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!

Miss Scratching Post, February 2010?

There's a contest goin' on...and I'm in it!

Steve "Kitten Do'Claw" is holding a series of YouTube competitions to find Your Favourite Queens. I am honoured and privileged to be one of the three contestants for this month.



What do you need to do? Go to the video and post a comment listing the two queens you want to vote for (Loraguy, Josh Sorce, or me). Votes are taken until February 20th, and the queen with the most votes wins. It's easy if you've got a YouTube account! And if you don't have one...well, think of all the terrible comments you can leave in OTHER videos! And all of the one-star ratings! And the obscenities you can spout! Voting for me in this contest is just the first step to an all new type of social life.

And while you're hanging around, check out Kitten's channel (LiveFromTheCatHouse) to see the only other "domestic drag shows" I've found online. Kitten is a pro, and a sweetie also.

Get your voting gloves on! But please, for the sake of decorum and karma, do not vote with multiple aliases. Seriously. I hate it when other people do it.

Creepy Pedro Reviews "The Exterminating Angel"

I warned them! Didn't I tell the improbable Mexican aristocrats that they must not rise above their social station lest they suffer the consequences of my wrath?

If they were worried about starvation, they should have packed a taco. Rather than fear baldness, they could have donned a wide sombrero. Had they put aside their evening wear and instead worn their comfortable ponchos, they would have escaped the ire and condemnation of me...yes, THE EXTERMINATING PEDRO!

A mistranslated title has confused film students for almost fifty years. Solemn, bearded young women unplug their cherrybomb mouths and scream "What was it all about, Pedro?" because they do not know my full name, they do not know my predilections, they have been tragically mislead.

You see, The Exterminating Pedro admires and respects Mexican culture, especially the jolly antics of the Mexican Jumping Beans. To me, Mexicans and their film directors are like flies in a washbasin, pleasing when they link arms and copulate and play their grand pianos. Otherwise they anger me, so with newspaper or poisoned frijoles I smite them 'til they're DEAD.

But still the girl with the goatee is screaming "What did it all mean?" so let me explain a few things. When the Mexican lady saw a plastic hand floating the darkness, that was MY plastic hand, seeking alms and offering salvation. She screamed because of the Mexican complex about religion, finance, land ownership, imperialism, cleanliness, and The Alamo.

What about the bear and the sheep? Those were MY bear and sheep so please don't touch them.

Why didn't the victims simply leave the room, she asks? Because I wouldn't allow it! I am The Exterminating Pedro! This is all you need to know!

Enough...stop shouting, bearded lady, or I will put you in a room with nine other people who are much like you and equally vapid. I, The Exterminating Pedro, grow weary of your buzzing. Like I did with the improbable Mexican aristocrats of 1962, I wave my plastic hand for silence. You have been warned. You will play or die.

Scrutable Poetry Corner: "Guestroom Books" by Newman Levy

"Guestroom Books" by Newman Levy (The New Yorker, April 12, 1930).

Beside my chaste and downy cot
There stands a goodly number
Of stately tomes of prose and pomes
To lull the guest to slumber.

The verse of T. S. Eliot,
A copy of "Ulysses,"
As though to say "No place you'll stay
So cultured is as this is."

The works (in French) of Baudelaire,
And Keats "Epipsychidion"
And next to it The Holy Writ
Purloined, I fear, from Gideon.

A goodly and narcotic list
Of literary glories,
While down below my host, I know,
Is reading Snappy Stories.

"God's Country: A Short History" by Ralph Barton

The New Yorker panned this book, but it sounded so interesting that I couldn't resist finding a copy: "God's Country: A Short History" by Ralph Barton, published in 1929. As you can see by the tag list for this post, it contains elements of pretty much everything I talk about in this blog.

Barton was a popular '20s cartoonist and caricaturist, and he seemed to be trying to establish himself as a writer before his manic-depression prompted his suicide in 1931. I'm not surprised that he killed himself two years after writing this book. "God's Country" is a bitter thing indeed.

It's a satirical, absurd history of the United States, beginning with Christopher Columbus and ending with a bizarre dystopia in which women have taken over the government, radio advertisers have inadvertently caused widespread looting and domestic terror, and poison gas has destroyed everybody except for eight criminals who -- following the intentions of the pilgrims from the beginning of the book -- set out to wreck everything all over again.

Oooo, it's nasty. Barton has equal loathing for Democrats and Republicans (known in the book as "Uniboodlists" and "Multiboodlists" for reasons I didn't understand), Presidents ("Misters"), businessmen ("Interests"), newspapers (who dictate "Public Opinion"), and the everyday citizens who allow the aforementioned to get away with everything they do, over and over again, throughout the entire history of democracy.

Is there anybody Barton doesn't hate? He appears to have sympathy for Native Americans, he finds few unpleasant things to say about Abraham Lincoln, and he goes out of his way to avoid lampooning African Americans, but for the most part "God's Country" is a relentless, snarky skewering of EVERYBODY. And that means you too, reader. And me.

You can imagine how tedious such a book can be. It's especially tedious to somebody (like me) who doesn't know the finer points of every President -- errr, Mister -- in American history. Barton goes through them all, giving them the names of monarchs ("St. Abraham," "Franklin the Debonaire") to highlight one going theme throughout the book: the American obsession with electing "jus' plain folk" who are -- in actual fact -- part of the social elite who have been carefully groomed to appear otherwise.

This obsession is one element of the book that still holds true today (see Palin, Sarah). Another element is the reliance on FEAR to manipulate public opinion, as formented by business requirements and amplified by the newspapers. We sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that the disgusting collusion of politics, business, and media is a relatively new phenomenon. "God's Country" will tell you different.

After 250 pages of spot-on satire, Barton comes to women's suffrage and temperance activism. I can only assume that he really, really didn't like women, as the book tips from "cutting satire" to "cruel stereotype" in the space of a few pages, detailing a world where women with "blacksnake whips" run around emasculating everybody and turning them into "ex-males." They conceive arbitrary rules and devise irrational schemes to enforce them, finally bringing about the downfall of the already-tottering country. It's ludicrous and leaves a bad impression, and is probably one of the reasons The New Yorker reviewer panned it.

But there are great moments, especially near the end when everything goes completely off the rails. The businessmen are discovered to have retreated into a secret society with its own language ("Six huh pcent a fi million dollas is thutty million dollas. Fiscal.") and in a mysterious desert pilgrimage they invent golf. This presentation of Big Business as a totally self-interested, self-contained, and illogical cabal is ominous in light of the subsequent financial collapse.

When the new breed of radio announcers start to amuse themselves by shouting demands like "Desire to see a prize fight!" and "Long to see a movie about Arabs!", the book provides an amazing insight into '20s popular culture. It's like reading a Readers Digest Condensed Version of The New Yorker between 1925 and 1929:

[They were] soon being ordered to deodorize, to smear mud on their faces, to hate New York, to play Mah Jong, to do cross-word puzzles, to ask each other questions, to bathe in violet rays, to develop personalities, to practice numerology, to adore the Russians, the negroes and aviators, to eat Eskimo Pie, to throw bits of paper out the window, to have themselves psychoanalyzed, to engage in Marathon contests, to eat liver and to perform a thousand other like obediences.

When "God's Country" is good, it's very, very good, but most of it is the 1920s brand of screwball, sledgehammer burlesque that leaves me exhausted, alternating with some surprisingly dry historical dissection.

More importantly, however, it is a clear expression of the immense disgust that an intelligent, educated, creative, and mentally-tortured man had for all the things he saw in the world around him. If he'd had a more balanced view of human nature then "God's Country" would be an easier book to read, but it never would have been written in the first place.