Before I go to the Drexoll 24-hour game-a-thon on Friday night, I’m going to go to this crazy “57 Varieties” show at the Butchershop. …the second instalment of this (monthly?) “57 Varieties” show series at the Butchershop Floor! We only made it to 39 varieties of performance last time (even that courtesy of some somewhat shady tabulation) but with YOUR HELP (cf. your poems, short films, unamplified musical performance, dance, acrobatics, puppetry, Iron Chef competitive cooking, or some more esoteric specialty) we can make it to 57 varieties and thus fulfill the conditions of the ancient prophecy, bringing about the end times and a golden era of unprecedented prosperity for the 57,000 chosen ones in and around Vancouver’s arts community. Don’t miss this opportunity for a fun Friday night and life everlasting at no extra charge! (Crazy people indeed…) Doors at 8! Entrance by donation or bring something (unplugged or visual) to share!
It’s days like this that make me want to go hiking into the forest, find a water hole and go swimming with friends.
Members of Congress were given a private viewing of unreleased photographs and videos from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq; some showed Pfc. Lynndie England having sex with other soldiers in front of prisoners; other images showed prisoners cowering before attack dogs, Iraqi women being forced to expose their breasts, naked prisoners tied up together, prisoners being forced to masturbate, and a prisoner repeatedly smashing his head against a wall. “It was pretty disgusting, not what you’d expect from Americans,”
Oh sure it is. It doesn’t matter what country you are from. People of any nationality, any religious upbringing, any race – we are all capable of the lowest acts of depravity to the ultimate acts of kindness & self-sacrifice.
An American businessman named Nick Berg was decapitated on video by Iraqi militants.
That just supports my point.
Rumsfeld, who this week made a surprise visit to Abu Ghraib prison, compared the Iraq war to the American Civil War and said that “the carnage was horrendous, and it was worth it.”
The Bin Laden Construction group was selected to build the world’s tallest skyscraper in Dubai. “Nothing good or just can be built on the destruction or suffering of others,” said President Bush at a commencement address
Ummm…think about what you just said there, dum-dum….
Homosexuals were lining up to get married in Massachusetts, and President Bush again called for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
There’s a lot of flag burners
Who’ve got too much freedom
I wanna make it legal for
policemen to beat ’em
I’m an amendment-to-be
And I hope one day they’ll ratify me
Australia’s treasurer promised to pay $2,000 for every child born in the country; “You go home,” he said, “and do your patriotic duty tonight.”
Would that pay for airfare? And now, the sciences:
Scientists reported that the amount of sunshine that reaches the surface of the earth has dropped significantly in recent decades. An EPA study found that household “air fresheners” could be causing a carcinogenic smog in people’s homes, and the World Wildlife Fund said that world cod stocks could be wiped out by 2020. Mammals that live in colder climates benefit from having a large penis, scientists said, and trillions of 17-year cicadas were preparing to swarm, mate, and die in the Eastern United States.
Today I must draw. I haven’t drawn since Thursday and that’s bad. Last night I had another mini-painting potluck. We also watched the last episode of Justice League. It was a 3-parter and they showed all 3 parts in a row, which was good. The episode itself was pretty good. Actually, it was very good compared to most episodes of JL. I want to do a nitpicker’s guide to Justice League, but of course I won’t. Anyway I painted a bunch of figures as did Norm, Kelly & Paul, Stewie, Chris Gibbons, James, Jon, but not Marlo. Kelly brought over cake and I made pancakes with banana, strawberries, raspberries, and little Reese peanut butter chips in them – which were quite good. On the weekend I got a bunch of Warhammer 40,000 stuff from a garage sale for 12.00 and change. The best part was the paint set and the little cardboard buildings. So I painted a couple of the miniatures that came with that. After everyone left Anghold came over and we watched two more episodes of Six Feet Under. It’s quite good. I think that’s the way to watch TV shows – wait for them to get released on DVD. No commercials, no waiting another week to see what happens. Of course that doesn’t do much for their ratings so if everyone did that the show would never get a second season, but if I thought that my input actually made a difference in the world of tv-making then I would be concerned. And also I’d have my own show.
This photo was taken yesterday while Stewie and I were having a delightful walk from my place to the Varsity Ridge Bowling lanes. We met Marlo & James there and on the electronic scoring system we entered our names as Walter, Smokey, Maude and Donnie. First one to name the reference gets a good sasparilla. Some restrictions apply. You must be 18 or over and a resident of the Vancouver area.
If you go here http://contradictionfilms.com/projects.html you can see the teaser for “Believers.” That’s me in the robes, chanting “Ia! Ran Tegoth! Aklo Sabaoth!” and that’s my little demon drawing too. That’s not my blood though…we got that from a cat.
I forget who my Buffy-fan friends are.
For the benefit of those bored readers like Marlo & Yvonne I’ll post some interesting tidbits from my past involving rodents.
When I was a wee lad – I guess 11-14 years of age – I rescued a mouse from our cat. I don’t remember the cat’s name. It may not have had a name apart from “kitty.” It was a calico cat and I was very fond of it. We were living on a farm at the time and it wasn’t allowed inside the house, so sometimes on rainy days or cold days I would go out onto the porch with a big puffy jacket and put her in the jacket (while I was wearing it) and slip my arms out of the sleeves and pet her for a while. Once she caught a mouse and my brother and I saw it. Often she would, as many cats do, leave her kills (mice, voles, moles, birds) on the doorstep as little offerings. This time she was still playing with it, and we forced her mouth open and took the vermin. We put it in a box and brought it into my brother’s room. It wasn’t moving – we weren’t sure if it was at death’s door or not. We brought it some cheese (of course) and tried to nurse it back to health. It must have just been in shock because after a couple minutes it completely regained its strength as if nothing had happened and shot all over the room on its tiny legs. We managed to catch it again and release it outside, presumably far away from kitty.
So that’s a happy story, and here’s a sad one. In Chilliwack, while we were living on the army base (this happens before the above story by several years). I had a friend whose name was Shawn. Shawn’s parents were hippies, I think, and he called his father by his father’s real name, not “Dad” which was weird to me. Sean had a pet gerbil. I was over at his house once and he left me in his room while he was doing some chore or something so I brought the gerbil out of the cage. He always tried to get away from me (and with good cause as it turns out) so I held it by the tip of its tail so it couldn’t get away. Not to be beaten, the damn thing pulled so hard that the tip of its tail popped off leaving me with a little bloody stump. I don’t think I fessed up because I remember being confronted with the gerbil in front of Shawn’s dad and I was asked to leave. I don’t think I was allowed over to Shawn’s house anymore
Did I already tell the story of my brother’s rat – the one with an infected leg?
I’m finished my tight deadline now so I actually have time to see a movie at…Tinseltown! Showtimes are for May 14, 2004 to May 20, 2004
Good Bye Lenin! 14A 121 mins
Fri-Thu: 12:30 4:05 7:05 9:45
I’m Not Scared PG 108 mins
Fri-Thu: 2:40 7:35
Main Hoon Na 14A 100 mins
Fri-Thu: 12:00 4:00 8:00
The Corporation PG 165 mins
Fri-Thu: 12:10 3:55 7:00 10:10
The Delicate Art of Parking PG 87 mins
Fri-Thu: 12:35 3:30 5:30 7:50 10:00
The Punisher 18A 124 mins
Fri-Thu: 4:40 9:50
Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion PG 104 mins
Fri-Thu: 2:15 7:25
If you’re going to play WWFJ on Saturday at Drexoll’s then don’t read this.
Last night we played my anthropomorphic animal superhero game. Gabriel R. Bonesnapper III, a psychiatrist alligator, was having dinner in Little Italy with some friends. Afterwards, he took a stroll towards midtown. He didn’t know it, but he was being followed by an invisible sneak thief. Suddenly he came across the scene of a crime – an armored car was being raided by a group of rats in motorcycle suits, armed with guns. He arrived just as the guards – two dogs – were shot point blank in the chest. He ducked behind a dumpster to transform into – METALLIGATOR! He literally leaped into action, causing a shockwave with his mighty stomp that knocked down several of the rats, and also shattered quite a few windows in the bank nearby. Suddenly, another superhero, who was patrolling the area, showed up – Go-Rilla, the speedster ape. Together they started knocking heads together but suddenly rat reinforcements came on speedbikes, and brandishing UZIs. They also noticed that some of the litter of cash was floating up and disappearing, as if being pocketed by an invisible sneak thief! Out of nowhere this large oil slick appeared in the area, and they saw the invisible fink skating along away from the scene of the action. Go-Rilla created a sonic boom while Metalligator grabbed motorcycles and tossed them around like playthings. Car alarms were going off and dust devils of loose bills were swept up in Go-Rilla’s wake. They noticed that the rats seemed to be acting strange – as if they were invincible when clearly they were just high, no doubt from the new street drug ‘stemroids.’ The police arrived and that was when Go-Rilla started scouring the area at super speed for clues. He found an ‘entertainment token’ near one of the rat-punk’s bodies, and also stumbled across a rat counting piles of money – this was the Invisible Fink! Go-Rilla created a whirlwind around the Fink but the Fink created another oil slick and the speedster lost his footing. The Fink turned back invisible and started climbing down. By pure luck Metalligator happened to almost bump into the Fink on the way down, and tried to give him a tail slap, but even after Go-Rilla tried to choke the area with tear gas borrowed from the police, the Fink got away with only one hundred dollar bill.
The police (a cat team) took statements from the heroes, realized that the window damage was caused by the fight, and that Metalligator lied about it. They asked for the heroes names and address of residence, to which the heroes declined. This left the police to take them downtown for questioning, at which point the heroes skedaddled.
The whole session went pretty well, and the rules seemed fine overall. Norm played Metalligator, Stewie played Go-Rilla and James played Invisible Fink. This was the playtest for Saturday’s game. James played a character who was not at all heroic, so that made things a little more…interesting. This was their very first experience as super-heroes, so they don’t have much of a reputation as of yet, but despite the fact that they foiled a robbery, the police are none too happy about the damage done plus the fact that one of the security guards bled to death on the scene during the fight. Also – they are wanted for questioning. Of course, the police have only heard third hand information about this invisible criminal from the two superheroes.
On Saturday Martin will be playing Master Spine (a porcupine with astral projection), Denzil will be playing Pengun (a penguin with matter creation powers), Jon will be playing Invincibull (a bull with invincibility, obviously!) and Liam will be playing Flame-ingo (flamingo with fire powers).
No time for a real entry today, except to say that yesterday I was woken up by a pavement saw and today I was woken up by the building’s fire alarm. They’re just testing all the smoke detectors etc. Wouldn’t it be ironic if a fire started on testing day? Just like in Fawlty Towers. This brings me to my first interesting news tidbit from the past 7 days: A German ornithologist discovered that urban nightingales, forced to compete with noise pollution, can sing so loud they break the law. The loudest recorded was 95 decibels, which is as loud as a chainsaw. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologized for the torture of Iraqi prisoners and said that there are “many more photographs and indeed some videos” of American soldiers engaging in “blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman” behavior; Rumsfeld took “full responsibility” for the abuse but still refused to resign. “It’s going to get a good deal more terrible, I’m afraid.” Specialist Sabrina Harman, who faces court martial because of her role in the torture, said in an email that she never even saw a copy of the Geneva Conventions until recently. “I read the entire thing,” she said, “highlighting everything the prison is in violation of. There’s a lot.” Harman said her job was to “soften up” prisoners for interrogation. American soldiers allegedly put a harness on an elderly Iraqi woman and rode her like a donkey. New charges included rape, murder, and child molestation. “The system works,” Rumsfeld told the Senate. President Bush, who authorized his staff to leak the fact that he had privately rebuked Donald Rumsfeld for failing to tell him about the torture photographs, apologized on Arab television; British Prime Minister Tony Blair also apologized, though there were questions about the authenticity of the British images. President Bush continued to maintain that the Abu Ghraib torturers were un-American, but human-rights advocates pointed out that similar abuse takes place in U.S. prisons all the time, especially in Texas. U.S. officials postponed the release of this year’s international human-rights report because the timing was somewhat embarrassing. Russian legislators hired a Siberian shaman to purge the parliament building of “negative energy.” Sheikh Abdul-Sattar al-Bahadli, an aide to Moktada al-Sadr, offered rewards for the capture or killing of British soldiers; he said that female soldiers could be kept as slaves. The Congressional Research Service said that Bush Administration officials broke the law when they ordered the Medicare actuary to withhold information on the true cost of the new Medicare law from Congress. African clawed frogs were invading San Francisco. A new study found that Americans get substandard medical care most of the time, despite the fact that they spend about $1.4 trillion a year for it, and scientists announced that women with large breasts and narrow waists are especially fertile.