one hand, this is gonna be the last time that they're going to be doing Dark Side of the Moon ever here in North America, but, on the other hand, if I were to head to the other tent, I can check out ModeSelektor, Chromeo and Simian Mobile Disco. Not only that, if I do that, I won't be missing any of Justice. I have a feeling that's what'll happen in the end, but still, it'll be a shame to miss Roger Waters

11:00-end Justice

This, I have no doubt, will be the most amazing part of the show

~fin~

7 days until Coachella 2008

2008-04-17T21:11:00.001-07:00

A week from now, I am going to be in the United States for the first time in ten year, Coachella 2008. I've been looking forward to this trip since I made arrangements way back in the dead of winter. The thoughts of going to the best music fest in North America made suffering through minus 40 degree weather and frostbite worthwhile. I wouldn't say that the lineup is as good as last year (having fantastic bands like Rage Against the Machine, DJ Shadow, the Arcade Fire, Ghostface Killah amongst others), but this one seems to make up for it with lots of great French dance bands.

As of now, these are the bands that I want to see the most at the concert. It'll be intersting to see how this list compares in over a week after it's all finished.

In no particular order

1) Kraftwerk

The only Kraftwerk that I've managed to hear at this point is the stuff sampled in Afrika Bambaataa's Planet Rock and bits of Tour de France, so I can't say that I'm an uber-fan. With that considered, they are the progenitors of electronica music and they've been known to put on a great show. And with the members of Kraftwerk getting older, it's unlikely that I'll ever get to see 'em live again, so I can't knock that.

2) Roger Waters

There's been a quote floating around the internet saying that Roger Waters doing Dark Side of the Moon live is akin to having Ringo Star doing Sargent Peppers live. I'm no hater and from what I've read, Roger Waters puts on a damn fine show. Checking out the Dark Side of the Moon at Coachella is a matter of historical curiousity for me, as it's the last time it'll be performed in North America. I'm not knocking that.

3) M.I.A.

I have deep seated fears that M.I.A.'s more of a produced artist than a live one. My brother Christopher, who I'm going to the concert with, says that Marc Ronson, who's also appearing, says that she lacks finesse live. This has instilled doubt into my heart of hearts. But when it comes to technical proficiency, one only has to look to Wayne Coyne, who isn't a fantastic singer, to see that an artist who has heart and love for their craft can make for an awersome live act. All the shit that I've read about M.I.A. points to her being awesome live, so that gives me hope.

4) the National

I have no idea if the National are a good live act or not, but I'm a huge fan of their lyrics. Hence, they're an un-negotiable act to miss.

5) Midnight Juggeranuts

If the concert has nearly as much energy this clip here, I'm gonna be a happy man.

6) Justice

I'm keen on seeing Justice for the same reason for wanting to see the Midnight Juggernauts. I'm keen on bouncing up and down for two hours straight high on kickass French Dance.

7) Gogol Bordello

This guys really haven't been high on my radar, and with the exception of Wanderlust King, I'm totally unfamiliar with their music. But that's totally irrelevent. Acording to Mike and Stephen, my friends whose opinion I greatly trust, they put on a kickass live show. If they can make a room full of Vancouverites shake their asses, you gotta give whoever can do that some major props.

Movies I want to see: Space is the Place

2007-04-26T17:33:00.000-07:00

After Grindhouse and a discussion with my younger brother, I've decided to check out some more blaxploitation movies. Since everyone's aware of the classics, like Trick Trucker, Superfly, Dolemite, and the Mack, I thought that I'd try my hand at more obscure stuff. Either that, or something weirder.

So weirder I have found.

If you hear the words "Space Is the Place", if you are like me, undoubtedly, you'll remember the song by Spacehog from the late nineties. If you heard the words "Space Is the Place" and were a fan of progressive jazz musician in the 60s, I'm sure that this movie would stir some memories. I know little of this movie, except that it stars Sun-Ra, a somewhat famous jazz musician of the era. I checked out some of his tunes and the good stuff reminds me of Yoko Kano's jazz from Cowboy Bebop, which is a high compliment. The rest, is etherial acid jazz. So if it was a comic book, it would be "What If...the soundtrack to Escape From LA was done by an acid soaked jazzman"? Jazz is cool. It gives me a reason to check out this movie.

Reason two: the costumes. Aren't they awesome? Much like rappers of today, Sun Ra has an overinflated self image. Instead of believing himself to be a god of sex, he sees himself as a literal God. A God who will save us all through jazz and Egypt worship. Who doesn't want that?

Aural Sex: Music from April 15 to April 22nd

2007-04-24T15:28:00.000-07:00

Should have updated this earlier, but I am a lazy SOB and/or busy one. Onwards!

Unsurprisingly, Pixies are number one again this week. I attribute this to my listening to their live concert out of Winipeg two years ago. I'm of the opinion that the Pixies' live stuff is a hundred times better than their recorded stuff. Unlike most bands, their banter is kept to a near minimum. The most I heard from the concert recording was Kim Deal asking the audience if they played to Winipeg or not. This met with a deafening "NO!" The concert screams with so much energy that you can practically see Frank Black's sweat come out of the speakers. Great concert, worth hunting down if you're into the Pixies.

The Who is number two thanks to their Live At Leeds album that I pulled off of Soulseek at the end of last week. While the concert on the CD lacks the frantic energy of a Pixies concert, it's worth it just to hear all of the Who's repertoire from the ages in concerto.

New up is Man Man, a small band that everyone should check out. Man Man what Tom Waits would sound if he cloned himself and inserted him into an art band. Some of the songs, are too short and are a little bit too cacophonous, but there's a couple gems in there. Out of their album Six Demon Bag, their best songs are Feathers, Black Mission Goggles (which has the energy of an super powered atomic bomb that can destroy the mother fucking sun!) and Van Helsing Boom Box. The rest is hit or miss, so check yourself before you wreck yourself. They're also fronting for Modest Mouse this summer, which is double plus good since Modest Mouse is awesome (when they're sober).

Clint Mansell's up there since I needed some atmospheric music while I was reading the Ruins. It was the Fountain Soundtrack. (Rob's mini review of the Fountain: Want to see Hugh Jackman cry and people turn into trees? This movie is for you!)

The Embassy's new music that I found through last.fm. From what I recall, it's Swedish, so your millage may vary. The Embassy's techno-lite pop that comes from the Earth's gummy centre. It rots teeth and tickles your ear holes.

The rest isn't really worth commenting on since it's old hat.

As always, you check see what I'm listening to right now by looking up to the left or internet stalking me on my last.fm profile. I got invisible eyes, so I'll see you acoming if you check me out.

The State Of My Shitty Musical Taste

2007-04-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

I got myself a big ass ipod now that the breakup has hit the FSJ area. Music's my vacation.

I got myself an 80 gig one thinking that I'd be able to fill it up quickly with my music and tool it up with other dandy things. As of the moment, I've only managed to put 10 gigs of music in there. That's my complete CD collection, with a couple of lost exception as well as three years or so of downloading music. With all that empty space on the ipod, suddenly I've come to the realization that I don't listen to enough music, and that the music that I'm listening to isn't that varied. So I've decided to do my semi-annual music expanding experiment. I've decided that since I've mined out all the good stuff from 80s hip hop, I'm going to start checking out more disco and 70s soul. This is my plan for the future.

That said, I'd digging Of Montreal's new album right now. I've been rather mixed on Of Montreal in the past, liking their beat heavy stuff more so than their meandering slow shit. Out of all the songs in Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer, the best of the lot is the Past Is a Grotesque Animal, an epic 11 plus minute song. The song builds to an explosion like an aural dam bursting after being bombarded with vicious synth. I wholeheartedly recommend this amazing beast of a song.

Today, I have the conch

2007-04-16T21:33:00.000-07:00

Before Piggy's (who represents reason) head was brutally smashed in by a rock (which represents man's most base violent impulses) in the classic novel, Lord of the Flies, he held the conch. The conch for those who don't remember Lord of the Flies, was a symbol for democracy, or leadership. Basically, whoever holds the conch, gets to control the island. Got it? My boss has metaphorically passed me the modern day conch on the day to the airport today. While he's conquering the water and fire elements, I hold the mystical cell phone and the date book of order. While it's highly doubtful that I shall get to exercise my executive powers in the next two weeks (blank cheques!), it's nice to know that I'm considered competent enough to run a company for a bit.

The Sound of Music for the week of April 8th to 15th.

2007-04-15T19:37:00.000-07:00

Lots of Pixies this week, thanks to me finally transferring my music collection from my old PC to the new one. I doubt that they'll be as much next week, but you can never be too certain. Radio Birdman's up there too, but that's because I transfered their new CD to the computer. Last.fm doesn't track vehicle plays, unfortunately.

The Roots and the Who feature prominently this week thanks to a feature on IGN on the Top 25 Live CDs of All Time. Since I haven't had a chance to listen to all of the Who CD yet, I'm sure that it'll track a lot higher next week.

John Carpenter is on the list, of course, due to Rodriguez's fantastic Planet Terror soundtrack. I digs me Carpenter's crazy synth-o-sounds.

The rest are odds and ends.

As always, you can mock my musical choices, or, better yet, join last.fm so that I can mock yours. It's what makes the world run smooth as a baby's bottom. Or you can gaze to the right and see what I'm listening to right now. SO MANY CHOICES FOR YOUR BRAINS!

Lastly, if you have any new tunes for me to plug into my ear holes, just pop in your comments

Heather Salmon Needs Killer Joints For Paper Movies

2007-04-14T11:17:00.000-07:00

My friend Heather is working on another project, Bookworm Music, and this is a good thing. If you have an inkling of what the female nerd scene is like, no doubt you're aware of the idea of a fiction orientated mix cd sountrack is. These communities are scattered across internet tubes like a fistful of pennies. For the most part, these places aren't worth the time and effort. Fueled by the untapped estrogen mines of horny 17 year old women, they spend their after class time creating mix cds for their favourite slash moments. Ever wanted to know which song worms through their brains while they read a story of Frodo's ass being tongued for the first time by Sam while Merry and Pippin lick each other's eyeballs? Beautiful, by Christina Aguilera. This is more true than you want to believe.

Heather is a smart cookie. She's taken the core idea, creating mix cds for paper films and sharpening her knives so that all the shitty parts are taken out. No j-pop, no music dedicated to tender slashy moments, nothing based issue three billion of X-Men. Just soundtracks to movies in your brain made by pop cultural fizz. It's a good idea and a good start. I dig the idea so much that I've created a last.fm site dedicated to it. Give it a check-see. Undoubtably your ears will thank you in the magnificent future

Manhunt 2 lacks Cox, but otherwise, looks good

2007-04-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

See that? That's the Manhunt 2 trailer. Spooky, yes?

I'm a huge fan of Manhunt, despite the fact that it's named after a dating site for gay men ( it's true!) I'm not a huge fan of the stealth genre, the only game that I've played besides Manhunt was Metal Gear Solid, but a couple of factors have pushed me to check it out.

Factor 1)

It's Rockstar. And being a drone for Rockstar games that their ability to push new innovative content, I said yes.

Factor 2)

Brian Cox! If the game didn't have Brian Cox, there would be less of a chance that I'd pick it up. Brian Cox is awesome. Did you know that he once played a pedophile *and* played the guy who created Wolverine in the X-Men movies? That, my friends, is called range. Cox one ups himself in Manhunt by playing a snuff obsessed movie director. A snuff director who gets off while you kill gang members and makes quips to encourage your killination. Yes, this is what makes a game worth playing.

This brings me to the stealth genre. Most games of the genre are usually about you sneaking into a base, evading enemies as much as possible along the way. I'm surprised that no one has decided to play with the genre a bit more in terms of content. Wouldn't it make more sense if a game structured on evading your opponents be focused on someone trying to escape from a prison and moving to freedom? There's gold in that there idea, I tells you.

Here We Go Again (Again)

2007-04-12T08:38:00.000-07:00

So yeah, I have free time.

For those who are out of the loop (none), for the last three months I've been ovaries deep working for The Man. Or A Man. Or A Dude, since he's not much older than I. Through good fortune, I've been working with a lab tech that used to do my dad's old soil sampling work at ALS. Seeing a lack of line locating in FSJ, last year he started up his own company. Since his brother in law is pussy whipped, he was down one person and since I worked for him a bit during the summer, voila, I have a job.

And busy I have been. All the way from mid January to the end of March, I think that I had something like 6-8 days off. Considering how this was a relatively quiet winter, I think that the company will do well when things pick up next winter.

This leaves me with free time for the next time. A lot of it, I say! Thus, I've decided to get back on the blogging bandwagon. Therefore, expect to see daily posting here and on MKZ until work gets busy again.

Thus endth the lesson

Rob needs new music badly

2007-01-15T08:22:00.000-08:00

I've been going through a huge electro kick for the last week and a half, but I'm starting to get sick of it and am looking for something new. Does anyone have any bands or, more importantly, any music blogs to recommend to me so that I can have a massive influx of killer new tunes?

Many thanks!

Why should you check out Crispin Glover? Well, really, you should.

2007-01-10T07:19:00.000-08:00

David sent me an email last night saying that Crispin Glover's weirdo magnet, What Is It is playing in Salt Lake City. He wanted me to use my love of Glover's madness to justify checking out the movie. This is what I shall attempt to do.

First off, why Glover? I don't know. Why not? He's probably Hollywood's most genuine madman. We're not talking about Johnny Depp faux mysteriouso, nah. Glover does cool shit like collect old dentist chairs is is dating a Playboy model. The guy is obsessed with old books, spending a fair bit of time either collecting them or pulling a Burroughs and doing some cut-up work with them and re releasing them as new work. He also is a Volcano fanatic, spending his spare time recreating famous ones in his abode. See also, the name of his company.

Witness my shitty selling skills! In all honesty, I'd only recommend checking out What Is It if Glover's there in person. The reviews for the flick have been pretty much negative. Too weird, too avant guard, I guess. Anyhow, if Glover's there, you get the full meal deal. He usually screens his movie accompanied by a slide show of his picture books mixed with some of his music with a side order of Q&A.

So voila! Reasons to check out Crispin Glover

Holy wii internet channel, Batman!

2007-01-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

Future shock: I'm posting this from the wii. Nintendo's little console that could has proven to be a pretty amazing little box. Or an obese ipod on lots of drugs. Strange drugs. I came to the wii because of the virtual console. The ability to download Nintendo's library of games for less than a rental? Yeah, I'm sold. Truth be told, I've spent more money on the Virtual Console service than I've actually spent on games. Nintendo is no doubt laughing while bathing in trillion dollar notes.

I give Nintendo major props for doing one things right: making my mom play Wii bowling. They get extra bonus points for the fact that she enjoyed it. This is a major coup considering how many times she threatened to "destroy that godaweful machine". Nintendo has appeared on the side of angels for the first time in forever.

Lots of talk about wii sports and the new Zelda game being the game of the year. I call bullshit on that. The game of the year is easily the wii channel. Everyone that's seen it, or played with it, seems to be hypnotized by its uncanny abilities. Bring it to a party, I bet you that you'll spend a good hour making miis, and none of that time will feel wasted. It makes creativity a collaborative activity. This isn't a bad thing.

Butter dogs

2007-01-05T18:01:00.000-08:00

Lets talk about Japan, shall we? Everyone knows that in Japan, things are a tad more strange here, right? This is the country where you can buy panties from vending machines, where manga artists spend more time and effort into drawing ropes in a bondage comic than they do on a woman. They have cafes were chicks dressed up as maids will wait on unsocialable nerds for a fair price. Get the picture?

Want to know about the butter dogs? Listen. First, they get a chick who is willing to do anything, and I mean anything on camera for a couple of yen. Second, they lather her cunt in butter. That's right, creamy straight from the cow butter. It's lathered inside and around their cunt. Third: they let out the dog. The dog's hungry, smells the butter and begins to lick. Butter dogs.

In Japan, you can't see genitalia in hardcore porn. It's like that scene in the movie, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, where Chevey Chase takes off his pants when he's dreaming. Instead of privates, you saw blurry plaid. It's like that with Japanese porn, only less plaid. Get this: in Japan, butter dogs get awards for their performances, but you can't see what a woman's pussy looks like. How fucked is that?

Snakes on the Brain

2006-08-18T06:54:00.000-07:00

When my kids ask me when Snakes on a Plane hit its cultural zenith,
I'll tell them that it was when they did a tv specuak on pedophiles.
In order to catch society's sickest sexual deviants, they had adults
pose as children. One of the handles for a 13 year old sex pot was
"Snakes on a Girl". Cultural significance at its finest.

Not much else to say about the flick until I see it with Stephen and
company this evening. I had a dream about the movie last night.
Instead of being about Snakes on a Plane, it was about Snakes on a Bus
in Outerspace! It was sorta like Speed meets Snakes on a Plane...in
outer space. The calm cool collected bus driver helped passengers
fight planet sized snakes with staying on schedule. If there's any
justice in the world, this will be the plot of the sequel.

Post your thoughts about the movie here. Everyone knows you'll see it tonight.

Joementum

2006-08-16T22:56:00.000-07:00

Remember "Joementum"? It was a mythical energy force that was
supposed to propel the frog voiced Lieberman to presidential victory a
couple years ago. He had an amazing plan to harnice this strange
force live on Fox tv. The would be to appear naked on Hannity on
Colmes. How he'd do this without distrupting the show is a mystery to
me, honestly. After that, he'd stretch the sagging fat under his
arms, affectionately nicked named "water wings" into fleshy bat wings.
He'd then invoke the rites of the Ancient Demonocrats to bless him
with the Spirit of the Vote. Unholy engery would then fill the
studio, lifting him into the air and he'd escape the studio. Flying
through the air, an ancient 600 year old dinosaur, voters would feel
compell to leave their homes so that they could view the spectacle.
His liver spots would bloom, and out of them a vote enducing
psychoactive would excrete from the beautifl holes. From the heavens
a mist would descend to God's favoured nation and Lieberman would
guarentee his place in presidental history. His muppet like face
would feed on the blood of fat babies. He'd shit tax breaks for the
rich. Terrorism would be a thing of the past. If it wasn't for the
true instrument of evil, Ned Lamont we'd be living in a perfect
world. Alas, poor Joe. Alas, poor us.

2006-08-16T18:57:00.000-07:00

Miwako Takabe is still easily one of the most beautiful women that I know.

Sequelitis

2006-08-06T18:19:00.000-07:00

I had a dream last night about the Marvel universe, Ghost Rider, in
particular. Acording to my dream, the bike that Ghost Rider drive is
a top seller there. In my wake filled state, this seems to make a lot
of sense. I'm suprised that no one has addressed it,

The direct to DVD industry is licking the asshole of Disney and finds
that they like what they taste. Shelves are filled with almost decade
old sequels to movies that did boffo in the rental market. Do you
think that the cinema going public were clamouring for a sequel to 8mm
or Starship Troopers? Wait, don't answer that, I fear I shall be
ashamed by your answers. Newest to this ever growing pantheon of
direct to DVD sequels that, no doubt, are superior to the the
originals, is Like Mike 2. I saw Like Mike a billion years ago.
Seeing the flick caused God's head to explode. Our universe is holy
brain guts, spread from Cosmic Centre to Cosmic End, all because of
this flick. I didn't bother to do anything besides look at the
package, but I have no doubt that the sequel is the story of the first
told again for a new generation of children whose lives missed the
magic of the original. Alas, I was hoping that the shoes in the
sequel would be worn by a present day Bow Wow and would turn out to be
the shoes of Michael Jackson. The climax of the film would be him be
him raping all the members of the orphanage followed by his marriage
to a pill popping starlet. Do this, and you can pave the stree in
million dollar bills. The people clamour for it.

Saskatoon soundwave

2006-07-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

It's hot and greasy here in Saskatoon. By the end of the day, your
body gets so slick with perpsiration that you slide down the street
lubricated in people sweat. I haven't been in a city this hot since I
lived in Fredericton. It's fucking unreal how hot it is.

My brother has been walking around sporting an erection for the last
three days.
"My cock quivers for Mstrkrft", he tells us. I have learned about
this band through nerd osmosis. They are the sticky musical offspring
of Death From Above 1979 and Girlsareshort, and I mean this in the
most literal sense. I've listened to them and I have concluded that
this bad is OK, but nothing spectacular. Christopher is adament that
they will kickass.
"Our ears must bask in their soundsphere!" Plans made,we're seeing
them this evening. I cross my fingers and hope that they delight my
earholes.

Documentaries from the dreamscapes

2006-07-24T08:36:00.000-07:00

The pillships that run the electrical storms in my brain have shrunk.
Instead of exploding in my stomach, polinating my head with horrible
dreams, they slowly disolve and dull my senses. My head's now in
London and I see the world through slow motion fog.

When you dream, what do you dream about? I dream about Hong Kong in
the 1980s. Tong B Boys harrass a young Amercian reporter slaving away
on a book about Chinese crime. She sends me the letters. She writes
of how the men treat their women, with degrading cruelty. Because
it's a dream, she can write her letters at any time, no matter how
inconvinient it is for her. For example, how many people can write a
desriptive letter while they're being raped? i'm guess that the
numbers are few. But I'm no expert.

Listen. They begin by kidnapping her on the way back to her house,
stuffing her mouth with a drug filled rag. Senses are dulled and
passes out. Whe wakes up in a warehouse, location: undisclosed
She's surrounded by hundreds of men, each wanting to have their turn
with her. Her bed is an old matress, covered in a newspaper that
soaks up semen and blood. Somehow, in between men, she documents the
events in typical journalistic objectivity. When the men are
finished, they peel off her skin. It comes off, layer by layer, in
paper thin sheets, nerve endings dangling like shoe laces. The more
adventerous men tear holes in her musclture and fuck it. Other men,
cook her flesh and eat it. The room starts to smeel like burned ham.
They cut out her clitoris and auction it to the highest bidder. It
too, is eaten. An eye is removed and her socket is fucked. A man
pills out his cock after completion, his penis covered in semen, blood
and eye juice. They kill her after that. She signs her letter in
blood, expressing regret about not knowing what they'll do with her
corspe. It doesn't take that much imagination to guess what they'd
do.

I've dreamt about this for months. Details change, but the crux is
the same. It's this reaspm that I've opted tochange my head pills

Doubting Thomas

2006-06-01T17:56:00.000-07:00

Our lizard eyed Prime Minister expelled some poison from his venom sacks to the Canadian press corps this week. Suckling on the teat of the Republican party, our new government has decided that Canadian reporters have to sign a paper requesting the ability to question the PM instead of the traditional way of reporters asking in the order they arrive. Harper, whole being interviewed for a radiocast verbally shat on the press saying that they had a definate liberal bias.
"WE must change this so system so that the message gets out without filtration," he said, before unhinging his lower awy and inhaling a live pig. Undetered, the Canadian media shaved their testicals, shorn and waxed them and dangled them in heavy defiance by boycotting the PM's briefings. The CBC, wanting to address the issue, reaninmated decagenariain Helen Thomas long enough for her to comment on the situation.
"Thre press' job isn't to be well liked," her ghostly voiced coughed, "It's job is to antagonize power. If the prime minister odesn't like the question, he can't always say "no comment". A leader of a decomcrazy is answererable to the people and that's what we do." After the program, she once again returned to her grave beneath the Washington monument.

the Unhealthy X-Men

2006-05-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

After the near record breaking opening weekend of X-Men 3:the Last Stand, I have no doubt in my homo sapien brain that Brett Ratner is furiously masturbating on a pile of hundred dollar bills while Jackie Chan fists him with Wolverine claws. Cash, semen and KY Jelly, this is the smell of Hollywood sucess.

X-Men 3: the Last Stand? More like I can't stand this shit. Instead of the movie being a metaphor for how oppressed gays, blacks, jews are, they've turned the flick into a typical Hollywood actioner. After noted homosexualist Bryan Singer left to do Superman, the powers that be decided to choose Wolverine cosplayer Brett Ratner to direct tge movie. Have you ever wanted to see a movie where Colin Powell leaves president, dresses up like a leather daddy and rips people apart? That's what you'll get when you see Kelsey Grammar as Hank McCoy. The more I think about it, the more Beast sounds like John Macain. Lets vote Republican in 2008.

Do you like Hugh Jackman's nipples? In X-Men 3, they're as hard as adamantium. There was a scene in the movie where my sexuality was questioned where he used his totally masculine areolas to carve Jean Grey a statue out of clay. Art sooths the dark Pheonix. Glorious Canadian art.

There's this guy called Bobby Drake in this movie. He's quite skilled at looking slightly confused. Wouldn't you be confused when your love interest who is 19 looks like she barely entered puberty? X-fans, you my masturbate without guilt when you see Kitty Pride in her leather suit. I digress. Bobboy Drake's alias is Iceman and yet he's not allowed to fly the plane. Does this make sense in the post Top Gun world. The answer is a sad shake of the head.

How gay is Ian Mackellen in the new X-flick? Not as gay as he was in X2. Although both he and Professor X argue like old lovers when they meet Jean Grey at the beginning of the movie, there's no super queer moments like him giggling like a school girl and lisping to Rogue, "I love what you've done with your hair." Bring back Fagneto.

The Juggernaut. He's unstoppable until stopped by Shadowcat. And did we need to change him from a black pimp into a lovable cockney footballer?
"Oi oi! I'm the Juggernaut, you twat! Me bollocks are so large!"

The circle of knives

2006-05-26T03:15:00.000-07:00

It's 3:11 and I can't sleep thanks to the miracle of life. My dad, feeling his biological clock ticking for the fourth time has decided to birth chickens again. This is how the process works. You get a bunch of fertilized eggs from the coop, this time, forty, put them in an incubator, monitor the temperature and wait for nature to work its magic. The downside is that incubators are cold mercless machines, cold merciless machines incapable of love. This lack of love is responsible for killing off many an egg. Out of the batch of 40 eggs, only 16 of them developed into fetuses, or whatever you call half formed chicks. The rest: breakfast.

Have you ever made eggs and toast and had a little bit of blood in your egg? Imagine doing that, but cracking the egg and having a dead psuedo chicken come out. IT's the best of both worlds, really. You get the runny flavour of an egg plus the delicious texture of a chicken. Advantage of these chickens: small bones! You just bite into their small bodies with a satisfying crunch. Also: the eyes aren't fully formed, so you don't have to pull them out. Bonus: chickenbrains! Oh yeah!

But I digress. Just like most men, the little pecker is up bright and early. Right now I can hear it's amazing struggle trying to break it's way out of the egg. Its kempf has been going on since 10 last night and I wouldn't be suprised it it continues until 10 this morning. But my sleep, like Andy Serkis' cock ring, is precious and I need it as a porn star needs it. Why can't chickens be scientologists? For the love that is all thetan, why?

The Da Vinci Load of Shit

2006-05-19T21:42:00.000-07:00

My brother Simon and his Itallian girlfriend, Illainia, both ardent Catholics are going to join with the local chapter of the Catholic League to protest the premier of the DaVinci Code this evening. The Catholic Church is worried that the message of the film with create more instability within the church and its followers. Being a Catholic, I'm privy to some of the reasons why we should avoid the film on theocratic grounds.

-The film postulates that Da Vinci would ejaculate into his inks and used the tainted art material to create his finest works. Many men who see DaVinci's works, such as the Mona Lisa have felt compelled to engage in various homosexual acts because of this. No doubt a method for Da Vinci to create more homosexualists.

-Acording to the film and the book, if you move up up, then down down then left right, left right, then hit the B Button and then the A button before pressing start, you'll be granted 30 lives. This is in direct contrast witht the Catholic Church that says that we have only one life and can "continue" into the next through acceptance of Jesus Christ, our savior, who died on the cross for our sins.

-The film suggests that the earth rotates around the sun. This is preposterous. The truth is that the sun and the stars revolve around the earth. Another scientific note is that lava comes from hell and that eruptions happen when there's an overcrowding in Hell. AFter the release of the book, there has been more eruptions than ever recorded in human history. It's quite possible that the release of the film might cause the Rockies to return to their volcanic state in the next 30 years as viewers of the film begin to die off.

Mighty Joe Young

2006-05-18T21:23:00.000-07:00

I've been sent to the bush with the brothers Gladyz for the last three weeks. Tim every day; Joesph, Mondays

Wednesdays and Fridays. Sweating's not bad, my face drips with filth like an ugly icecream cone by the end of the

day. When Joe Gladyz sweats, he smells like old fruit and oil. It's rancid. He doesn't expire liquid, he expells

muck. Tim takes it in stride and so, in the efforts on making our well lubricated work machine run smooth, I've

ignored Joe's problem. That's until he stopped going to work. his brother Tim told me that Joe's been progressively getting worse. For the last couple of weeks, his stomach has started to bloat, distending

to strange proportions. The way that he describes it, when he's naked, Joe looks like a starving African child, except, you know, white. Joe went to the hospital earlier and it turns out that there was a hole in his stomach. That bloating and the smell were caused, from what I understand, from rotting food stuck in the area between the food sack and his skin. The situation is so dire that he's going to have to get a stomache transplant, an incredibly rare procedure. Tim and I have been crossing our fingers for a fatality in the next couple of days so that Joe can get back into the work force. Failing that, Joe'll have to be sent off to Calgary where U of C students have been working on transplanting cow stomaches to human ones. No one is sure if the operation will be sucessfull, but you have to try somewhere. Willful ignorance only gets you so far

Google notebook

2006-05-17T20:34:00.000-07:00

When I first heard about Google Notebook, everyone speculated that it would be google's answer to del.icio.us albeit with a quicker search function. With the program's release yesterday, I found out that assesment is partially true. Like del.icio.us, you can bookmark pages and allow them to be searched online using user made taxonomies (bet you haven't heard that word thrown around that often. Horrah for Web 2.0 and New Slang), however it lacks the non-hierarcal structure of classifiying info, or in del.cio.us' case, tags which makes del.icio.us so appealing. I find google's decision not to do that to be a tad boggling since gmail's label system is so useful. On the other hand, google notebook is much more friendly when it comes to reseach. Notebook allows you to add tremendous amounts of notes to a topic that you're working on without having to link the information to a website. Also, notebook allows you to add a much larger description of the site, or note, than del.cio.us. I find del.icio.us to be pretty limited because often I find that I want just a snippet of the website quoted in the description field and it's often too large and gets cut off. Notebook allows you to bookmark images and shows them when you go to your notebook's page, something that I wish that del.icious would do. If google allows the ability to add multiple tags to each website as well storing the page's website, like Furl does, it'll be a del.icio.us killer. Until then, I'll be using del.icio.us for bookmarking and most likely be using notebook for heavy research.

BrassEye on youtube

2006-02-14T23:42:00.000-08:00

Thanks to youtube's lax enforcement of copyright laws, you can check out the ultra controversial pedophile episode of BrassEye. What's BrassEye? It's a politcal satire in the same vein as the Daily Show mixed with celebrity interviews that predated Ali G. The humour is as black as coal, but you can't help but to laugh at the audacity of the stuff that they pulled off. Anyhow, check it out and see what you think.

Part 1
Part 2
Classified under:BrassEye,

Weirdness with T.Rex

2006-02-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

T.rex has infected everything. A couple of weeks ago, Mike sends me the Breakfast on Pluto trailer, which makes the little girl inside me shriek because Cillian Murphy (aka Killian Murphy if you've seen Red Eye) runs around in a tress, but it makes the man inside me growl because of the trailer music. Crunchy guitars, sexy violins, men sound like bats' screaching falseto. Children of the Revolution by T.Rex. The music tongues my ear hole and it turns me on. So I go searching for glam rock. The results, like some weird shit by ELO turns my interest flaccid. But T.Rex is still gold. Whoosh! It's the present and I'm reading the Engine and Matt Fraction says that the new Flaming Lips albums sounds like T.Rex. I figure that the album is released and I check out their website. No dice, it's coming out in April. They do tack about the album and said that they were inspired by Devendra Banhart. I check that out, only to find that one of his albums was inspired by T.Rez. Odd how things went full circle.
Classified under:music,

An amusing story about Danny/Denny, pussy fucker

2005-10-17T08:12:00.000-07:00

I told this story to Miwako and Mike a while back, but since I've lacked content here for the last week plus, I figured that I'd retell this thrilling story of weirdness and shame.

When I went back for Thanksgiving, Danny/Denny and his girlfriend, Jill picked up a kitten to bring back to Danny/Denny's place here in PG. As of yet, they haven't named it yet (I suggested Lightbulb). Last night, they
both came over to visit Anson. Danny/Denny asked Anson if he could give him some condoms, for obvious reasons. Anson gives him three. To this, Danny/Denny says "This will do for the night." Jill, hearing
this, tells Anson that the condoms are for the kitten. The fucking kitten. I'm not sure if she's either ashamed of their sex life or they have unspeakable plans for the kitten.

Tags:

personal

Italian zeitgeist and Fell

2005-10-07T23:06:00.000-07:00

Ho ho ho! MKZ has once again captured the attention of Italian smut lovers. This pleases me greatly.

I haven't picked up any of Warren Ellis' work since he was signed his exclusivity deal with DC a couple of years ago. Sure, the first couple issues of the Global Frequency were ace, but it quickly petered off until they got to the Japanese and Hyper Violence issues. His other stuff was a mixed bag. I wasn't exactly fond of MEK or Reload and I missed out on Red, which supposedly retreads everything that Reload did, but with a man instead. His Marvel output hasn't been exactly fantastic either, if you forgive the oblique pun. Now, it seems that Ellis has exited the valley of shit material and is on his way up to producing good material. This brings me to Fell. Normally, I pick up Ellis' stuff in trades, as they look nicer on my shelf and they tend to flow a lot better. Fell, on the other hand, is the anti-thesis of Ellis' other work. Instead of being an ongoing story like Transmet or Desolation Jones (which looks super ace), each issue is a stand alone packed to the gills with dense goodness. Best yet, Fell is extremely afordable, costing you a fistful of change. With the extra material in the back, it seems to me that you're getting a better bang for your buck than most comics out there. Pricing comics like this would definately make me pick up more monthlies than I do (which is none, currently).

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I am not dying, thank God!

2005-10-06T21:59:00.000-07:00

First thing's first. I talked to the doctor yesterday and he said that I have restless leg syndrom. After a conversation with my mom today I found out that she has it too. Sounds like spasmatic legs run in the family.

As I am leaving for FSJ this weekend for Thanksgiving, I'm gearing up with a lot of music for the ride there. Thanks to the heavy layer of trees in the pinepass, the radio is dead for 90% of the ride. Thankfully, I have one of those things that plugs into your tape deck allowing you to hook it up to any portable music device. Armed with soulseek, I'm downloading lots of tunes for the drive. On tap first will be the Pixies concert live from the Commdore Ballroom in Vancouver last year. Listening to the first couple of track I've decided that this is probably the best recording of a concert *ever*. The energy that flows between the Pixies and the crowd is electrifying. The crowd's bellowed sing along mates well with Frank Black's squeals. This surpasses my recording of the Flaming Lips in concert ten fold.

I'm also working on getting music by Radio Birdman, a punk band from Australlia from the mid 70s. If you haven't had a chance to listen to them, give them a shot. They have a crunchy guitar punk sound that's blended with a Hawaiian surfabilly twang. They're fairly obscure, but definately worth checking out

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Rob's twitch

2005-10-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

I don't often write about my health because it really hasn't been much of an issue to me in the past. Sure, I still have troubles moving my middle finger on my right hand and I have Christmas toe on my left foot due to tree planting, but besides that, I'm in okay shape. Lately, that's changed. For the last couple of months I've noticed that my body has developed some pretty bad vicious twitches/spasm when it's at rest. For example, when I'm in bed, trying to sleep, I'll feet a sharp poke on my body and another part of my body will twitch or spasm. It's not so that I can't sleep, but it's starting to affect my peace of mind. I've had minor twitches for the last three years. When I worked at the Lido theater in FSJ I'd have occational face twitches, but they didn't happen in the places that it does now nor with the frequency. One of the people that I worked with said that I might have Torrettes. Hah hah hah. My ex-girlfriend Pearl, who is training to be a nurse says that she doesn't know much about what couple be happening to me. She said that it could be neurological, but I'd have to talk to a doctor to make sure. Anyhow, sinceI'm relatively new to Prince George, I'm going to have to find a family doctor as the walk in clinic nearby isn't very good. I went there a couple of times to help out Anson and his friends and the doctor's diagnosis has always been quick and I I've felt that they didn't give patients enough time to talk about their symptoms, et cetra. I suppose this is due to the crumbling medical system here in Canada.

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personal

Booyeah! Lifehacker gives props to me!

2005-09-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

My younger brother Christopher has been having some troubles with XP lately and has assigned me the task to find him some replacement software. Finding it pretty much impossible to find information from my regular sources, I decided to contact my favourite productivity and webjunk website, lifehacker for advice. And, lo!, they gave me a hand up and gave me a shout out. Looks like my addiction to productivity porn has finally paid off.

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Letters from Japan

2005-09-28T06:21:00.000-07:00

For the last two days I've received a lot of email from my two good Japanese friends, Miwako and Kazuko. Kazuko's email was the first one that I received since I went to PG, no doubt because I didn't get her email address until a couple of weeks ago from Miwako. For those of you who are keeping score at home, Kazuko was one of the girls that Anson had a mad crush on while we were living in FSJ. Thanks to Anson's machinations, he managed to convince she, Miwako and myself to take a trip to Van so that he could work his mojo on her and make her love him forever. It didn't work and they've barely spoken since. That said, the friendship between she and wasn't affected and we've been pretty decent friends ever since. Anyhow, she wrote me this pretty sizable email that pretty much ends with her asking me if I still like Miwako, saying that's the reason that she wrote the email in the first place. Gotta love how indirect Japanese women are.

Miwako sent me some pictures last night which I'd like to post up here, but I have to get her permission. It's of her and her friend riding camels in the Japanese desert. When I got over the surprise that the Japanese desert looks like a desert desert, my interest was piqued by the camels themselves. They were wearing little SARS masks. I'm guessing that they wear them to prevent sand from getting into their lungs, but they look pretty unreal.

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Danny/Denny boy

2005-09-26T06:34:00.000-07:00

Quelle surprise! I just woke up to take a piss and who did I find playing San Andreas in the living room? It's Anson's boyfriend! Staying over for a record breaking three nights. Last night Anson told me, as Danny/Denny's English is pretty piss poor, that Danny/Denny wants to take me out for supper sometime next month. Any place, my choice. Should I milk the cow, and go for a hardcore expensive meal? Or should I expand my tastes and go all Ong Bak on the new Thai restaurant and check that out. Choices!

I have decided to give VIFF this year this consideration. The Korean film line up feels awefully tempting and I really didn't have much of a vacation this summer with all the treeplanting and other work that I did this summer. The only thing that's standing in the way of my trip is the price of gas. I've decided that if I'm to go, I'll have to convince Anson to come with me so that I can split gas prices and so far he's not willing to budge. That said, the CNC has a great film program going. The Cinema CNC is starting up early next month with Murderball to premier the season followed somewhere along the line with Wong Kar Wai's 2046. I'm not the biggest fan of Wai, but I do dig his asthetic and he makes Chinese women look *very* beautiful.

Now that the Hype Machine is down, does anyone have any recommendations for any blog databases where I can get new tunes from?

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personal

New look (sorta) for MKZ and RoBlog

2005-09-25T04:18:00.000-07:00

Remember how a couple of days ago I mentioned that I was going to overhaul MKZ? Those with eagle eyes will notice that I didn't do anything of the sort. I spent a good portion of this morning working on a template for it but after a quick chat with Stephen it was decided that it looked too similar to this blog. Thus, the search for a new template continues. That said, I decided to bite the bullet and add a favicon to both RoBlog and MKZ. Since MKZ doesn't have have a real logo (Mike, you gotta design one, man!) I opted for Brian Peppers. I used a toast icon for this one sinc eI couldn't find anything cool, although I might opt for a dada-ist action figure or something along those lines. Any suggestions?

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Who needs sleep?

2005-09-25T03:09:00.000-07:00

It's loud in Prince George this evening and I can't sleep. In the other room, Anson is making loud noises. Either he's arguing with someone over Skype or he's playing Counterstrike. Black noise snaking into my bedroom. Meanwhile, outside in the city, a cacophony street races blare through my window. Tagged throughout the city with sketchy graffiti is "4:20 racing". This is what I've dubbed these early morning road battles, the 4:20 races. You never see the cars, but you hear the tires squeal like bats. The end of the races are punctuated by police sirens or the chimes of broken glass and corkscrew metal. I can think of better late night lullabyes.

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personal

What's on tap for today?

2005-09-23T07:53:00.000-07:00

Here's today's plan.
-Go out for breakfast buffet with Anson
The college is throwing a big breakfast buffet for 6.75. If tree planting has taught me anything, it's that a big breakfast is the best thing in the whole entire world. A good meal of eggs, sausage and fruit trumps store bought bread and jam every morning and lives you filled for a whole lot longer. Hopefully Anson can drag his ass out of bed so that we don't miss the sausages. Move, man, man!

-Watch the Corpse Bride
This isn't a *must* see, but I'm a sucker for Tim Burton produced stop motion stuff. The animation was so smooth when I saw it for the first time I was convinced that it was CGI. That's a high compliment,

-Get a gym membership
It's highly doubtful that I'll get one today, but I should really get one. For the last couple of days I've been feeling nostalgic for tree planting. It's not because I miss the work. Hell, my toes and still numb and my finger still fucks up in the morning. I'm missing the adrenalin rush that comes from working my body to its fullest. Right now my life is pretty sedentary and I'm gaining weight. It would be nice to be able to keep the pants that I have and not have to go up a size higher, if I can help it. I'm thinking that if I do go to the gym, I'm going to have to do it alone. Going with Anson last year was okay, but wasn't the greatest. I felt that I was going there more for his benefit than mine (which is true). If tree planting taught me anything this summer it's that I *can* get into shape and I'm stronger than I thought. I'm thankful for the experience because of that.

-Redesign Moon Karma Zero
Looking over MKZ yesterday, I had an epiphany: the site's incredibly ugly. I'm not sure if this is the case, but I'm almost positive that there hasn't been a site redesign since it's inception. Right now, as I look at it, it's pretty gaudy and bloated. What I'd like to do is stream line it a bit and get rid of all the wasted space. My biggest gripe about the blogger templates is that most of them have inelegant design. If you look at the design of MKZ, you'll notice that there's a *lot* of wasted space there. Left and right of the content and links is an ugly gap of empty space. Space like that should be utilized so that pictures aren't squeezed and so that we can put more content there. And thanks to my love of technology, the blog doesn't have a uniform look for posts. This morning, I decided to go back to the old method of tagging posts so that there isn't as much of a visual dissonance that there is right now. Assuming that my code fu is strong enough, I'd really like to make the design bottom heavy which I think is an incredibly efficient use of frames. And you know me, I love streamlined efficiency when it comes to web design.

-Get a new mouse
This will be my third computer related purchase at Future Shop this month. It's getting out of hand, frankly.

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the V Reviews Final Fantasy: Advent Children

2005-09-22T09:53:00.000-07:00

The V Forum is an old WEF satelite known for its snark. It's incredibly witty and takes the piss pretty much out of everything. Their review of Final Fantasy: Advent Children is more gold from them. The review, in its entirety:

Don't bother watching Advent Asshat, btw - it's like a cutscene from the game, only with worse plot, you cant skip through it, and you can't vent your rage at having to watch it by using Omnislash on a level 1 bad guy.

Seriously, about 10 minutes in, I had my very own 'limit break'.

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Goooooood morning, Prince George!

2005-09-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

Normally when I wake up in the morning, there's usually no traces of Anson's shenanigans from the previous evening. Chances are that he's up until 4:30 or so playing Counterstrike which leaves him too weak with "stomach flu" (which happens more often than I can count) and I don't see him until he gets back from school in the evening. This year he's remarkably more sedate than last. I have yet to be woken up to him yelling "What da fuck!"
after being sniped by a clever player. I count this as a good thing. Back to the story. This morning I woke up to find a sheet of his homework quietly placed on my desk for my perusal. How he managed to knock on my door, find out that I was asleep, open and place it on my desk without me waking up will be a mystery to my dying days (or until lunch). On my way to make breakfast, I found out that his buddy Denny OR Danny was sleeping on the couch, no doubt tired out from playing San Andreas and drinking my beer until the wee hours. It's the future, and Chinese people are everywhere.

The internet likes me better when I wake up. My Go! Team mailing list has sent me some new music, the live version of their performance of Ladyflash live from Toronto, Mike wrote a new comic and I found out that you can buy disposable underware. Oh, and busty Japanese women too. Can't forget about that. Oh no.

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personal

Blender's top 500 songs of the last 25 years

2005-09-20T13:30:00.000-07:00

Damn you Blender! Damn you for creating a list that I *must* read! You know my weakness, oh yes you do.

Just like last time, I'm going to post the list and bold songs that I have in my possession in some form. Be it in album, bootleg or video game format. Commentary shall be in italics. Onwards!

001. "Billie Jean" - Michael Jackson
002. "B.O.B." - Outkast
003. "Sweet Child O' Mine" - Guns N' Roses
Welcome to the Jungle is better.
004. "One" - U2
005. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - Nirvana
006. "Like a Prayer" - Madonna
007. "Love Will Tear Us Apart" - Joy Division
008. "Sucker MCs" - Run-D.M.C.
009. ". . .Baby One More Time" - Britney Spears
010. "In Da Club" - 50 Cent
011. "My Name Is" - Eminem
012. "The Message" - Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
I was just pimping this song to Mike yesterday. How about that?
013. "Fight for Your Right" - Beastie Boys
014. "You Shook Me All Night Long" - AC/DC
015. "Hey Ya" - Outkast
I am of the opinion that this song will define the 00s. I've told anyone who will listen to me that this will be the case. I have no clue why I haven't downloaded this song.
016. "I Want It That Way" - Backstreet Boys
017. "Super Freak" - Rick James
018. "I'm Coming Out" - Diana Ross
019. "Just Like Heaven" - The Cure
020. "The Show" - Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew
021. "Fight the Power" - Public Enemy
022. "Pour Some Sugar on Me" - Def Leppard
My brother Steven has an amazing hardon for this song. I'm sure that if he gets a hold of this list he shall use this as an example of why Def Leppard is better than the Pixies
023. "It's Like That" - Run-D.M.C.
024. "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" - Prince
025. "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang" - Dr. Dre
This has been my ring tone for ages
026. "Hypnotize" - Notorious B.I.G.
027. "Just a Friend" - Biz Markie
028. "Cars" - Gary Numan
The most obnoxious song from Vice City, I say
029. "Get Ur Freak On" - Missy Elliott
030. "99 Problems" - Jay-Z
031. "I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need To Get By (Puff Daddy Remix) - Method Man featuring Mary J. Blige
032. "Livin' on a Prayer" - Bon Jovi
033. "No Diggity" - Blackstreet
034. "Mybabydaddy" - B-Rock and the Bizz
035. "Crosseyed and Painless" - Talking Heads
036. "It Takes Two" - Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock
037. "Bootylicious" - Destiny's Child
038. "I Love Rock & Roll" - Joan Jett
039. "Mind Playing Tricks on Me" - Geto Boys
040. "Push It" - Salt 'N Pepa
041. "In the Air Tonight" - Phil Collins
042. "Got Your Money" - Ol' Dirty Bastard
043. "Hurt" - Johnny Cash
044. "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)" - Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel
045. "Sexual Healing" - Marvin Gaye
046. "Fuck tha Police" - N.W.A.
047. "I Want to Know What Love Is" - Foreigner
048. "Monkey Gone to Heaven" - Pixies
049. "Lose Yourself" - Eminem
050. "Hungry Like the Wolf" - Duran Duran
051. "All Apologies" - Nirvana
052. "Wonderwall" - Oasis
053. "Beat It" - Michael Jackson
054. "Middle of the Road" - The Pretenders
055. "The Scientist" - Coldplay
I should download this song. It's pretty damn good
056. "Poison" Bell Biv Devoe
057. "West End Girls" - Pet Shop Boys
058. "Karma Police" - Radiohead
059. "How Soon is Now?" - The Smiths
I just got into this group. This song any good?
060. "Missing You" - John Waite
061. "Ignition (Remix)" - R. Kelly
062. "Just Can't Get Enough" - Depeche Mode
063. "Beautiful Day" - U2
064. "Say My Name" - Destiny's Child
065. "Enter Sandman" - Metallica
066. "Doo Wop (That Thing)" - Lauryn Hill
067. "The Boys of Summer" - Don Henley
068. "That's the Joint" - Funky 4 + 1
069. "You're Still the One" - Shania Twain
070. "Summer of '69" - Bryan Adams
071. "Criminal" - Fiona Apple
072. "The Humpty Dance" - Digital Underground
073. "House of Jealous Lovers" - The Rapture
074. "Take Me Out" - Franz Ferdinand
075. "Head Like a Hole" - Nine Inch Nails
076. "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" - The Gap Band
077. "Girls, Girls, Girls" - Motley Crue
078. "A Stroke of Genius" - Freelance Hellraiser
Probably the best mashup next to the grey albumn
079. "Losing My Religion" - R.E.M.
080. "Hot in Herre" - Nelly
081. "Galang" - M.I.A.
M.I.A. is totally worth checking out if you haven't yet
082. "Yeah!" - Usher
Listening to this song a lot this summer I have come to the conclusion that L'il John needs to go to anger management. The man is like an angry bear. I half expect him to maul me when I listen to the song
083. "To Hell with Poverty" - Gang of Four
084. "Borderline" - Madonna
085. "Drop It Like It's Hot" - Snoop Dogg
Heard this song a lot while planting trees this summer. We debated if the "oooop" sound in the song was actually the word "Snoooooop!" There was no definitive conclusion.
086. "Work It" - Missy Elliott
087. "Into the Groove" - Madonna
088. "Pull Up to the Bumper" - Grace Jones
089. "Rockin' in the Free World" - Neil Young
090. "That's Entertainment" - The Jam
091. "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" - Queens of the Stone Age
092. "Heartbeat" - Taana Gardner
093. "Cut Your Hair" - Pavement
094. "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss" - P.M. Dawn
095. "Unsatisfied" - The Replacements
096. "True Faith" - New Order
097. "Since U Been Gone" - Kelly Clarkson
098. "When You Were Mine" - Prince
099. "Come As You Are" - Nirvana
I dig the live version from MTV unplugged. Almost more than Smells Like Teen Spirit. *gasp*
100. "Bring the Noise" - Public Enemy
101. "I Got a Man" - Positive K
102. "Losing My Edge" - LCD Soundsystem
103. "Sabotage" - Beastie Boys
104. "Welcome to the Jungle" - Guns N' Roses
This song has one of the best openings in music history. It's up there with Radiohead's Everything In Its Right Plac and Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. The perfect opener to any mix CD
105. "Fascinated" - Company B
106. "Little Red Corvette" - Prince
107. "Fell in Love with a Girl" - The White Stripes
108. "Still Not a Player" - Big Punisher
109. "Creep" - Radiohead
Heard this song for the first time this summer. Easily Radioheads's most accessable song
110. "Toxic" - Britney Spears
This song is one of my guilty pleasures. Seriously.
111. "Planet Rock" - Afrika Bambaataa & the Soul Sonic Force
112. "Round and Round" - Ratt
113. "Nothing Compares 2 U" - Sinead O'Connor
114. "Crazy in Love" - Beyonce
115. "Gin & Juice" - Snoop Dogg
116. "Violet" - Hole
117. "Paid in Full" - Eric B. & Rakim
118. "Cars with the Boom" - L'Trimm
119. "How I Could Just Kill a Man" - Cypress Hill
My younger brother, Simon, is adament that the Rage cover is better. I'm inclined to agree
120. "Get Low" - Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz
121. "In the End" - Linkin Park
122. "All I Wanna Do" - Sheryl Crow
123. "Formed a Band" - Art Brut
I've been hearing good stuff about these guys. Are they any good?
124. "Sad Songs (Say So Much)" - Elton John
125. "Rockit" - Herbie Hancock
126. "It Was a Good Day" - Ice Cube
127. "Bulls on Parade" - Rage Against the Machine
I've heard this song more times than I can count thanks to my brother's band. My brother can play the riffs pitch perfect. It's awesome
128. "Milkshake" - Kelis
129. "I Ran (So Far Away)" - A Flock of Seagulls
The greatest of pure 80s cheese. Gotta love the intro with the smooth synth and the seagull like guitars
130. "Mama Said Knock You Out" - LL Cool J
131. "Freedom" - George Michael
132. "Waltz #2 (XO)" - Elliott Smith
133. "Through the Wire" - Kanye West
I think that All Falls Down is a much better song, but then again, I am no music critic. What do I know?
134. "Believe" - CherThis song reminds of Mellie Lenz. It played on the radio literally all the time when we'd go on dates. That and that Chris Gains cover of that song which I can't recall at this moment.
135. "Daughter" - Pearl Jam
136. "Word Up!" - Cameo
My younger brother Steven bought this album thanks to the utterly bizzare album art
137. "Brimful of Asha" - Cornershop
I only downloaded this song because Cornershop did remixes for Cornelius' Fantasma. It's a good song, tho'.
138. "Up the Bracket" - The Libertines
139. "The Breaks" - Kurtis Blow
I gotta say, Kurtis Blow is easily one of my favourite MCs from the 80s. Don't let the fact that I know of probably three MCs make my opinion mean less
140. "Shook Ones Pt. 2" - Mobb Deep
141. "Maps" - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
142. "Everybody Wants You" - Billy Squier
143. "Lit Up" - Buckcherry
144. "The Body Rock" - The Treacherous Three
145. "Beautiful" - Christina Aguilera
When I started chatting with Heather she was adament that the music video was one of the most beautiful in history. Sorry, but men kissing men doesn't make something the best. Not by a long shot. This song gets bonus points because my Korean friend Jung would sing it when he got drunk. Which happened a lot. Memories...
146. "Goodies" - Ciara
147. "Everybody Knows" - Leonard Cohen
148. "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)" - En Vogue
149. "You Oughta Know" - Alanis Morissette
150. "Don't You Want Me" - Human League
151. "Run" - Ghostface feat. Jadakiss
152. "I Fee For You" - Chaka Khan
153. "Ordinary World" - Duran Duran
154. "Stay" - Lisa LoebGod, she was cute!
155. "Not Dark Yet" - Bob Dylan
156. "Double Dutch Bus" - Frankie Smith
157. "Around the World" - Daft Punk One More Time is better, I say
158. "Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)" Jay-Z
159. "Birth, School, Work, Death" - The Godfathers
160. "Temptation" - New Order
161. "Danger! High Voltage" - Electric Six
162. "Jump" - Van Halen
163. "Sister Christian" - Night Ranger
164. "The Look of Love" - ABC
165. "Bye Bye Bye" - 'N Sync
166. "Start Me Up" - Rolling Stones
167. "Breathe" - Faith Hill
168. "Juicy" - Notorious B.I.G.
169. "When Doves Cry" - Prince
170. "Girls & Boys" - Blur
171. "Ms. Jackson" - Outkast
For the longest time, I thought that Outkast was a Canadian band. Why the fuck haven't I downloaded this song yet?
172. "Flava in Ya Ear" - Craig Mack
173. "Ready or Not" - The Fugees
174. "Fuck and Run" - Liz Phair
175. "Made You Look" - Nas
176. "Murder (Or a Heart Attack)" - Old 97's
177. "California" - Phantom Planet
Mike sent this to me ages ago and it's been popping up on random quite a bit lately. I'm suprised that a band that has a Hollywood actor in it can be good.
178. "Jam on It" - Newcleus
179. "The Sound of Settling" - Death Cab for Cutie
180. "Top Billin'" - Audio Two
181. "Our Lips Are Sealed" - The Go-Go's
182. "Complicated" - Avril Lavigne
I am still of the opinion that this can be turned into the most badass Christopher monologue ever
183. "Janie's Got a Gun" - Aerosmith
184. "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" - Lucinda Williams
185. "Fade Into You" - Mazzy Star
186. "You Don't Love Me (No No No)" - Dawn Penn
187. "Killin' Time" - Clint Black
188. "Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel" - Grandmaster Flash
Precussor to the fantastic party lists of the Avalanches. This song is *awesome
189. "Crush" - Jennifer Paige
190. "Shake Your Rump" - Beastie BoysI dig the production by the Dust Brothers on this
191. "Bastards of Young" - Replacements
192. "I Thing" - Amerie
193. "Walk This Way" - Run-D.M.C.
194. "If You Leave" - OMD
195. "More Than This" - Roxy Music
196. "U Can't Touch This" - MC Hammer
197. "Love Removal Machine" - The Cult
198. "Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)" - Los Del Rio
199. "Debaser" - Pixies
200. "The Seed (2.0)" - The Roots
201. "Building a Mystery" - Sarah McLachlan
202. "Deep Cover" - Dr. Dre
203. "Rid of Me" - PJ Harvey
204. "Let's Kill Saturday Night" - Robbie Fulks
205. "Take Your Mama" - Scissor Sisters
206. "This Love" - Moroon 5
Miwako loved this song
207. "Friends in Low Places" - Garth Brooks
208. "Work for Love" - Ministry
209. "It Wasn't Me" - Shaggy
210. "Oh Sherrie" - Steve Perry
211. "Dude" - Beenie Man
212. "Last Nite" - The Strokes
213. "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" - Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks
214. "I Will Follow" - U2
215. "Life is a Highway" - Tom Cochrane
216. "Scenario (Remix)" - A Tribe Called Quest
The remix is easily better than the original, much like the remix of the Diamonds of Sierra Leonne is better than the origina
217. "Move Your Feet" - Junior Senior
Heather put this on the mix CD that she gave me for Christmas. When I moved to PG it played on the radio all the time. It was one of those weird instances of convergence
218. "Seven Nation Army" - White Stripes
219. "Get Busy" - Sean Paul
220. "Semi-Charmed Life" - Third Eye Blind
221. "Academy Fight Song" - Mission of Burma
222. "Mundian to Back Ke (Jay-Z Remix)" - Panjabi MC
223. "Two of Hearts" - Stacey Q.
224. "Once in a Lifetime" - Talking Heads
225. "Fast Car" - Tracy Chapman
226. "Alright" - Supergrass
227. "Where's Your Head At" - Basement Jaxx
228. "Hate to Say I Told You So" - The Hives
I remember bugging Steve from the movie theater to make me a burnt CD of the Hives when I was working at the theater. AFter listening to the Hives that summer, I was glad that I didn't buy the album. Hate to Say I Told You So is probably the only great track on the CD
229. "Edge of Seventeen" - Stevie Nicks
230. "Wild Thing" - Tone-Loc
231. "Sour Times" - Portishead
232. "They Want EFX" - Das EFX
233. "Black and White" - The DB's
234. "Here I Go Again" - Whitesnake
235. "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off" - Jermaine Stewart
236. "Where is my Mind?" - The Pixies
237. "Set It Off" - Strafe
238. "Everybody Hurts" - R.E.M.
239. "Do You Miss Me" - Jocelyn Enriquez
240. "All the Small Things" - Blink-182
241. "Bittersweet Symphony" - The Verve
I'm a sucker for the violins at the beginning of the song
242. "I Can't Live Without My Radio" - LL Cool J
243. "Being Boring" - Pet Shop Boys
244. "Institutionalized" - Suicidal Tendencies
245. "I'm Not OK (I Promise)" - My Chemical Romance
246. "Rump Shaker" - Wreckz-N-Effect
247. "Downtown Train" - Tom Waits
248. "Careless Whisper" - George Michael
249. "For Lovers" - Wolfman featuring Pete Doherty
250. "Move Ya Body" - Nina Sky
251. "Don't Believe the Hype" - Public Enemy
252. "Born in the U.S.A." - Bruce Springsteen
253. "La Di Da Di" - Doug E. Fresh
254. "Big Pimpin'" - Jay-Z
255. "A Pretty Girl is Like" - Magnetic Fields
256. "Looking for the Perfect Beat" - Afrika Bambaataa & Soul Sonic Force
257. "C'Mon N' Ride It (The Train)" - Quad City DJs
258. "Genius of Love" - Tom Tom Club
259. "Kiss" - Prince
260. "Going Back to Cali" - LL Cool J
261. "Call Me" - Blondie
262. "Islands in the Stream" - Kenny Rogers featuring Dolly Parton
263. "Ace of Spades" - Motorhead
264. "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" - Whitney Houston
265. "I Want Your (Hands on Me)" - Sinead O'Connor
266. "Free Fallin'" - Tom Petty
267. "Malibu" - Hole
268. "With or Without You" - U2
269. "Take Your Time (Do It Right)" - The S.O.S. Band
270. "Flex" - Mad Cobra
271. "Don't Stop Believin'" - Journey
272. "Rock the Casbah" - The Clash
273. "Keep Me in Your Heart" - Warren Zevon
274. "Brilliant Disguise" - Bruce Springsteen
275. "Real Love" - Mary J. Blige
276. "Hold On Loosely" - .38 Special
277. "I Want You" - Elvis Costello
278. "Stan" - Eminem
Pearl put this on a mix CD for me when I first moved to Victoria. I like the Dido bit more in this song than her stuff solo
279. "Rock 'N' Roll High School" - The Ramones
280. "Just Like a Pill" - Pink
281. "Sexy Boy" - Air
282. "Oh Boy" - Cam'ron
283. "Lips Like Sugar" - Echo and the Bunnymen
284. "Down By the Water" - PJ Harvey
285. "Don't Tell Me" - Madonna
286. "I've Been Waiting" - Matthew Sweet
287. "Head Over Heels" - Tears For Fears
288. "One Armed Scissor" - At the Drive-In
289. "You Spin Me 'Round (Like a Record)" - Dead or Alive
290. "Only Shallow" - My Bloody Valentine
291. "People Who Died" - The Jim Carroll Band
292. "Larger Than Life" - Backstreet Boys
293. "Connection" - Elastica
294. "Black" - Pearl Jam
295. "Owner of a Lonely Heart" - Yes
296. "Save Me" - Aimee Mann
I think that Wise Up is a better song.
297. "November Rain" - Guns N' Roses
One of the girls that I tree planted with wanted to get married to this song. Yeah, she was a little bit crazy
298. "I Need to Know" - Marc Anthony
299. "Smooth Criminal" - Michael Jackson
300. "Everything Zen" - Bush
301. "In Between Days" - The Cure
302. "Loser" - Beck
303. "Kissing the Lipless" - The Shins
304. "Hot for Teacher" - Van Halen
305. "Pretty in Pink" - Psychedelic Furs
306. "Say Yes" - Elliott Smith
307. "I Get Around" - Tupac
308. "Hold Me Now" - Thompson Twins
309. "Ex-Factor" - Lauryn Hill
310. "Firestarter" - The Prodigy
Heh, I have fond memories of this song. One of the guys used this song to create a trailer to the movie Firestarer.
311. "Come Pick Me Up" - Ryan Adams
312. "Smooth Operator" - Sade
313. "Bawitdaba" - Kid Rock
314. "Love Vigilantes" - New Order
315. "Every Breath You Take" - Police
316. "California Stars" - Billy Bragg and Wilco
317. "White Flag" - Dido
318. "Ha" - Juvenile
319. "Genie in a Bottle" - Christina Aguilera
Pearl put this on a mix CD, which puts her musical taste into question again
320. "Tyrone" - Erykah Badu
321. "Jane Says" - Jane's Addiction
322. "Constant Craving" - k.d. lang
323. "Black Steel" - Tricky
324. "Slack Motherfucker" - Superchunk
325. "Jump Around" - House of Pain
326. "Battery" - Metallica
327. "Slow Jamz" - Kanye West featuring Twista and Jamie Foxx
328. "Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangsta" - Geto Boys
329. "Potholes in my Lawn" - De La Soul
330. "Can't Deny It" - Fabolous
331. "Waiting for the Sun" - The Jayhawks
332. "I Wonder if I Take You Home" - Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam
333. "Cannonball" - The Breeders
Just downloaded this song a couple of weeks ago thanks to the One Songthread on the V forum
334. "Teen Age Riot" - Sonic Youth
335. "Everybody Everybody" - Black Box
336. "Time After Time" - Cyndi Lauper
337. "Killing Me Softly with His Song" - Fugees
338. "Outfit" - Drive-By Truckers
339. "Ain't Nothin' Goin' on But the Rent" - Gwen Guthrie
340. "Song 2" - Blur
341. "What Have You Done for Me Lately" - Janet Jackson
342. "Seether" - Veruca Salt Hey, isn't Nina Gordon from Veruca Salt?
343. "Passionate Kisses" - Lucinda Williams
344. "Freaks Come Out at Night" - Whodini
345. "Still Tippin'" - Mike Jones
346. "Block Rockin' Beats" - Chemical Brothers
347. "Girls" - Beastie Boys
348. "Independent Women Part 1" - Destiny's Child
349. "Roxanne Roxanne" - U.T.F.O.
350. "Stacy's Mom" - Fountains of Wayne
351. "Buffalo Gals" - Malcolm McLaren
352. "Heart Shaped Box" - Nirvana
353. "Games Without Frontiers" - Peter Gabriel
354. "Army of Me" - Bjork
355. "Save It For Later" - English Beat
356. "Atomic Dog" - George Clinton
Thanks to the Onion's coverage of President Clinton's attack on Bagdad, this was one of the first songs that I downloaded off of Napster
357. "Never Too Much" - Luther Vandross
358. "Wall of Death" - Richard and Linda Thompson
359. "I Wish" - Skee-Lo
360. "Help You Ann" - Lyres
361. "Show Me Love" - Robyn
362. "Fix Up, Look Sharp" - Dizzee Rascal
363. "Tainted Love" - Soft Cell
364. "Buddy Holly" - WeezerPearl put this on a mix CD, which brings her taste back to normal levels
365. "Rock Box" - Run-D.M.C.
366. "I Touch Myself" - Divinyls
367. "Paranoid Android" - Radiohead
368. "Seven Year Ache" - Rosanne Cash
369. "Teenage Dirtbag" - Wheatus My brother Christopher digs this song a lot. Some guy from some rock band, can't remember which, said that this is one of the best pop songs ever.
370. "Voices Carry" - 'Til Tuesday
371. "Roam" - B-52's
372. "Party Up (Up in Here)" - DMX
373. "Whip It" - Devo
374. "Rosa Parks" - Outkast
375. "Purple Rain" - Prince
376. "Portions for Foxes" - Rilo Kiley
Fucking right! Man, this song is *awesome*! Good to see that she's being repped here
377. "Black Hole Sun" - Soundgarden
For extra kicks, download Cibo Matto's off the wall cover of this song. Very weird
378. "Devil's Right Hand" - Steve Earle
379. "Hero Takes a Fall" - The Bangles
380. "Rebellion (Lies)" - The Arcade Fire
Quelle suprise! Hope that this one goes up the charts in following years
381. "Portland, Oregon" - Loretta Lyn feauring Jack White
382. "Let's Get Serious" - Jermaine Jackson
383. "Torn" - Natalie Imbruglia
384. "Straight Outta Compton" - N.W.A.
In my opinion, N.W.A.'s best song
385. "Message of Love" - The Pretenders
386. "Total Eclipse of the Heart" - Bonnie Tyler
387. "Are You That Somebody" - Aaliyah
388. "When I Come Around" - Green Day
389. "Shake Ya Ass" - Mystikal
390. "Never Say Never" - Romeo Void
I sent this to my buddy Kyoung from Korea. He thought that this was one of the coolest songs ever. Looks like the 80s didn't hit Korea as hard as it did here
391. "Underneath Your Clothes" - Shakira
392. "Interstate Love Song" - Stone Temple Pilots
393. "Jump" - Kris Kross
394. "Celebrated Hummer" - Husker Du
395. "Doin It" - LL Cool J
396. "Touch Me I'm Sick" - Mudhoney
397. "Summer Babe (Winter Version)" - Pavement
398. "Harvest Moon" - Neil Young
I dig the blues version that I have from a CBC jazz album
399. "C'Mon C'Mon" - Von Bondies
400. "I Wanna Go Back" - Eddie Money
401. "Ray of Light" - Madonna
402. "South Bronx" - Boogie Down Productions
403. "Back in Black" - AC/DC
404. "Bad Boys" - Inner Circle
405. "Stupid Girl" - Garbage
406. "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life" - Indeep
407. "Freak Scene" - Dinosaur Jr.
408. "Tom Sawyer" - Rush
I'll never have to download this song because my brothers play it EVERY FUCKING DAY back in FSJ.
409. "Rebel Without a Pause" - Public Enemy
410. "Rough Boys" - Pete Townshend
411. "Ride" - The Vines
412. "If I Was Your Girlfriend" - Prince
413. "Fallin'" - Alicia Keys
414. "Flagpole Sitta" - Harvey Danger
415. "Waterfalls" - TLC
416. "Chop Suey" - System of a Down
417. "Situation" - Yaz
418. "Rumors" - Timex Social Club
419. "I'm on Fire" - Bruce Springsteen
420. "Southern Hospitality" - Ludacris
421. "Murder She Wrote" - Chaka Demus & Pliers
422. "Sex Style" - Kool Keith
423. "Last Goodbye" - Jeff Buckley
424. "We're the Desperate" - X
425. "I Just Wanna Love U (Give It to Me)" - Jay-Z
426. "Where It's At" - Beck
Heard it for the first time this summer while tree planting. Awesome song
427. "That's the Way Love Goes" - Janet Jackson
428. "Bad Reputation" - Freedy Johnston
429. "Cry Me a River" - Justin Timberlake
430. "Closing Time" - Semisonic
Is there a rule out there that says that when a bar closes that you *have* to play this song? I need an answer to this question.
431. "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" - The Smiths
432. "There She Goes" - The La's
433. "Cornflake Girl" - Tori Amos
434. "Walking on Thin Ice" - Yoko Ono
435. "Let Me Go" - Heaven 17
436. "Grindin'" - Clipse
437. "Running Up That Hill" - Kate Bush
438. "Pretend We're Dead" - L7
439. "Feel So Good" - Ma$e
440. "You Get What You Give" - New Radicals
441. "Don't You (Forget About Me)" - Simple Minds
442. "Square Biz" - Teena Marie
443. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - U2
444. "Tell Me Why" - Wynonna Judd
445. "Rebel Girl" - Bikini Kill
446. "Just an Illusion" - Imagination
447. "Do You Realize??" - Flaming Lips
The most saddest and yet the most beautiful song I've listened to. I have made people cry by forcing them to listen to this song. Easily the Lips' best song
448. "Player's Anthem" - Junior M.A.F.I.A.
449. "Steal My Sunshine" - Len
450. "Smooth" - Santana featuring Rob Thomas
451. "Country Grammar (Hot Shit)" - Nelly
452. "All the Things She Said" - t.A.T.u.
453. "Don't Wanna Know Why" - Whiskeytown
454. "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" - D'Angelo
455. "Lover I Don't Have to Love" - Bright Eyes
456. "Too Drunk to Fuck" - The Dead Kennedys
457. "Right Here" - Go-Betweens
458. "Come Out and Play" - Offspring
459. "Don't Know Why" - Norah Jones
460. "P.S.K. What Does it Mean?" - Schoolly D
461. "Hail Mary" - Makaveli (aka Tupac)
462. "Judy and the Dream of Horses" - Belle and Sebastian
463. "Hate It or Love it" - The Game
464. "Trapped in the Closet" - R. Kelly
465. "Let the Music Play" - Shannon
466. "Baby Got Back" - Sir Mix-A-Lot
Mix-A-Lot wrote a follow up to this song which was an ode to tits. It wasn't nearly as sucessful
467. "Brick" - Ben Folds Five
468. "Papa Don't Preach" - Madonna
469. "Radiation Vibe" - Fountains of Wayne
470. "They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)" - Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth
471. "Hunger Strike" - Temple of the Dog
472. "Small Stakes" - Spoon
473. "Autumn Sweater" - Yo La Tengo
474. "Gigantic" - Pixies
If we ignore Fight Club, this was my first intro to the Pixies. I wasn't impressed the first couple of times, but now I understand
475. "I Alone" - Live
476. "Strictly Business" - EPMD
477. "C.R.E.A.M." - Wu-Tang Clan
478. "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See" - Busta Rhymes
479. "Santa Monica" - Everclear
480. "Guilty Conscience" - Eminem
481. "Lake of Fire" - Meat Puppets
482. "Man on the Moon" - R.E.M.
483. "Passing Me By" - Pharcyde
484. "I Wanna Be Adored" - Stone Roses
485. "We are All on Drugs" - Weezer
486. "Can't Stand It" - Wilco
487. "Regulate" - Warren G
488. "Murderer" - Buju Banton
489. "Da' Butt" - E.U.
490. "History Lesson Part II" - Minutemen
491. "Common People" - Pulp
I like this better than William Snatner's version, hence damaging my geek cred
492. "Here Comes the Hotstepper" - Ini Kamoze
493. "Born Slippy (Nuxx)" - Underworld
494. "I'll Be You" - Replacements
495. "Don't Speak" - No Doubt
496. "1979" - The Smashing Pumpkins
Why is it tha whenever I see Heather online this song is playing?
497. "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" - The Darkness
498. "Somebody's Baby" - Jackson Browne
499. "I Dont' Want to Miss a Thing" - Aerosmith
500. "Yellow" - Coldplay

Holy shit, that was long. Blogger, why can't you make a cut like livejournal does?

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1up reviews We Heart Katamari!

2005-09-20T10:02:00.000-07:00

1up gets major props from me for using beatnik poetry to review this year's most offbeat game.

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Conversations with Miwako: Relationships

2005-09-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

Rob: You got a new boyfriend yet?
Miwa: new boyfriend is..
Rob:...white? Like me?
Miwa:actually not
Rob: Not what?
Miwa: I'm not telling you right now ha ha
Rob: Heh. Okay.
Miwa: he is not my boyfriend yet
Rob:Ah, I see. Are you trying?
Miwa:ya kind of
Rob: Well, I don't think that it'll be that hard. You're a pretty cute girl and lots of guys like you.
Miwa:thank you for compliment
Rob:No problem.
Miwa: how about you? did you get a new girlfriend?
Rob: What do you think? I'm pretty sure that you can guess.
Miwa: i think not yet, because i not yet
Rob: Hah. Yeah, you're right. It would be funny if I got a new girlfriend when you got a new boyfriend. But no, nothing for me.
Miwa:i see, but i think your girlfriend is coming soon
Rob: Anson might invite some girls over for supper this Saturday. He said that there's a Japanese girl that wants to meet me, but I think that he might be bullshitting me. He told me that this Japanese girl gives better massages than you.
Miwa: wow! good for you!
Rob:We'll see. Like I said, I don't know her, so I can't say.
Miwa: now you have a chance. i'm sure you are nice person
Rob:Anyhow, I'm hoping that Anson isn't full of shit, but, on the other hand, I'm trying not to get my hopes up high because I don't want to be disapointed if things don't work out.
Miwa says: i see, but just don't be negative and we'll see on Saturday
Rob:Yeah. So the guy that you're intersted in, what's he like?
Miwa: he is quite tall
Rob:Like a basketball player tall?
Miwa: about 180cm
Rob: Okay.... So you like him because he's tall?
Miwa: noway
Rob:Heh. Okay, so why do you like him?
Miwa:actually, i don't the reason why i like him
Rob: Huh. I see. You just do, eh? Does he know you?
Miwa: yes he knows me
Rob: Well, that helps. It's worse if he doesn't know you. Do you guys hang out a lot?
Miwa: not really
Rob: I see. So how are you going to convince him that your worth his time? I want to know your evil plan.
Miwa:ha ha. I'm not telling you
Rob: Afraid that I"m going to steal it?
Miwa: I'm thiking too
Rob:Hm.
Miwa: ha ha
Rob: I know what would work. Give him your panties. That always works. Trust me.
Miwa:oh Rob!
Rob: You know my plan will not fail!
Miwa:I can't trust you,
Rob: Can't trust me? Fff....
Rob: I want to take a trip to Vancouver to see Takeshis and a bunch of other movies, but gas is so expensive.
Miwa: ya, you really like movie
Rob: Plus, I'd like to visit Mike.
Miwa: oh ya is he doing well?
Rob: Yeah. He loves his new girlfriend. He tells me *everything* about her.
Miwa: wow! he got a new girlfriend
Rob:Yeah.
Miwa:i envy him
Rob: It's the girl that he liked 4 years ago when he was in school. He's liked her for a *long* time. He's pretty lucky that it worked out.
Miwa: wow very romantic. is she living in Vancouver too?
Rob: Yeah. I'm not sure if it's romantic, but he's pretty damn lucky
Miwa: we're gonna share his good luck! ha ha
Rob: Hah. Yeah, I hope so. I wish that he could send me a package of sexual luck that he has going for him.
Miwa: ha ha you are such a boy

Tags:

the Internet buzzes on the Nintendo Revolution controller: select quotes

2005-09-16T08:11:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the unveiling of the Nintendo Revolution controller last night, the internet has been cracked in half with tons of commentary on how Revolutionary the controller is. Video game journalist/comic writer, Kieron Gillens says that "If you don’t like the Revolution controller, you are fundamentally part of the problem and killing the fucking art form.". Strong words. Nintendo, was obviously pleased with how it turned out. Third party developers, whose support has waned from Nintendo's products in the current generation have been consistently impressed with the contoller. The usual parties aside, my favourite commentary on the Revolution controller comes from Insert Credit, whose snark makes me laugh. My favourite quotes from their Revolution discussion
"Nintendo has captured my heart and shifted my paradigms."
"Campbell: "Snake! You must turn the controller upside down!""
"Thus, 9/15/05 will be known has the day everyone on the internet whined, a lot."
"Well it's certainly no HD-Era revolution."

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Conversations with Stephen: Children of the Revolution

2005-09-15T23:29:00.000-07:00

Rob: So what about that Revolution, eh?

Stephen: Finally a controller you can wank with.

Rob: Foolish man, everyone knows that the powerglove was the first controller that was made for masturbation.

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VIFF 2005 Film Guide Is Up!

2005-09-12T16:38:00.000-07:00

The film line up for the 24 annual Vancouver Film Fest is up, and like every year, it has some of the best selection of asian cinema on this side of the Ocean. Of the movies, here's my selection of flicks that I'd see if I was there.

Crying Fist: Profiled earlier, it's said by many to best this year's best boxing flick. Take that, Ron Howard.

Blood Rain: A period detective thriller in the vein of Se7en.

Haze: Cronenbergian thriller by body horror master Tsukamoto.

Linda Linda Linda: Japanese teen comedy about an all girl band.

Takashis: New flick by Media Engine One, Kintano Takeshi.

Grain In Ear: Funny revenge flick from South Korea.

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NERDGASM! How to get NES midi ringtones on your cell... FOR FREE!

2005-09-12T16:10:00.000-07:00

If you're anything like me, when you got a cell phone, you were probably super excited about the possibilities of custom ring tones. And, if you are like me, you were probably pretty disapointed when you discovered how expensive a ring tone was and how they lacked a selection of your favourite NES tunes. Fret no longer. Thanks to the foresight of my friend David and Phoneuploader you can.

What do you need to do this? A cell phone that can receive text messages, browse the internet and download files. There's a FAQwhich should answer if your phone will work or not. After that, begin by going to David's Video Game Ring Tone Archive (which is by no means a completist website, but a great place to start), choose the midi that you want and save it to your hard drive. Next, go to Phone Uploader fill in the info for your phone. In a couple of seconds, you should be text messaged with an URL. This URL is the website where you can download your midi. For free! Pretty nifty, eh?

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Favourite Photo: Blasterettes

2005-09-09T10:10:00.000-07:00

I saw this in Radar last week and have been captivated by it for the last couple of weeks. It's from Luis Gispert and Jeffrey Reed's short film Stereomongrel, flick dedicated to the old school hip hop scene.

I can't explain why I like this photo so much. Part of me likes it because it looks like something out of a a new wave comic book movie. Think more Scott Pilgrim than Batman Begins. Another part of me loves how much it festishizes the old asthetic. To me, that's very sexy.

You can see more of Luis Gispert and Jeffrey Reed's work here.

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Invasion of the Asian Women!

2005-09-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

It's 9 and the morning and Vivien is over for breakfast, care of Eric, my other Chinese room mate. What's cooking? I have no clue what it's called, but it involves rice, onions and some bok choi, I believe. Why is she here? I have no clue. Rumour has it that Vivien has a crush on him. This is funny because both Eric and Vivien (supposedly) have significant others back in China.

Vivien just called me into the other room asking if she could use this sheet of computer packaging. Evidently she's going to cut his hair. Curiousier and curiousier.

In other news, Anson is inviting the Legendary Japanese Girl Who Wants To Meet Rob and her Taiwanese friend. Tomorrow will tell me if Anson was bullshitting me or not about someone wanting to meet me. I am 50% looking forward to it. If that doesn't pan out, I get to talk politics with the Taiwanese girl, much to Anson's chagrin. Ho ho ho!

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personal

Post summer checklist

2005-09-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a post tree planting checklist of all the stuff that managed to go wrong in the apartment in my absence

Missing
-my cheese grater
-measuring cup
-cookie tray

Dead
-my dienbacia

Damaged
-my futon, cracked in the back due to horrible abuse
-kitchen sink counter. Warped due to water damage.
-bathmat. The underside was covered in some sort of blackish mould. Tossed when I got back
-Oven mits. Also mouldy since they were stored around the sink. Tossed.
-Placemats. Moudly too.

Destroyed
-DVD player. Doesn't work, for some reason.

All and all, I'm surprised that we still have an apartment.

Conversations with Anson: XYZ

2005-09-07T22:25:00.000-07:00

My new pair of pants has a slight zipper problem, flying low about 90% of the time. This is a conversation pertaining to it that occuring earlier today.

Rob: "Fuck! My zipper has become undone again!"
Anson: "I know why your zipper keeps on going down."
Rob: "Because my pants suck?"
Anson: "No. Your cock wants pussy. It opens the door of your pants, looking. It wants to be free, Rob."
No more was said after that.

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personal

CBC unplugged: keeping track of the Ceeb

2005-09-07T08:19:00.000-07:00

Like most Canadians, I'm a huge CBC Radio fan. Unfortunately with the big lockout (or whatever they're calling it on the radio now), I'm not getting my regular dose of news and radio programming. Thankfully, CBC Radio's resident nerd, Tod Maffin has a solution for us, CBC Unplugged. It fills the hole left in my life from my lack of my morning programming with postcasts from CBC hosts, news from the lockout and witty piss taking. From their list of top ten reasons that you're obsessed with the lockout, smart commentary on morning programming: "You can't stop yourself from tuning in to hear the clever morning musings and unbelievable chemistry between Rob Renaud and Susan Marjetti." Hardy har har!

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Launch Portal: something we need

2005-09-07T07:13:00.000-07:00

Why hasn't someone made a website to centralize all your web ouput? Tribe.net is the only website that comes close to this, allowing you to post all your feeds, your website, your photos, del.icio.us links et cetra in one place, but I have yet to see anyone that's done that with tags. I'd kill for a plugin that tracks all my tags across the internet and puts it into a tagcloud like the one in my deli.icio.us.I'm guessing that the easiest way of doing something like that would be to tag everything with a constant username and track it through technorati. This, of course, would just give me links, and not tags. Is there a solution out there?

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In dreams/what do you dream about...?

2005-09-07T07:07:00.000-07:00

Okay, this was weird. I had a dream that out of the blue, Heather messaged me on MSN. She then proceeded to open her webcam, without me asking her, mind you, to show her a sex show from earlier that evening. It was of her with a woman who was overwhelming her, to say the least. Her boyfriend was there, but in the dream he was white. He wasn't partaking in the action, but rather, opting to lay out his back on the floor. He looked spent. I was sorta suprised that Heather let me see this. I'm not sure if this makes the dream Heather more generous or just more evil.

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Frightening new nerd tech: Listal

2005-09-05T11:57:00.000-07:00

In further efforts to centralize as many things I can to the internet, I've decided to sign up for Listal. Listal does everything that I wanted a catalogging system to do. It easily shows your collection of DVDS, music, books and games to the world. The site works great for someone like me who likes to catagorize and file stuff as it allows tagging and rating of your shit. If you guys want to check out my stuff, you can do it right here.

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social_software

God, I'm so fucking hung over

2005-09-02T08:54:00.000-07:00

Normally I don't get the hangovers after I drink, but Anson insisted
that I drink hard liquor mixed up with beer last night. I don't know
what it's called when you put a shot of vodka inside a glass of beer,
but that's what we were doing last night. My head, it pounds like a
fierce drum. My toxic brain: it feels sad.

The drive back to PG was uneventful and my new van ran as smooth as a
vulva. So the so called destroyed futon just turned out to be the
back simply pushed out of the socket. Easily fixable.
So our apartment wasn't destoyed. This is a Good Thing.

But there are Bad Things.

Anson and Eric haven't cleaned the place in months (they claim that
they did, but this is debatable). The kitchen is an utter mess.
There's tons of plates piled up and the walls are covered in the thick
grease that one gets when they live with asians and indians. Not
good. What is worse is that water has seeped into the counter and has
warped the linoleum hardcore. Where it should be flush and flat we
have more of a dali-esque look to it. My post beer senses tell me
that the manager will probably have to rip it out and get a new one.
Not good.

on the bright side, at least I can listen to the Pixies as loud as I want. Woo!

t-minus 3 and a half hours to go to PG

2005-09-01T03:38:00.000-07:00

If this works, this should post to both <a
href="http://machine_gun_elephant.blogspot.com/">RoBlog</a> and it's
evil twin on <a
href="http://spaces.msn.com/members/machinegunelephant/">MSN
Spaces</a>. Why the doubling up on blogs? It boils down to simple
integration with Messenger. Unlike Google Talk, Messenger is pinged
when it's updated, which is a faster way than RSS of showing updates.
We'll see how it turns out.

It's t minus three and a half hours before I depart for PG. Unlike
the last couple of times when I moved to a large city, I'm going it
alone this time. I plan on arming myself with Red Bull or the new
Mountain Dew Energy Drink to combat sleepiness. Last time I drove, I
had the good fortune of going with Miwako. I'm not sure if it's a
long trip thing or the women who I keep company with, but I've found
that if I'm stuck in a vehicle longer than three hours with a woman
that's not my mother, I invariably end up learning about their period.
I'm not sure if this is supposed to flatter or frighten me. I'm
going with the former. I chatted with Anson last night and he has Big
Plans for me. My Big Plans for PG includes picking up the first two
trades of Scott Pilgrim, the Walking Dead cleaning up the messy
apartment and organizing my new books and movies. Anson has
insinuated that I will end up with Team China at a pub a couple of
pubs away from the apartment drinking copious amounts of beer and
wings. Knowing Anson I shall be pressured to drink hard liquor, like
the vile, *vile* bottle of vodka that he saved in the fridge for me.
Horrah.

Other things that I look forward to in PG:
-the drive-in movie theater
-using the magical powers of broadband and downloading the fuck out of
my computer
-Scottt Pilgrim. Oh fucking yeah!
-Mysterious Chinese Girl That Wants To Meet Me (assuming that Anson's
not pulling typical hyperbole bullshit with women)
-upgrading to Google Desktop 2 (I am a nerd)
-fucking around with Greasemonkey and other fine Firefox plugins (I am
a nerd part two)

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personal

Quick word on Sympathy for Lady Vengence From Kyoung

2005-08-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

My friend from Korea, Kyoung finally managed to see the conclusion to Chan Wok Park's Vengeance trilogy. He didn't go into the plot specifics, but he did mention that the movie wasn't as good as Oldboy (but then again, what can be, right?), but cautioned that the movies couldn't easily be compared. Kyoung mentioned that the audience was polarized by the movie, either loving or hating the flick. Will this stop me from checking it out? Fuck no, man. Chan Wok Park is easily the world's most exciting director and he has yet to disapoint me with his movies.

Kyoung also saw Crying Fist which I also mentioned earlier as a movie that I wanted to see. He said that it was probably best boxing movie that he's ever seen, which is impressive considering his appetite for cinema.
Classified under:movies,Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

I am mildy drunk

2005-08-14T22:10:00.000-07:00

But I'm not asshole or prick drunk; more like bullshitter drunk. Bullshitter drunk means that I'm affable and will hold my secrets, so don't try to pry them out of me, Stephen. Nope, it means that I'm in the mood for shitty fast food and Asian porn. horrah for Chinese tits! It also means that I won't be writing horribly embarassing emails to my ex girlfriends about how much they hate me. This is a good thing.
Categories: personal

In the Realms of the Unreal

2005-08-14T00:40:00.000-07:00

What about In the Realms of the Unreal, eh? I wrote about the movie a while back on my sister blog, Moon Karma Zero and finally watched it this evening. A quick primer for those who don't know aobut the movie: it's a doc about a reclusive Janitor called Henry Darger who spent his life toiling away painting and writing a 13 000 page epic about the Vivien girls. I've always been interested in found/outsider art, so the movie was a real treat for me. Having never seen Darger's art in person I was facinated by the level of detail that he put into his paintings and the content of the art. You don't see hermaphrodite girls getting mutilated because of their love of Christ every day, you know?
Categories: Henry_Darger, movies, In_the_Realms_of_the_Unreal

testing new catagory system

2005-08-12T18:42:00.000-07:00

This is a test
Categories: test

Karaoka and aftermath

2005-08-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

The plan last night was to go to Jackfish Dundees with my brother's girlfriend (for the summer, it must be emphasized) and the female population and engage in the ancient Japanese art of karaoke. That was the plan. I convinced Stephen to give me a ride to Jackfish's selling him on the idea of girls, drunken single girls, with shaved legs, the shaved part being important to my bush addled brain. I met up with Christopher's girlfriend (for the summer) Megan Brooks, the sister of Joe, a guy that I hung out in junior high, Andrew West and his sister, Nicole. Apperently, there was trivia of obscure, for me, at least, country music and late 70s musical anthems mixed with geographical trivia. I ordered myself a picture of beer knowing that my tree planting given abilities of holding my liquor would come in handy. And lo, I wasn't a belligerent drunk. *snark alert* This will come as a suprise to some. *snark alert off* With liquor oiling the wheels of conversation, we talked of many things: Victoria, Issaiah Bell, my brother Christopher, movies, Grand Theft Auto, a shitty new wave band that came to FSJ (whose name escapes me) et cetra. We also hatched a plan to get my brother drunk as no one has seen him under the influence. I've never seen Christopher drink a drip of alcohol in my life, mainly due to a weird quirk of his that says that he doesn't want anyone in the family to see him stumble and vomit. Or so he says. I think he can't hold his liquor. The evening ended with the girls singing a Dixie Chicks song and Stephen and I heading to McDo's to get my drunken hamburger fix. I found out this morning that Megan got kicked out of Loony Tunes. It was best described as a post emptive manuver as they should have done it on her birthday.

If it didn't rain this morning, I'd be out in the field today "working" instead of in the office, doing paper work. This is bad because I have a rare hangover. Why's the field better? I dig it because the work is mostly setup. Since we're pumping water, most of the work takes place in the first hour that we arrive at a site moving pumps. After that, you spend most of the day in the truck reading books, listening to CDs, eating snacks and bullshitting all while raking in tall dollars. Working in the office isn't hard physical work, but it's steady and you don't get breaks like you would in the field. Instead of spending 2-3 hours driving from our place and back in the John out to PJ or Mile, you gotta be ready to work in the basement at 7 onwards. Mornings, like this, where I got less than 5 hours of sleep, it's nice to work in the field since it allows the opportunities to sleep. No such luck in the office.

I've never been keen on the fact that my dad runs his business at home. Business bleeds into family affairs more than it should. It's not something that you can turn off when you leave the office, since the difference between the office and the house is a set of stairs. My dad's not the greatest communicator (like me!), so when he gets pissed off, or is having a shitty day, he'll take it out on everyone. It sucks, because you have no clue what'll set him off. Like today, out of the blue, my dad went "You know, I make mistakes too! Everyone is always on top of me", totally without warning. That said, he's a great boss and I like working for him.
Classified under:personal,

Kickass new Korean flicks

2005-08-11T09:24:00.000-07:00

If you're into the international film scene, like myself, you probably know that Korea (and to a lesser degree, Japan) is producing some of the world's best cinema. From the stylized ultra violence of Chan Wok Park's Vengeance trilogy to Kim Ki Duk's more contemplative fare like 3-Iron, the Korean film scene is bringing out imagry and action that harkens back to the heyday of late 80s, early 90s Hong Kong cinema. Adi Tantimedh is a comic writer and critic overseas who is incredibly fond of the Asian film scene. I usually trust his judgement of what's shit and what' good. Recently he released his thoughts on three new Korean movies, all of which, I want to see badly now. He says:

im Ji-Won is probably one of the top five directors in Korea right now, with only four movies to his credit. He has never made the same type of film twice. His first, the deadpan black comedy THE QUIET FAMILY, has the dubious honour of being remade into a hysterical DIY musical by Takeshi Miike, THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS.

His second, THE FOUL KING, was a comedy about an office worker who becomes a masked wrestler and loses himself in the fantasy life.

His short film HOME, in the pan-Asian horror anthology THREE, is a hallucinatory nightmare about limbo in a housing estate. That whetted his appetite for A TALE OF TWO SISTERS, a gothic ghost story that takes the key Korean folktale about the evil stepmother and the revenge of the dead girl she persecuted and reimagines it into a labyrinthine maze of psychological trauma, and is probably the most stylish ghost story in the current cycle of Asian horror films.

A BITTERSWEET LIFE is Kim's entry in the gangster genre. It has more in common with Cocteau, French existential movies and Michael Mann. The hero is a gangland enforcer who has never been in love, who doesn't have a life outside of his work. He's a coiled spring of precise, efficient violence and highly valued by his boss. He's given an assignement: to watch his boss' young mistress, and if she's unfaithful, to kill her.

He chooses not to kill her, and unleashes an avalanche of Hell and Retribution upon himself. But when a hard man's heart melts for the first time in his life, and he's made to pay for it, he's apt to return some Hell and Retribution of his own.

It's not the originality of the plot, but the oblique and unexpected approach Kim Ji-Won takes to tell his story here. He goes all out with the hyperreal, ultrastylish Cinemascope compositions of cool, sleek surfaces that mirror his hero's melting glacial exterior. The setpieces are amazing, but it's the moments of silence that punctuate them that make the movie surprisingly contemplative, the camera dwelling on the star's face, after the torture sequences, the fights, and the apocalyptic shoot-out. The film becomes increasingly off-beat as it goes along, my favourite moments being a bunch of bumbling Russian-Siberian arms dealers. And Kim withholds the emotional pay-off and the revelations for the final moments of the movie, making it a gangster movie that plays to the rhythm of a heart breaking in slow motion.

This is one of the of the best films of the year.

ARAHAN is the Korean martial arts-superhero comedy hit of 2004.

A nerdish traffic cop is accidentally zapped by a shopgirl with Chi powers when she was trying to stop a purse-snatcher. He discovers that her father and the friends who trained her are Secret Masters of martial arts who who has stayed hidden in ordinary life for decades, waiting for the right pupil to pass their teachings to. And they in turn discover that with his extraordinary Chi potential, that student is him. When an old enemy escapes from his prison, intent on taking over the world, they suddenly have a deadline to turn him into a Master to save the day.

Again, the premise isn't original, but it's the execution and incidental details that carry the show. The wittiest touch is the story's location of superpowered sages hiding among the bickering urban working class of modern-day Seoul, working as shopkeepers, labourers and small businessmen. The cute superpowered girl works as a convenience store who uses her breaks to run across rooftops and down the sides of buildings to fight crime. The supervillain is unleashed from a secret tomb by workmen drilling to extend some roadworks. The martial arts wire-fu is as slick and accomplished as anything from Hong Kong, but takes the movie one-ups CROUCHING TIGER by being totally irreverent and taking the piss at every opportunity. As a superhero movie, it shares a lot in common with Raimi's Spider-man films, but is a lot more exuberant and much funnier.

Director Ryu Seung-Wan is one of the other top five directors in Korea. He's got all the savvy and inventive wit of Sam Raimi, and casts his brother, the talented Ryu Seung-Bum as his lead.

CRYING FIST

So yes, Ryu Seung-Wan is practically the Korean Sam Raimi, and here he takes a completely different tack after ARAHAN.

The story is simple: an aging boxer and a juvenile delinquent separately use the sport to claw their way back to a life worth living, and eventually face each other in a lightweight championship bout where both has everything to lose and everything to gain.

Boxing movies are underdog redemption stories, not to mention weepies for men. Guys feel better about being emotional after having the snot pounded after them, because they feel less girly about it, and CRYING FIST lays it on in spades. It subverts the conventions by making both its main characters sympathetic underdogs fighting to regain their dignity.

Choi Min-Sik from OLD BOY is the older guy, a former Silver Medalist boxer whose life has gone to shit after years of bad investments and fair-weather friends who took his money and never came back. His wife has thrown him out and his son is embarrassed by him. He has brain damage from all those blows to the head and he makes money by offering himself as a punching bag to passers-by to take out their frustrations on.

Ryu Seung-Bum, the director's brother again, plays a completely different role from the well-meaning nerd in ARAHAN. Here he's a sullen tearaway with a mountain of pent-up rage and a way with his fists. He starts to find an outlet in the boxing program in jail, and after his father dies, feels the need to atone for the grief he caused his ailing grandmother.

By the time the two men meet in the ring at the film's climax, we're rooting for both of them and watching the tragedy of two men trying to find redemption by pummelling the shit out of each other.

Unlike the cartoon stylisation of ARAHAN, director Ryu goes for a sharp, high-contrast look and the use of long lenses to draw you into the characters' world. And unlike namby-pamby Hollywood fights, he shoots the fights in long uninterrupted mastershots without the use of stunt doubles. It's the dynamism of both style and story that reinvents the boxing movie.

Sounds like Korea is aping HK's strongest genres: the wire fu flick and the heroic blood shed gangster movie. Hopefully these movies (and Sympathy for Lady Vegeance) will be in Chinatown next time I visit Vancouver
Classified under:Korea,movies

Site overhaul almost finito

2005-08-09T00:05:00.000-07:00

Well, it took me a good couple of hours, but the site redesign is almost finished. Thoughts, anyone?

Deeds and memes.

2005-08-06T13:22:00.000-07:00

Well, as of a couple of hours ago, I finished my good deeds for the week and phoned up Pearl. Today's her birthday, you see, and I give her my annual phone call today. I can honestly say that this year was better than my call last year since this time she was actually home and I didn't have to talk to her Englishly challenged mother. We didn't chat that much, since I had woke her up, something that tends to happen when I give my exes a ring (this also happened when I called up Miwako on her birthday, earlier this week). Since she was so sleepy, I told her that I'd phone her up in a couple of days, most likely later in the day so I could talk to her in a more concrete state.

Had she been awake, I doubt that we'd have that much to say. For the last week, we've been emailing each other quite a bit; an email per day. It's like the old days, brain picking with a dash of inuendo. It's good to know that she's still the same person, inspite of the fact that she's getting married.

Tangently, I've shamelessly stolen another meme from Heather. Shameless, I tell you!

1. Reply with your name and I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll pick a flavor of jello to wrestle with you in.
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on your journal. Unless I got it from your journal, or you've already posted it on your journal.

I usually don't do this, but I'm up for the interaction. Indulge me, once again. This, I command.
Classified under:personal,memes

Books that I want to read

2005-08-06T10:21:00.000-07:00

Coming up later this year is a new comic by Vertigo comics called Testament. The premise is intriguing, as it's an alogorical comic about the Bible. Much like how cinema often reinterprets the Dracula myth for each generation, Testament reimagines the Old Testament in a world much like our own. Seeing as Vertigo usually trades their comics 6 months after the end of an arc, I'll be waiting until next October to pick the series up.

My buddy from tree planting recommended a book to me called the Dice Man. He assures me that it's one of the greatest novels that he's ever read. Considering how much reading material digested, I'll take his word for it. He tells me that it's a book about a psychologist that, in a fit of boredom, decides to make all his life choices based on a roll of the dice. Denis urged me to go into the book clean, knowing no more than that, so thats what I have planned.

The collected edition of Demo is coming out later this year, the critically acclaimed comic by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan. Originally sold as "what if kids had powers in the real world", it looks to be much better than that.

Also published by AiT-Planet Lar, the guys that brought out Demo is Tales From Fish Camp. It involves tales of hard drinking and hard work, which sounds like tree planting.

The first two trades of Scott Pilgrim will be waiting for me in PG when I get back. I look forward to this more than anything else.

Classified under:books,comics

Why Rogers is pissing me off

2005-08-03T19:45:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, I was pretty stoked to find out that I could send email to my Rogers cell account. Seeing as I'm now spending most of my day away from the computer *gasp*, I figured that getting my e-mail would make things easier. Since I have an utterly kickass gmail account, I knew that anything that came into my mail box would easily be forwarded to my cell, unlike my shitty hotmail one. I had all this cool shit planned out for my cell. I was going to use one of those RSS subscription services to send feeds to my e-mail account, allowing me to pretty much have all the web access that I'd need on my phone. Pretty cool, eh? Unfortunately for me, Rogers has this bullshit policy of billing me for emails received as text messages. To receive a message, I have to text Rogers to authorize it, a 15 cent fee each time. To make matters worse, there's a 160 character limit per message, which means that depending on the length of the message, you'll be shelling out more money. Pretty shitty. I heard that this policy is a relatively new, just added last month. , so I'm not the only one being burned. Hopefully Rogers realizes the error of their ways and reinstitues their old system, but seeing as they're a money hungry corporation, it's quite doubtful.

Le sigh!
Classified under:rogers,cell phones

Rob needs help badly!

2005-08-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

If someone could get all the tracks from the Go! Team's album, Thunder, Ligthening Strike and put them on the internet via You Send It, I would be *very* grateful.

Classified under:personal,the Go! Team

Memegasm!

2005-07-28T22:02:00.000-07:00

If you're on Heather's friend list on her livejournal (and chance are, you're not, because you're not fucking cool), you might have noticed that she posted a meme. I'm not one to do memetic stuff, usually, but for my push for content, I'm taking the plunge. Prepare yourselves!

The meme goes as follows:
Ask me for my "Top 5" of pretty much anything & I will give you my list.

Then copy this in your journal and let everyone else ask you for lists
Pretty pushy, eh? I have followed her orders, as I am a weak willed man. Aras, she didn't answer my question. Unlike her, however, I WILL! Isn't the internet wild and utterly mad?
Classified under:memes,lists

Tone Twilight Zone

2005-07-28T13:46:00.000-07:00

One of my weirder experiences tree planting was one of the e-mails that I received when I got back. It was from my lady friend from Japan, Miwa. She had e-mailed and told me that I had phoned her while I was tree planting and wanted to thank me for the phone call. This is odd for a couple of reasons. First of all, I had no access to telephones while I was planting trees. This makes it pretty much impossible as it is to talk to her. Secondly, even if I did have telephone access, she never gave me her telephone number. Thirdly, assuming that I *did* call her, using my cell, there was no signal where I was, and, even if I did have signal, I have to contact Rogers before I makes calls overseas lest someone has stolen my cell. So yeah, it was pretty disconcerting. I'm almost of the opinion that there's a Rob from a parallel universe. It's *very* weird. That said, judging from her sheer joy in the e-mail, she was pleased as punch that I called. Today, Miwako returned the favour and called me this morning. It was great to hear her trademarke "Harro, Rob!" once again and catch up on each other's lives, despite me not having called her before. Her birthday is coming up soon, which means I'll have to give her a phone call. For real, this time
Classified under:weird,Miwako+Takabe

Spin's Greatest Albums of the Last 20 Years

2005-07-26T22:05:00.000-07:00

Classified under:music,lists
Last month's issue featured a top 100 list of the greatest CDs of the last 20 years. I, being a list whore, had no choice but to pick it up. Since Spin
isn't on par with Blender or Rolling Stone, there's a lot of suspect choices on the list. That said, I figured that I'd save you all some money and give you

the top 20 albums of the last 20 years.

Note, the albums bolded are ones that I own, bootlegged or otherwise. Gasp in shock and horror as we see the horrible holes in my musical library. My commentary will be in brackets. Without further ado...

1)Radiohead-OK Computer
2)Public Enemy-It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
3)Nirvana-Nevermind
4)Pavement-Slanted and Enchanted
5)the Smiths-the Queen is Dead
6)Pixies-Surfer Rosa (I listened to this CD over and over again while I was planting at Blue River. It took a while to get into, but now I *really* love their sound. Frank Black's scratchy guitar bat screeches are phenomenal)
7)De La Soul-3 Fee High and Rising
8)Prince-Sign 'o' the Times
9)PJ Harvey-Rid of Me (Anyone ever listen to PJ Harvey? There was a lot of buzz on her new album but I've seemed to have completely missed out. Last summer, the CBC decried that Alanis Morriset had fucked her career over and had killed the riot grrl movement that she started. Note: this might be bull)
10)N.W.A.-Straight Outta Compton (I get merciless ribbing from Anson for liking this album)
11)U2-Achtung Baby
12)Beastie Boys-Paul's Boutique (This is the only Beastie Boys album that I own)
13)Husker Du-New Day Rising (Husker Du always sounded like a wannabe hippie icecream company)
14)Sonic Youth-Daydream Nation'
15)Liz Phair-Exile in Guyville
16)Beck-Odelay (Shame alert! I never heard this album until I started planting trees this summer. Very impressive. You could hear the Dust Brother's fingerprints all over it)
17)Nas-Illmatic
18)Guns 'N' Roses-Appetite for Destruction (I've been meaning to buy this for ages. Welcome to the Jungle and Sweet Child o' Mine are both very ace)
19)Hole-Live Through This (When my friend from Ireland, Denis, say this, he called the whole list a load of bollocks. He doesn't dig Hole)
20)Wu-tang Clan-Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
21)Public Enemy-Fear of a Black Planet
22)My Bloody Valentine-Loveless (The WEF used to rave about My Bloody Valentine. Am I missing out?)
23)Outkast-Skankonia (I should pick this one up to, as it has Ms Jackson and Gasoline Dreams. Great songs, those)
24)Sleater-Kinney-Dig Me Out ( I have it on good authority that Sleater Kinney is pretty good too)
25)Nine Inch Nails-The Downward Spiral
26)Bjork-Post (Bjork has a huge queer following. Why? This is something that I don't understand, as I am a straight man)
27)the Cure-The Head on the Door (I have a copy of the Cure's set from Coachella 2004 that I've probably listened to twice now. I wasn't that impressed.)
28)Oasis-Definatelu Maybe
29)Fugazi-13 Songs
30)the Notorious B.I.G.-Ready to Die (I had a chance to listen to this album this summer. Halfway through, I said "Fuck this", and switched to Dre 2001.)
31)Dinosaur Jr.-You're Living All Over Me
32)the Replacements-Tim (I bought this when I bought DJ Shadow's Pre-emptive strike for my love of Can't Hardly Wait and Alex Chilton, which aren't on this album. Since it's on the list, I guess it's time to re-examine.
33)Ice Cube-AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted (I still say that Ice Cube is our generation's Bill Cosby)
34)Elliot SMith-Either/Or
35)Dr. Dre-the Chronic (Thanks to San Andreas, I'd probably pick this up for Dre Day and Nothin' But a G Thang)
36)Pixies-Doolite
37)Guided By Voices-Bee Thousand
38)A Tribe Called Quest-The Low End Theory
39)Lucinda Williams-Lucinda Williams
40)Run-D.M.C.-Raising Hell
41)Smashing Pumpkins-Siamese Dreams
42)Jane's Addiction-Nothing's Shocking (And yes, I am aware that I'm missing out hardcore by not having picked up the Smashing Pumpkins and Jane's Addiction.
Truth be told, I didn't start picking up CD's until the late 90s. FACT!)
43)Boogie Down Productions-Criminal Minded
44)Green Day-Dookie
45)Kanye West-College Dropout (I probably wouldn't have picked this up if I didn't hear Lyndsey glorify Kanye almost every fucking day on the block. It's an excellent rap album that takes the piss out of most of the rap that you hear on the radio. Great lyrics and fantastic beats. I picked it up for 10 bucks at CD Plus. You can't go wrong with that.
46)The Fall-This Nation's Saving Grace
47)Eric B & Rakim-Paid in Full
48)Radiohead-Kid A (Has one of my favourite opening tracks of all time. I was so impressed with their sound on this, I picked up Hail to the Thief. I thought Kid A was better)
49)Lauryn Hill-The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
50)New Order-Low-Life
51)Nirvana-In Utero
52)Beastie Boys-Licensed to Ill
53)Rage Against the Machine-The Battle of Los Angeles (Both this and Licensed to Ill, my brother Simon owns and loves)
54)the Breeders-Last Splash
55)The Chemical Brothers-Dig Your Own Hole
56)PJ Harvey=To Bring You My Love
57)White Stripes-White Blood Cells (Yeah, I know, I should own this album. Blah, blah, blah)
58)Metalica-Master of Puppets
59)Modest Mouse-The Lonesome Crowded West
60)De La Soul-De La Soul Is Dead
61)Weezer-Pinkerton (I have a feeling that hard-core Weezer fans, Mike, I'm talking to you, will dispute this being on the list)
62)Missy Elliot-Supa Dupa Fly
63)Pavement-Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
64)Eminem-The Marshal Matthers LP
65)Basement Jaxx-Remedy
66)Outkast-Aquemini
67)Slayer-Reign in Blood
68)Tricky-Maxiquaye
69)DJ Shadow-Entroducing (Being a huge Shadow fan, I'm glad to see him on the list. Entroducing is an awesome album)
70)Jay-Z-the Blueprint
71)The Jesus and Mary Chain-Psychocandy
72)Raekwon-Onlu Built 4 Cuban Linx
73)Pulp-Different Class (The coolest girl that I worked with this summer, Angela, was a huge Pulp fan. She, Denis and I would spend our evenings in the truck listening to this CD belting out Common People almost every night. Besides staring at the ass of Candance, IMO, the cutest girl at camp, this was my favourite part of my downtime)
74)Portishead-Dummy
75)Le Tigre-Le Tigre
76)Belle and Sebastian-If You're Feeling Sinister
77)Wilco-Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (I have the feeling that Mike will sell me on this one)
78)the Stone Roses-the Stone Roses
79)Moby-Everything is Wrong
80)D'Angelo-Voodoo
81)Beck-Mellow Gold
82)Jeff Buckley-Grace
83)At the Drive-In-Relationship of Command
84)Soundgarden-Superunknown
85)R.E.M.-Automatic for the People
86)Meat Puppers-Up on the Sun
87)Blur Parklife
88)Stereolab-Emperor Tomato Ketchup (Didn't Stereolab do that infectious song for that Voltzwagon commercial?)
89)Yeah Yeah Yeahs-Fever to Tell
90)Sonic Youth-Sister
91)XTC-Skylarking
92)Big Black-Atomizer
93)Pearl Jam-Ten
94)Slint-Spiderland
95)Elastica-Elastica
96)the Pogues-Rum, Sodomy & the Lash
97)Neutral Milk Hotel-In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
98)Cornershop-When I was Born for the 7th Time
99)Afgan Wings-Gentlemen
100)the Strokes-Is This It (More like This is shit. After listening to this album treeplanting, for the love of me, I couldn't figure out what all the fuss
was about)

Chatting with the ex

2005-07-25T21:03:00.000-07:00

Classified under:personal,
I chatted with Pearl for the first time in probably three odd months last night. Normally, I don't mind chatting with her. She's a smart, funny gal who knows me better than any other woman that I've dated. And, unlike my other exes, it never feels ackward or weird chatting with her. She always gives me her full undivided attention and never makes me feel like I'm chatting to myself.

I found out that her fiancé is moving to Leithbridge this fall, which causes me much glee. Knowing of her high libido and her distaste of long distance relationships, it'll be intersting to see if she lasts it out. Yeah, I'm being malicious, and yeah, I'm aware that they have a fantastic relationship, but it would great for the guy to get his just deserts for cheating on me with her. There shall be no sympathy for mister vengeance.

She also sent me a picture of her and her fiance and I have to say, that she's one of those women that gets hotter as she gets older. Fah! To make matters worse, she insinuated that she had a threesome with the guy and has been wolfing down pussy hardcore. This pisses me off to no end, as I've told her numerous times that under no circumstances that I want to know of her sex life. Case closed. She figured that it was kosher since it involved a women. No dice. It really irks me that she fucking lacks respect about how I feel about that shit. I really wish that she'd lay off. Knowing her, she probably will.

Her birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, which means that I'll have to give her my annual phone call. If it's like anything like last year, she'll gab my ear off like nothing ever happened between us. Near the end of our relationship, it got to be annoying, listening to her babble on and on about others for 15 minutes before she asked me how my day was, but I can handle it once a year.

Global Frequency pilot

2005-07-24T22:09:00.000-07:00

Classified under:Global Frequency,:television,

I wrote *way* back in 2003 that the Global Frequency comics was "the most expensive television pilot never made". Judging what John Rogers, one of the brains behind the series has to say, this is quite true and is one of the reasons that the show never got picked up. Thanks to my buddy, Stephen, I got a chance to see the shit canned pilot for the television series. The verdict? Well, for starters, it lacks the balls to the walls urgency of the comic book. Where the comic was densely packed action barely contained in 22 pages, the pilot for the Global Frequency had lots of room to breathe, even allowing time for *gasp* character development. And that's fine and dandy. The comic medium is much different than what you can do in television. My other gripe was that the acting wasn't that great, with the exception of Michelle Forbes as the hardass Miranda Zero. Like all television series', I'm sure that this would have improved had the show went on. What's good about the series? Thankfully, it captures the esscence of the comic, which is a bunch of orindary people working together for the greater good of humanity. And the pilot had some great pieces of meat for comic fans, foreshadowing the cyborg that they encounter in the second issue.

But that's all peas and carrots. Check out the pilot yourself and see how it compares to the comic.

I don't understand Kotex

2005-07-23T22:37:00.000-07:00

I don't understand commercials about feminine products. I just saw a commercial by Kotex that declared that there's nothing plain about "plain janes", then segueways into how their new symbol is going to be an orchid. Am I missing something here? Is different menstrual symptons make a woman less plain than others? And why the orchid? Somehow, I don't see the co-relation between that and the moon blood. Is this because I am male?

Rob versus the employement agency

2005-05-11T15:03:00.000-07:00

I fear for the future of Canadian youth using job finding services. Lets take my experiences yesterday, for example. I met with his guy called Francis, who I thought would help me find a job resource center, basically a place where I could print off resumes without having to be charged tall dollars. He, on the other hand, was an overzelous social worker with dubious mental facilities. I became susipicious of his abilities when he started to show me how to use the internet.
"Well, Robert, this website can show us how to find work. Lets look up counsellor, for example, that's my job."
He types it up and the screen for various counselling jobs appears on the screen.
"Ineresting," he mutters, and studies the job requirements for a couple of minutes before I politely cough.

He showed his true incompetence when he phoned me up today.
"Is this Robert?"
"Yes?"
"This is Francis, I have good news for you!"
"Uh... okay?"
"You have been approved for EI! Congratulations! There is a snag, however. Because of this, we can not process your claim through us. You must go through CorPro."
"I'm a little confused here. I didn't apply for EI. Are you sure?"
"Yes, positive. So, you know where Corpro is, correct? We need to schedule an apoinment as soon as possible"
"Wait, wait... I didn't go there for EI. I just wanted a printer, remember."
And then Francis gets a little beligerent.
"Robert, this is a good thing, I explained this to you, you *have* EI! You can get subsidized for a job!" He pauses for a minute. Silence.
"Wait, you are Robert, correct?"
"Yeah, this is Rob."
"I'm so sorry. I thought that you were Steve."
"Steve? You called me Robert all throughout the conversation. What's going on?"
"I'm so sorry about this." A rueful pause. "I'm so sorry." He then hangs up.

Rob nerds out on Kinja

2005-05-09T23:14:00.000-07:00

Classified under:RSS,
I've always liked the idea of an RSS feed, but I've never liked the execution of RSS feeders. Yeah, it's handy to see all your favourite blogs updated in one place, but I never dug having to click through a bunch of tabs, like a message board to read someone's blog. I like reading everything in one fell swoop, like what livejournal offers. Thankfully, kinja offers does this, and offers RSS feeds in one webpage using a digets format. It's far from perfect, tho'. Unlike a service such as bloglines, kinja offers ads. It's not a huge distraction, but the ads are tad oversized and distrupt reading flow. I wish that the page would offer an RSS feed as well, so I could combine it with RSS Digest so that I could add a side bar either here or to MKZ so that I can keep all my webpages centralized. Gripes aside, I recommend it to anyone that hasn't used an RSS reader. If you're interested, you can read my daily blogs and give it a shot. I'd be interested in checking out everyone's list or bloglines, if they have one.

Interesting Nintendo Revolutions rumours

2005-05-07T23:14:00.000-07:00

Classified under:rumours,Nintendo Revolution
Here's the juicy stuff from the forum, and I don't think that you guys deserve the pain of having to register for scant info.

The controller will be wireless; he’s right about that. As you also know, the Xbox 360’s controllers will be wireless as well. Where do you think they got this idea? That’s why Nintendo is still trying to determine what to show at E3. From what I’ve heard, they will show the design of the system as well as games. I’ll tell you about the software later though.

The controller will also be pressure sensitive. The pressure you put into it will determine certain things, such as movement. This is another optional capibility. Someone on Nintendo’s board mentioned this months ago. They said that “touching is good, but feeling is better.” This may sound strange, but it provides great controls. Racing games will really be helped by this control setting.

The Nintendo Revolution will also include voice control more advanced than anything seen so far. Nintendogs is just the beginning. To achieve this, Nintendo sent us headsets (similar to ones you can use for Xbox Live) that are wirelessless communicating with the console. Imagine being able to merely call for an airstrike or reload your gun by giving out commands orally. So far, we have put this feature to the test the most; as you can see, I’m excited over this feature.

...As Nintendo has stated before, the system will be online. In my eyes, the online system they have set up is the most revolutionary part of the system. While Sony and Microsoft are busy turning their systems into trojan horses for their other electronic devices, Nintendo is going to use the Revolution for direct communication with gamers. The only way I can describe it is as an internet service. Imagine turning it on and checking your mail on the system. You see previews and demos of DS and Revolution games that you can download. A magazine similar to Nintendo Power will be exclusive to the system, and you will be able to access it on the Revolution’s homepage. As you check you mail, you will also see various invitations from gamers on your buddy list who want to play you. There are so many other ways this is going to be used. Once the Revolution comes out, there will be no reason to hang out on message boards. Message boards as well as chat rooms will be available on the Revolution so that gamers can discuss and challenge each other all day. And the best thing is that the entire thing is totally free and easy to use. Why play Madden on Xbox Live when you’ll be able to play it for free on the Revolution with much better services?

IGN dimisses this as bullshit, but it sounds interesting to me. Hopefully Nintendo reveals some stuff at this year's E3.

Why I love Miwako

2005-05-06T10:59:00.000-07:00

Classified under:personal,
I e-mailed my good friend Miwako a couple of weeks ago, the first time since she moved back to Japan. In the e-mail I told her of Anson's habit of having to have me go with him *everywhere*, even if it's a short trip to the store that's literally outside the door. Miwako, replied with her usual wit.

From your story, I felt Anson is like Japanese girls because most Japanese girls go everywhere with friends. Even though when they go to washroom. ha ha

Thankfully, Anson doesn't require to hold his dick when he takes a piss.

Why I don't watch movies with Anson

2005-05-05T01:14:00.000-07:00

After having Anson fall asleep during Sin City and cutting our screening of Oldboy short (in Chinese subtitles, no less) to get some sleep, I have officially vowed never to watch a movie with Anson again. I have no clue how he couldn't be enthralled by Oldboy. For one hour, I had to listen to him say, over and over again, "I don't understand, Rob". Sometimes I wonder why I bother introducing my friends to cinema.

The Flaming Lips: Live @ Coachella

2005-05-04T08:11:00.000-07:00

Classified under:Flaming Lips,music
Those who know me are undoubtably aware that I really dig recordings of live music. Be it small venues or super crowds, there's nothing quite like listening to the band interacting with the audience and making subtle changes to their music to fit the venue and situation. I'm also a huge fan of the Flaming Lips who are famous for putting on fantastic live shows as well. Thanks to the power of soulseek, the heir apparent to audiogalaxy, I've managed to get a fantastic live track of the Lips live at Coachella. Not only is the recording fantastically clean, but manages to capture the fun and playfulness of Wayne Coyne rocking it up with the audience. Listening to the call and answer portion of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots gives me goosebumps everytime that I listen to it.

Viral marketing: Greenzap

2005-04-21T15:13:00.000-07:00

Classified under:marketing,
Normally I don't try to shill products, but this one interests me. Greenzap is the internet's new alternative to Paypal. Considering all the fuss that paypal has been experiencing, it's cool to see a company offer an alternative. Their business plan is a smart one too. For those who pre-register, they get 25 dollars in their account, plus 5 dollars for a referal. So, instead of spending money on advertising, they're rewarding word of mouth. Very clever, if you ask me. It'll be interesting to see if it pays off. Reguardless, if anyone is intersted in getting an account, click here and use the referal code flyingautobus.

And thus ends the shilling.

Music Track of the Day: Apparat Organ Quartet

2005-04-13T21:28:00.000-07:00

Classified under:music,mp3,Apparat Organ Quartet
Hey kids, you remember when all the cool bands were coming out of Iceland? Remember how most of them were ethereal examinations of space whales fucking? Forget about it. Some Icelandic music actually rock. How so? You do it by bringing together four crazy -ass organists and tell them to go full bore on refurbished organs. The Apparat Organ Quartet does Sunday mass could never do. They make organ music sound cool and not draconian.

RIP BassWolf

2005-04-13T15:16:00.000-07:00

Classified under:tagname,Guitar Wolf
Pitfork reported today that the beloved bass player of Guitar Wolf, Billy aka Hideaki Sekiguchi died from a heart attack.

Rock 'n Roll is NOT over, baby! Rock 'n Roll NEVER DIES!

Japanese love hotel report

2005-04-13T10:17:00.000-07:00

Classified under:Japan,sex

Outside, the price list. There are some "shifts" to bear in mind. It's not as simple as "3 p.m. check-in, noon check-out". You can go with the "Stay" rate, which means "all night", but check-in for this rate is 9-10 p.m. It's the most expensive.

"Rest" means 1-3 hours. It can be done any time, but the rooms will probably fill for the night soon after 10!

The last, "Free Time" is available during the day, essentially "all you can screw" during set periods.

Notice that the prices end in "~". That means that the price is for the cheapest room in the house, which may already be occupied!

Music Track Of The Day: the Futureheads-Hounds of Love

2005-04-12T17:37:00.000-07:00

Classified under:music,mp3,the Futureheads
When you breed above average capela with the renaissance of New Wave, you get UK's Futureheads. Their cover of Kate Bush's Hounds of Love is infectious. The pulse of guitars with the "ooh oooh" blips sounds like the musical equivilent of sonar pigning through a school of fish. This is fantastic head bopping dance rock recommended to me by Mike. It's easily one of my favourite singles so far this year.

Useful tools: CDisplay Comic Reader

2005-04-10T21:19:00.000-07:00

Classified under:comics,software
For those of you who have been downloading comics torrents and have been fustrated with the .cbr file extension, I bring you good news. CDisplay is a program that allows you view .cbr files, comic style. It's pretty flexible too, allowing you to fit the pages on the screen without scrolling, and, if my memory serves, allows you to see double spreads on one page too. Go forth and download it. This is my good deed for the week, no doubt.

Aeon Flux movie website is up!

2005-04-09T20:35:00.000-07:00

Classified under:movies,Aeon Flux
One of my favourite cartoons from the '90s, Aeon Flux is being adapted to the screen by Paramount Pictures. Juding by the website it looks to be a *very* faithful adaptation. Charlize Theron catching a fly with her eyelashes? Pitch perfect, baby.

More Mix Cd Goodness

2005-04-06T20:28:00.000-07:00

Classified under:music,mix Cds
I found another website dedicated to mix Cds today. Judging by the fact that she puts enough time to create covers for the CDs with track listings and what appears to be back covering, this woman looks to have skills comparable to xtop's fantastic mix tapes. Her website hasn't been updated in almost a year, so it's hard to say if she'll respond with an e-mail and send me CD, but I'm crossing my fingers.

Audiopost: Grant Morrison on his alien abduction experience

2005-04-05T08:11:00.000-07:00

Classified under:Grant Morrison,mp3
I've been a fan of Grant Morrison's work for a long time and listening to him speak is a special treat. In this audio clip, he talks about his alien abduction experience, what it signified to him and how it related to the Invisibles.

Time Traveling With Tesuya Mizuguchi

2005-03-31T21:07:00.000-08:00

Classified under:video games,music
If you're not familiar with Mizuguchi's work, you're missing out one of gaming's most innovative creators, best known for his innovative use of music in games. He's the brains behind Sega's Space Channel 5 and the mind altering cult classic rez. Instead of doing the regular question and answer that most interviews stick with, 1.com opted to reanimate the music from Mizuguchi's gameography and used it to jump start old memories. It's a fantastic interview it's strongly recommended that you watch the video clips to get the full effect. Ace reporting.

Creepy new Burger King commercial (Windows Media)

2005-03-31T20:06:00.000-08:00

Classified under:advertising,Burger King
It only seems like yesterday that Burget King was using subversion to sell burgers. Thakfully (or not, depending on your sensibilities), the King has once again has dipped into the well of well of post modern marketing with the help of famed music video director David LaChapelle. Although the new commercial lacks the creepy undertones of having the Burger King wake up next to a man pimping his new burger, there is something disturbing about women playing with buckets of secret sauce.

The Onion's Good Scenes/Bad Scenes

2005-03-29T22:55:00.000-08:00

Classified under:webjunk,the Onion
In that last couple of years, on Tuesday, I've been looking forward to the Onion's AV Club moreso than the satire. This week's special on Bad Scenes in Good movies/Good Scenes in Bad Movies. Highlights features cinematic weirdos Christopher Walken and my favourite, Crispin Glover.

Sometimes, the strangest actors do their most subversive work in children's films, where their demented quirks stand in sharp relief to the family-friendly wholesomeness. (See also: Christopher Walken in The Country Bears, above.) As the prototypically cruel head of a orphanage, Glover forgets he's in an overlong Nike commercial and sets about terrorizing kids in his inimitably peculiar style. In the most twisted scene, Glover tries to squeeze information out of young Jonathan Lipnicki (the bespectacled moppet from Jerry Maguire) by holding a lighter under the sole remaining picture of his long-lost mother.

What is it? Glover inspired trauma.

Holy Shit! Gene Defcon is back!

2005-03-28T22:12:00.000-08:00

Classified under:music,Gene Defcon
Olympia Washington, and (dare I say it?) quite possibly the world's best lo-fi indie band is back. Bingo, Gene Defcon is back with his long awaited (by me) follow up album to Come Party With Me 2000. Oh yes! We've missed you, Gene Defcon. Carry on, you party cowboy.

Movies that I want to see: Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan

2005-03-28T21:17:00.000-08:00

Classified under:movies,Shaw Brothers

I had one of my Chinese friends, Chi, scout Vancouver's Chinatown last year for Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan. He said that he found it, but decided not to pick it up since he thought that it was a porno and he thought that I made a mistake with my film request. Is the film pornographic? Probably as pornographic as a shampoo commerical. Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan is one of the Shaw Brother's early exploitation movies, packed to the gills with sex and bloody kung fu action. The plot is typical revenge fare, an angry lesbian prostitute decides to kill all those who wronged her in the past. The reviews that I've say that the action is top notch and doesn't skimp out on the action. Something that I'll definately try to pick up this weekend in Vancouver.

Not pr0n

2005-03-28T16:28:00.000-08:00

Classified under: webjunk,
Not pr0n is my favourite internet time waster. Where most games on the internet focuses on slaughtering strangers using a half the US military's armoury of weapons, not pr0n challenges you to use your brain. Fustrating but extremely rewarding, it's worth the countless hours that you'll sink into it.

Sam Fisher on Metal Gear

2005-03-22T20:55:00.000-08:00

Classified under:video games,

A while back, I mentioned that I've been trying out the Metal Gear Solid games, just to get a taste of the competition. As I've said before, most of my experience with video games has been through military training simulators, which offer all the interactivity of a video game, with none of the fun. So I'm no expert game reviewer, but I'll give you my thoughts.

Let me start off by saying this -- in all my years of covert operations, I've never encountered robotic ninjas or rollerskating fat guys. I've never dealt with vampires or enemies telling me to do things with my controller, either. This is just ridiculous stuff here.

It's bad enough that your enemies are straight out of the comic books, but then there's the silly names. No self-respecting bad guy is going to call themselves names like Howitzer Platypus or Bazooka Marmoset. I'd like to meet the Japanese game developer who makes up these names, and make sure all aerosol products are kept out of reach.

Movies that I have to see: GI Samurai

2005-03-21T22:53:00.000-08:00

Classified under:movies,
The title pretty much sums the movie up. It's a Sonny Chiba actioner where he plays a military officer that, get this, travels back to Feudal Japan to fight along and against samurai warriros. And did I mention that it has a tank fighting a platoon of samurai? Sold!