Subverted Expectations in My Old Hometown

I posted earlier today about the somewhat noisy environment I'm living in. At the time I found myself looking forward to visiting my parents in New Hamburg, so I could experience some of that good old fashioned solitude I remember so well.

Instead of solitude, I found out that my parent's house -- the one I grew up in -- is surrounded by a ring of six barking beagles. The house next door sports exactly SEVEN children. An angry father kept yelling at his dog "SHUT UP! DON'T BACKTALK ME! YOU SHUT UP!!!"

And then, amidst the cacophony, somebody began driving their team of snowmobiles up and down the gravel road. You know what a snowmobile sounds like when it's skidding over a mountain of snow? Imagine it instead grinding its way through dirt and rocks at 5kph. It's like a dumptruck, a leafblower, and an oil drill all at once, complete with swearing.

I can't believe it. My house is quieter than such tranquility. I count my blessings, over and over and over again.

My New NEW Digs

I moved here in September when it was a little bit chilly and everybody was retreating indoors. Over the winter I've barely seen anything of my neighbours.

Now, with the obscenely beautiful weather, I'm learning a bit more about them than I'd like to. We all have little patios so we're sort of in each other's faces. Plus I'm living next door to the Brady Bunch, a family whose uncountable children simply cannot be held within in the confines of a two-bedroom house, so they spill out in all directions and are pretty much below every window and inescapable.

I'm a much more relaxed person now than I used to be, so I am better able to view their activities as "healthy play" as opposed to "intrusively noisy." And I can (so far) drown them out when I really need to concentrate by turning on the furnace fan, which provides the added benefit of air circulation and which the previous owners had on pretty much constantly.

Fortunately this community does not seem to host partiers, at least not the type for whom partying is a lifestyle instead of just a diversion. I much prefer the sound of children playing than the sound of thumping music. And even more fortunately, my other neighbours -- the ones I share a wall with -- are so quiet that I occasionally worry about them. This is a far cry from the days of yore: the barking daschund, the wrestling pre-teens on the stairway, the pot-fueled 2:00am guitar parties on a chilly Tuesday morning.

I think this will be good. I don't know how much any of these people will like me...some of them say hello when I'm watering my terminally thirsty shrubbery, while others just walk past.

Other good things: this place is so nice and tidy that it's a pleasure to clean...well, as pleasurable as cleaning can be. Zsa Zsa adores her extended patio time and her tense exchanges with the Stray Badass Cat, who I surreptitiously spray with water when it looks like things are going poorly.

A VERY good thing: just across the expressway from where I live is the beautiful, unspoiled wilderness of Bechtel Park, but to get there I have to take a huge detour around all the fences and across the overpass. I've noticed a little stream that travels UNDER the expressway and into the park, and I've been wondering if I couldn't splash my way over there that way.

So on Friday I started exploring, and holy cow! The stream does indeed travel through a tunnel, and right beside it there is a SECOND tunnel...FOR PEDESTRIANS! It's long and spooky and black -- the kind of thing that city planners don't build anymore for safety reasons -- but thanks to some skillfully-demolished fences it provides convenient access to the park. Not a place to go at night, but a pleasant and adventuresome trip for the noon hour wanderer in search of some peace.

I think I'll need to use it a few times during the warm patio weather.

The World of Tomorrow

This makes me laugh and laugh and laugh:



It's from season two, episode four of "Look Around You," a bizarre British spoof of '80s educational programs. While most of the show requires complete viewing to enjoy, this clip stands alone. I can't describe how much I love it.

If you want more, here's the clip that got me hooked: a look at synthesizers with "Synthesizer Patel." My God.

Career Counselor

After working a variety of jobs and majoring in a degree that I belatedly decided I didn't like, I feel I've finally found the perfect career: technical writer. It has just the right levels of independence, innovation, creativity, and variety.

But that doesn't mean I'm not open to other possibilities! While taking a break from animation (!) and with a cat permanently embedded on my lap, I decided to try..."Career Counselor" by Melvyn Lebowitz.


How can you not trust your future to a 1982 program written in BASIC for an 8-bit computer? Regarding the animated title screen, you'll note that the little pink woman in the dress goes to work in an office building after leaving school, while the naked blue man (presumably cold) works in a factory. He's also waving "Goodbye forever, until my job goes overseas!"

Anyway, which jobs did "Career Counselor" pick for me?

• EDITOR
• HISTORIAN
• HORTICULTURIST
• POLITICAL SCIENTIST
• PROSE WRITER
• SOIL CONSERVATIONIST
• TECHNICAL WRITER

Besides its insistence that I spend more of my time with plants, the suggestions are surprisingly good, though apparently I'm overpaid because the TECHNICAL WRITER's earning level is "24,000-29,999." This is notably higher than the earning level of either the PROSE WRITER or the SOIL CONSERVATIONIST, though the former's employment outlook is strangely "Good-Excellent." I guess things were different in 1982.

Maybe, as a hobby, I will start conserving soil.

Dr. Seuss and Flit: "Scream!"

When menaced by the big-assed stuff of nightmares...


I'm a bit confused by the insignia on John Cleese's right cuff...is that a naval marking, or is was this just something about pajamas at the time?

The Voyage of HMCS Thumpy (Preview)

Some time ago I realized that even though social media networks provide a useful tool for spreading news around, very few people these days will actually click on an audio link. They'll click on an embedded YouTube clip, but hardly anybody bothers to listen to a linked audio file anymore.

Because I want people to listen to (and hopefully buy) my music, I decided to make videos for some of my songs. Unfortunately I suck at building sets and lighting them, and I don't have the money or organizational ability to make such things look good, and I prefer to do everything myself to avoid worries about compensation, vision, and shuffling everybody's timetables.

So I bought Anime Studio Pro 6.1. I figured I could make simple animations to illustrate my music, and for a starter I've been working on a new song called "The Voyage of HMCS Thumpy." Here's an early version of part two of the five-part project, made entirely with the cheaper "Debut" version of the product. Warning: turn down your speakers, it's loud.



One thing that I've learned is that I'm a more visually-creative person than I've given myself credit for. However terrible I was in my highschool art class, I have a pretty good sense of style and proportion once I've grasped my tools. You'll see that more when I've finished the full version.

Which brings me to another thing I've learned about animation: IT TAKES A LOT OF WORK. Having a sophisticated tool like Anime Studio is only a small part of what animation seems to be about: design decisions, subtle tricks, and endless tweaking of the smallest parts of your project. I thought this would be easy, and I was wrong; witness the extended blog silence. Every day and every night I'm working.

Regarding the tool itself, Anime Studio is brilliant. Its interface is annoying and it has some very frustrating bugs, but once you've mastered half of it your options are pretty much unlimited. The little video above barely scrapes the surface. Wait until you've animated a CHARACTER.

Ah yes, the third thing I've learned about animation is that there are certain tasks that everybody dreads, and the biggie is "The Walk Cycle." I've just implemented my first one and I think it's pretty damn good, but I still have a lot to learn.

Anyway, I hope you like the video, and maybe you'll choose to become an animation hobbyist. Maybe I will too. But just remember that even a mediocre result takes a lot of effort and creativity no matter how many spiffy tools you have.

Creepy Pedro Reviews "District 9"

It should not surprise you that, when I accidentally touched the grease of a Hollywood Scriptwriter's typewriter, I began to transform into a Hollywood Scriptwriter myself.

This first manifested as a paunchy sadness. My doctor, instead of giving me Milk of Magnesia and a poultice for my bedsores, hit me on the head and wrapped me in a bag, and the next thing I knew I was in Peter Jackson's torture chamber, screaming.

"I have an idea for a blockbuster movie, but I'm unable to to nail it down, you see," said Mr. Jackson, reclining on a settee with his hairy feet sticking out. "I have stolen a disused Hollywood Scriptwriter's Typewriter from George Lucas' secret museum, but neither my Faceless Spouse nor I can make it operate." And there I saw the Faceless Spouse herself, gnashing and twisting.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?" I cried. "WHERE IS MY WIFE?"

Mr. Jackson applauded. "That's excellent! Your transformation into a Hollywood Scriptwriter is almost complete! We need you to operate the Hollywood Scriptwriter's Typewriter in order to ensure the success of our new movie. We want it to be about rampaging aliens that get all shot up. Other than this we do not know."

"I WILL NOT COOPERATE!" I shouted, but when Peter Jackson shocked me with an energy weapon attached to his belly, I told him that he needed to write a socially-relevant story with a strong character arc.

"Social commentary can be complicated and taxing to the audience," said Peter Jackson.

"Not if there are enough guns," I explained patiently, and both Peter and his Faceless Spouse applauded.

"We'll say it's all very maverick and visionary, and not a Hollywood action film at all!" said Peter, laughing. "If anybody gets bored, we'll say it's simply entertainment and not a social commentary!" His Faceless Spouse seemed to enjoy Peter's joke, and as a reward she shambled forth to push gruel into his wet, questing maw. This, I saw, was the source of their twisted bond: the gruel with flecks of meat, the laughing faces, the cynical horror.

Suddenly contemplative, Mr. Jackson stopped eating and pushed his Faceless Spouse aside. "But wait. I can't think of a single socially-relevant topic that hasn't been explored ad-nauseum."

"Xenophobic discrimination," I said.

"Is that good or bad?" asked Peter, and after a few additional shocks due to my predictable non-compliance, I typed out the first draft of a movie which would explain to viewers that xenophobic discrimination is both bad and pervasive. After reading it, Peter put down the script and said "That's really enlightening," and his Faceless Spouse gibbered mindlessly as though hungry for sex.

"But..." said Peter, turning over slightly like a sleek and largely immobile seal, revealing the engorged suckers which hung from his buttocks. "But...if we're going to convince the audience of such an audacious moral idea, we need to make them CARE about the goopy aliens. They must feel EMPATHY. Here's my guy from Weta Digital," and for the next three hours I endured a featurette about the design and implementation of the alien creatures. "After we film the man in the green suit, we digitally erase the wires and begin the sound design," said the guy from Weta Digital.

"STOP IT!" I screamed. "DETACH ME FROM THIS MACHINE! SHUT HIM UP!"

"Not until you give us a hook to hang the audience's sympathy on."

"LET ME GO! YOU CANNOT DO THIS! THERE ARE LAWS!"

"Not in Middle Earth," he snarled, and he barraged me with electrical zaps from his bellygun. "Give us what we want or I'll blast your stinking willawalla to the billabong!"

"DESIGN A CUTE ALIEN BABY WITH WET EYES!" I screamed, and then everybody exploded, and now Peter Jackson is rich, and I'm just sitting around and folding these fucking flowers.

"Why Helen?"

Hey! If you read more than just this blog (gasp!) you might be interested to know that I'm in the latest issue of India's first (and only) queer periodical, Bombay Dost.


It's a three-page spread with pictures, featuring an article I wrote about Bollywood film idol Helen...or at least the mythical version of Helen that I adore. If you're interested in getting a copy, you can order the issue (number two) online.

It looks great and the article is lots of fun, even if you wouldn't know Helen of Burma from Helen of Troy.

Videosex (No, It's Not What You Think)

I have long been enchanted by this cover of "Across the Universe." It is somehow -- inexplicably -- both heart-wrenchingly beautiful and David Lynch creepy. Likewise the video, which gives me goosebumps and makes me want to run away fast at the same time. It all makes me think of a cross between "O Superman," a church choir, and a meeting of the Hitler Youth.



The band (and tongue-in-cheek presentation) is certainly Laibach, but the singer (Anja Rupel) was in her own band: Videosex, '80s darlings of the former Yugoslavia.

"Videosex" is very weird to the contemporary, non-Yugoslavian listener. Their early new wave/post-punk music has aged poorly with its generic drum machine and vomit-inducing keyboard sax, but even then there was something INTERESTING about their work...a little twist, a little something added to make it stand out, even when they were working in a straight-forward pop genre.



Fortunately they didn't stay there for long. It's on their third album ("Svet Je Kopet Mlad") that they start performing a weird electro-cabaret-swing, as exemplified in this (fortunately translated) video for "Zemlja Pleše."



It's the final album -- "Ljubi In Sovraži" -- that's truly great. It's full of crazy beats and wild stylistic changes...from the quiet ambient booping of "Space Lab" to the over-the-top Foetus-like swing of "Snip Snap" (a cheerful English song about a boy whose thumbs get cut off because he sucks them). "Computer's First Christmas Card" is like nothing I've ever heard, a nonsense scat montage that you'd consider impossible until you actually hear it.

Fortunately the final album is available on iTunes, and so is their enormous "best of" compilation (at a very cheap price). The catch is that the sound quality ranges from "good" to "terrible." It's poorly mastered, has no mid range, and the bass sounds occasionally clip with an awful ripping sound.

The other sad thing is that I can find very little information about the band or their music. They obviously never made a dent in the English-speaking world, and their CD re-releases seem to have made fast-and-loose with the discography, transplanting songs from various eras as "bonus tracks."

Anyway, I'm happy to have found these little gems. If you're a fan of odd pop with a healthy tinge of complete insanity, check out "Ljubi In Sovraži" or -- since the "best of" collection contains most of those songs at the same price -- just get "Arhiv." "Across the Universe" is on there as well, though they've amusingly tried to remove the Laibach grunts at the end.

Meet the Happy-Go-Luckies

Oh wow, these things are ugly and weird.

It gives us great pleasure to present the twelve Happy-go-Luckies, the most amusing place cards that ever graced a sophisticated dinner table. Don't you like the way the cigarettes actually form part of the picture? Do you see that they make the legs of the little bathing girl below...and that a match makes her parasol stick?

As of April 12, 1930 the Lucky Strike company had made twelve varieties of these monstrous things, including what I think is a lady golfer and some jockeys jumping over cigarette-barricades. If we're lucky they'll print close-ups of the others in future issues.

Meanwhile, since they don't make 'em anymore, you can always build your own by centering the picture on your computer screen, taking a pair of gardening sheers, and cutting them OFF the screen, being careful to not disturb the other items on your desktop.*

If you don't want to cut a hole in your monitor, you can always hope to buy them at an online auction. Here's a lot of eleven that recently sold for $100.


Are you wondering what's on the back?


* Don't actually do this!