Eeuauaughhh

Arguably the best website ever created:

http://eeuauaughhhuauaahh.ytmnd.com/

Thanks to Dan for the link.

Subsessed

Some friends and colleagues of mine at Comrade enjoyed the opportunity to build an amusing campaign for gamemaker Ubisoft and their upcoming naval warfare simulation Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific. The result is Subsessed! The Depths of Destiny, a mockumentary about James Cameron-lookalike Cutter Wilson, whose "subsession" will be cured with a videogame.

Congrats to Thelton for his disgruntled office worker (not too much of a stretch!), and sympathies to Christy for wardrobe's insistence on dressing her so frumpy. Apparently she gets a chance to tart it up in Episode 5 of the series (Episodes 1, 2 and 3 are currently live). Friends, gamers, YouTubers, enjoy!

Go Bill

It doesn't stop.

My dear friend, fellow film freak, respected colleague, and overall inspiration Bill Chambers was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery 22 March. Things went well, I'm told. He's recovering now.

To Bill, I say: why not wait 'til May? You were two months early for this particular cliffhanger.

Go Rich

I just heard, and I want to tell everyone else.

So please meet my former colleague Rich Wilkins, one of the most kind and caring folks I've encountered. Rich and I never got close, but given more time working on the same projects, or hanging out in the same peer groups, I'm sure we would have.

The moment I was introduced to Rich I knew we shared a love of people and life. Those times we ran into each other, there was always a warm exchange of hellos or jokes. It disagrees with my arguably delusional worldview that a human being of his caliber would get sick, but I also know he'll face the challenge with commitment, strength, and a spirit I've never seen shaken.

Here's the site his friends, family and coworkers have made for him. Browsing it will show you the kind of man he is:

Go Rich

We're All It

Tagged by Kerrie with this bit of navel-gazing. Consider yourself tagged too. I'm an innie, and here's my lint:

Where did your last kiss take place?
In an aeroport.

Who knows a secret or two about you?
Most folk.

Three words to explain why you last threw up:
Beer, wine, gin.

Have you ever burned yourself?
Mostly the sun does that.

What's crazy to you?
Inattention.

Who is probably talking a load of crap about you right now?
Nobody.

Would you ever want to be a model?
Not really.

Do you tell white lies?
Only to protect.

When is your next party?
Tomorrow night.

Who do you want to be with right now?
Myself.

How do you handle a break up?
Make new stuff.

Your motivation for tomorrow?
Do my best.

Last person to hurt you?
Shannanigans.

Last person to make you laugh?
Doogie.

Have you ever cleaned up someone else's vomit?
Nope.

One best friend or 10 aquaintances?
All of the above.

Favorite food?
Pizza.

Most favorite person?
Too many to choose from.

Are you an emotional person?
Sure.

Do you like your name?
Yep.

Do you dance naked in your room at night?
No, but I critique my reflection.

Biggest fear?
Fear.

Favorite place to be?
Happy.

Do you hate anybody?
Nah.

Does anyone hate you?
So I've been told.

How many people do you trust fully?
Probably too many.

Cornello

A lot of beer, a little mixin'.

I like Audioslave best with some groove to go with their grind and unfortunate lyrics. To my surprise, this mix prefers Tom Morello's axe to Chris Cornell's voice. I enjoy both, save those ludicrous guitar solos that derail any track (though I had to include at least one here for legitimacy).

These guys are history now. Looks like Rage Against The Machine is reuniting, and Cornell is off to a solo career. Best wishes to 'em both. Their peak, in my opinion, was "Original Fire" - to which I cleaned up much drywall and steel scrap. AWWWWW YEAAAAAH.

Audioslave, folks.

This one's for Shaylyn, who was always kind to me.

One Fire Of Revelation

ADD-Day

Now it's raining! In full sunlight!

Wotta day.

Next: hail?

That Was Quick

Snow melted, sun ascendant.

What The--

Looks like my spring sproing was...premature.

Now it's snowing big, fluffy flakes outside.

Not that it'll last, of course. This Cowtown mantra applies:

If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes.

Ah well.

It *was* nice to run without tuque and mittens last night.

Feelin' It

So today's the official Last Day of Winter.

And though we've still got some snow on the ground here, I sense spring coiled and ready to sproing.

My time away's left me refreshed, excited, and horny as all get out. Plus, my meaning-monger radar's up. Walking along the street to fetch ingredients for tonight's dinner, I eyeballed myself a sweet triptych of chaos magick underfoot to get the evening (and perhaps the season) started: a page of somebody's screenplay made with the Final Draft demo version (I bent over to read it and found properly formatted but BORING dialogue), a discarded elastic curled into what I can only describe as a double vesica piscis, and a single die rolled (out of a dumpster, likely) to its #1.

It was great visiting with the fam, the Mbut, and Gramps. I got caught up on my backlogged magazine reading, started three new books (yay Teresa!), and worked my way through the 13 Years of Wax Trax! boxset, which was wonderful and has certainly inspired some ideas for April mixes. In the meantime, now I'm home, I'll do up a couple more rock mashups to finish out this month's theme, and I can also say Blorthos has been making noises (rather moist and feral noises) about getting a post up here soon.

Me, I'm itching to get my bike off Tacx and onto pavement, it's so nice outside. But not quite yet...I'll have to settle for running tonight without so many clothes on. Who knows? I may not even need a tuque (not toque, as Gweinz has learned me).

No tuque?!

Ah, the possibilities.

And that, my friends, is what spring is all about.

More On Movies

As much as I loved Pan's Labyrinth, I gotta admit:

The Lives of Others is my pick for Best Foreign Flick of 2006.

Puti Mbuti

It's the Pbut.

She's tiny. She's cute.

But don't let appearances fool you. She's tougher than she looks.

This 16-year-old mirrio fourrier just survived a near-fatal bout of acute pancreatitis. With the help of an attentive Robo-Kotti, a two-night stay at the local small-town animal hospice, and her new hypo-allergenic "gastro" diet of ground duck, she's back to her ole purrific self: professional sleeper, unabashed hedonist.

May she enjoy many more years with her loving family.

But Then!

Ever participated in a chain story?

You should!

It's where one person starts a tale, throwin' down a scene or sumthin', then tosses in a cliffhanger and lets the next person pick up where they left off. The new scribe either preserves the tone and advances the plot with their addition, or goes all anarchist and takes the action in a completely different direction.

It's like Exquisite Corpses (which I'd love to implement as Mini Nerd functionality, somehow), except with words instead of drawings. Sometimes the gameplay works better in theory than in practice, but I find it's always worth a few goes before switching to a game of Balderdash, Taboo, or Qbit.

To that end, I present this link to an online version of chain-storying - Ficlets - and invite you to enact tomfoolery with me.

Thanks to Lisa for the link! Hope you get in the game, kiddo. I also dare Teresa, Bill, Mike, Dory and Montreal Lisa to mince some words. And Bronwen, I'd love to write a chain story with you.

Grave Pronouncement

Saying of the day, courtesy of my morbid/silly Gramps on our walk a few moments ago:

"In this life, the only thing etched in stone...is an epitaph."

I giggled and cringed at the same time, always a good reaction.

Low-Ride Or No Ride

Sentence of the day:

High-waisted pants are so not the bomb.

AWWWWWWWWWWWW NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

YA YA YA ! ! !

This article makes me very happy:

The Golden Age of YA?

Gypsum Snoozer

Certain folk know I have a hard go of it falling asleep. One time it even took two and a half months. During that ordeal, I tried every recorded technique I could find, plus several of my own conception - with little success, I'll add.

Over the past year of working construction with the Board Brothers, however, I've discovered a new method.

At breaks (of which we get the standard three - two shorts in the morning and afternoon, one long at lunch), eating or drinking are usually the order of business. But unlike those breaks I've enjoyed when working, say, retail in the past (and especially at an office), while pausing during the drywalling of a home, we also REST.

That's right. Sleep. For 15 or 30 minutes.

Serious, satisfying, sinful naps.

Where, you may ask, does a construction worker lay his head for a few winks in the middle of an unfinished basement?

On drywall, of course.

Now: I'm the kinda guy who likes firm mattresses. A cozy, sink-into couch is fine for a brief stint in dreamland, but if I'm staying the night, I want support.

Well, in getting horizontal on a nice, fresh, 8-foot sheet of drywall, I found a truly reliable soporific.

Flatter than a futon. Stiffer than a yoga mat.

And damn easy to nod off on.

Last night I spent a few hours laying awake thinking about sentences for this blog post. I was trying to come up with a silly Princess & The Pea analog for a towering stack of drywall sheets and what treasure they might conceal underneath - to no avail.

Woulda been better to crash and let my subconscious sort it out.

And I might've pulled it off, too.

If I'd just tossed that pillow aside, pictured my mattress a little thinner and way more rigid, and conjured the imaginary smell of gypsum to soothe me to sleep.

Byzantium Redux

Early this morning, I finally finished Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantine Mosaic (comprised of Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors, and foisted upon me by dear Drew).

So, that's what, three years to read two books?

Sheesh.

Possible: I was avoiding the ending because I didn't really want to leave my first experience of these characters behind forever.

True: Guy Gavriel Kay takes his sweet time, often. I skipped the first 50 pages of Sailing to Sarantium because I couldn't find a protagonist, only to realize, a book and a half later, that this is Kay's genius - choosing an event, then triangulating its meaning through the multiple and varied perspectives of a diverse cast.

He spreads the love, does the Kay.

Looking at his new one, Ysabel, I don't see a smidgen of the technique thus far, but the tone and approach seem more YA. Should be interesting to see where he takes it.

Anyhoo, thank you Drew, for introducing me to a talent I'd missed. A Canuck talent, at that!

And to Teresa, if she's reading: you may be right, about reading.

No Words, Really

Well.

I'd picked Happy Feet as my favorite film of last year.

But I'm a softie.

Allow me to make a slight adjustment.

I also like it hard.

Happy Feet = Best Animated.

And...

There's no question Children of Men is the best live action flick.

I can't honestly say if it's what we bring to the film as viewers, but even so, congratulations to Alfonso Cuaron and his cast and crew. I knew there was some serious **** going on in Harry Potter 3 (which I admired and enjoyed), but this seals the deal.

Don't get me wrong. Pan's Labyrinth? Humbling! United 93? Damn well done. Letters From Iwo Jima? Clint, you still got it. Half-Nelson and Venus? Both wonderful. To Michael Mann, thanks for making me want Miami Vice back as a TV series with the new cast. Even Darren Aronofsky's crusade (The Fountain); gotta say I was intermittently entranced (especially with Hugh Jackman's performance). Mr Scorsese (The Departed)? About freakin' time.

And don't get me started on the great horror flicks from last year (another time, readers). And yet...yet...

I don't have any tissues here, but I'm still cleanin' up my face.

There's no...

I don't have any explanation for anyone who...

Just watch it.

You'll know what I mean.

I'm really tempted to name-check Blade Runner as the last best example of this kind of thing; it's that well-done.

See it!

You might like it.

Can't Contain Myself

Okay.

If, like me, you're from Canada, and you don't enjoy at least one Tragically Hip song, I have to admit I harbor serious suspicions about your character.

Also: The Tragically Hip's World Container is a wonderful album. Freaking wonderful.

Released at the end of last year (after almost a quarter-century of these Kingston, Ontariah fellas playing rock music together), and produced by populist knob-twiddler Bob Rock (God bless 'im), the whole damn affair is non-stop, goosebump-happy, joyful-bawling GREAT, track 1 through 11.

Frontman Gord Downie's a poet, yes, an abstracting sensitive fella, but he also knows how to scream and howl like a man through a wall of balls-out, aggressive youthful energy still tapped effortlessly by these guys as if they weren't anywhere near nudging middle-age.

It amazes me I could limit this minimix to only 4 of the album's songs, but alas, sometimes I am temperate.

GAH! NO! Screw that!

Rock on!!!

(For Trev.)

World Hip

We Love Big Brother

George Orwell (mentioned here last month in errata) posited humans would hate the idea of constant surveillance.

Turns out, we dig it large - at least if it's "men", and not "The Man", who're watching.

Blogs are a fair example of how, given our own terms and voices, we love to splay open, sometimes messily, our inner feelings, aspirations, observations and creations for a theoretical (and theoretically vast - yet intimate) audience.

It seems facetious to quote Shakespeare, but life can be a stage.

Where I'll dare to expand the Bard's assertion is to say, within our roles and responsibilities as employees, family members, friends and lovers even (loosely, "official" capacities), the stage is much like that in the theater, where we exchange our tragic and comic masks (among others) to "put on the best face" for a temporally present and captive audience, as it were.

On the web, in the blog - I would suggest - we get a more direct link (har har) to someone's inner machinery, their more raw and unpolished cogs of personality.

Can I go so far as to say, if everyday face-to-face life is a "stage" (sometimes a "screen", if we aim larger than life and have decent eyes), words and pictures on a monitor (like words and pictures on paper, possibly) are a "book" (for lack of a corresponding physical setting where written narrative is staged).

By that I mean, rather than preoccupy ourselves with appearances, outer dialogues, visible actions in the "real world", here we're concerned with what some can't disclose in person: their unspoken secrets, cherished hopes and dreams, closely-guarded shames and hesitations...what they "really think".

Is the web the best way we've found yet to achieve that universal inner connection some folk have sought for centuries? Is it the killer app for shared consciousness?

I'm reminded of Dan Simmons' "datasphere" from the Ilium/Olympos cycle of novels, something a little juicier and more inclusive than William Gibson's earlier (and equally prescient) conception of "the matrix", or cyberspace (which seemed less about connecting people than it did making cold, hard information available to those with the skill to access it). The old ARPANET vs. the interweb?

Whatevah.

Our cyberspace of today, our datasphere, is more cluttered and searching, more base and primal, than either of the above fictional constructs. If we choose to engage on a certain level, it feels...human.

An old question, yes, but I'm still asking it. Though technology distances us, can it nonetheless facilitate an intimacy of mind?

You tell me.

P.S. The link that inspired this ramble just sort of mysteriously appeared one day in my Favorites list. I never put it there myself.

Thank you, Big Brother.

Be Your Own Big Brother

More The Merrier

Please join me in welcoming two new arrivals to the Friends section of the sidebar here at Mini Nerd: the lovely and talented artists Tinselman and Etherbrian.

I've been a fan of Brian's since nigh on my AOL days (i.e. over a decade). If I didn't need to attract a desirable female mate, I'd likely wallpaper my entire home with his glorious pixelated whimsies and smoove vectorific dreamscapes. At the very least, now that I'm past my below-the-poverty-line years, I can't wait to commission (read: pay for) an illustration from Brian to make up for all his free font and icon sets I downloaded back in the day.

Robyn Miller over at Tinselman I've lauded earlier here at Mini Nerd for his work with Cyan on the classic adventure videogames Myst and Riven, and his later collaboration with Keith Moore for the project 1,000 Years and 1 Day by Ambo (a favorite album of mine from last year). That is to say, his output's near and dear to my heart. As for you, if you've any interest in art, Robyn's radar for cool and interesting art-related web links is impeccable.

A warm welcome to Brian and Robyn!

Nickeley Thornback

As a construction worker, one of my job responsibilities is to listen to rock music all day long.

Ask me, I prefer working with no musical accompaniment; time becomes more malleable and I enjoy an escape from clockwork distractions such as traffic reports, news bulletins, and top-of-the-hour, 30-minute, commercial-free rock-rides.

Regardless, the radio stays off only when Trev and I are boarding just the two of us. We share a love of peace and quiet, you see.

Trevor's brother Chad, on the other hand, needs screaming guitars, thumping drums, and an assortment of yelling men to "get him pumped" and keep him productive. Once, the guy indulged me and agreed to suffer eight hours of Christmas carols because hey, the season called for it and he's a giving chap. But most days, our exertions are scored by the sounds of CJAY 92, Cowtown's celebrated (and admirably community-minded) rock radio station, which chronicles its 30th anniversary this year.

Chad likes the CJAY.

As a result, I'm now shockingly familiar with the current rock Top 40 (the oldies I already know well from a pre-adolescent skidhood of banging my mulleted head and slamming air guitar to the hair metal of the 80s and trashy glam rock of up to two decades prior).

Today, CJAY has become such a cozy part of my aural makeup that if I'm walking along any given street downtown and my ears pick up longtime broadcaster Gerry Forbes making a sexist joke, or that partly-enjoyable cover of Genesis's "Land of Confusion" by Disturbed blaring from a nearby speaker, I know that if I turn my head to look, I will surely see a construction site, however small, no more than 20 feet away.

AND SO! IT FOLLOWS...

That for the month of March I'm only going to remix rock music.

Chad's fave is AC/DC, and I'd like to get some'a that in, since I'm also a big fan. Trev's choice is The Tragically Hip, so I've planned something for one of our country's finest (but mysteriously, least successful abroad) exports as well.

That said, this evening I'd like to kick things off with a minimix of some other Canuck offenders. The first originates just northeast of here in the small town of Hanna, where my sexiest ex also hails from. The second calls Toronto home, but they're signed to the record company owned by the throaty growler fronting the first outfit, Mr Chad Kroeger.

The bands, then, are Nickelback and Thornley, respectively. And though the former came out of "nowhere" to dominate the rock scene at least here at home, Thornley is itself a phoenix from the ashes of three other Canadian rock fixtures: Big Wreck, Big Sugar, and Three Days Grace. I must admit, they do sound a good deal to me like another recent (and recently disbanded) phoenix, Chris Cornell and Tom Morello's Audioslave. In fact, I thought Thornley was Audioslave the first time I heard them.

But more on Cornell and Morello later.

For now, here's Ian Thornley and Chad Kroeger trading sore throats and power chords for a couple minutes, courtesy of Board Brothers, CJAY 92, and your Mini Nerd.

And dedicated to Chad, of course.

So Far You Remind Me

By Any Other Name

Chaddington




Trevwick




Chaddish




Trebor

Red Thumb

I must needs get ready for Bible Kickboxing right fast, but first, another entry in March's recounting of visual transformations.

For those less intimate with my noggin, transformation's a big theme for me, and oftimes (especially across the last five years), it's physical transformation that fascinates (nay, obsesses) most.

I'm tickled by the way injuries, scars, and other manner of sudden bodily damage (or less abrupt change, enacted by that mutual, eternal, and inescapable assailant, time) imprint and preserve memory on our person, as if this mortal coil - transient and temporal though it may be - becomes a record during our lifetime, as in cellular amber, of those most violent events that shaped our histories as bodies.

Even the skin, sloughed every seven days or whatever, will work to retain the curvature and indentation of healed wounds, as if they are now an indelible part of our makeup and so must be inCORPorated into all subsequent renewals of the suit we wear over our insides. And of course, everything within the interior transformed invisibly too: bones broken only to be reset, stomachs enlarged then shrunken, livers exhausted and eventually spent.

My Red Thumb was proof for me (and remains so) that I was officially a construction worker at last. Chadwick had made clear to me on more than one occasion that it was only a matter of time before I instigated my first steel cut, and it was just as sudden, deep, and bleedy as he'd described in advance.

Amusingly, there wasn't a first-aid kit on-site when I pulled off the feat, so Trevley put a roll of toilet paper and a few strips of the ubiquitous Tuck Tape to the task of casting me until the disrupted flesh began its clumsy (and ultimately, sloppy) job of resealing and patching over the violation of "me" caused by the intrusion of that sharp "other" from the outside world.

I could go on about this stuff for hours, and explore way too many other metaphors for the simple act of pushing too hard with my wire snips (as I'm usually wont to push with all other tools, real and imagined, at my disposal) and slashing open my hand on the exposed edge of sheared metal - but instead I'll shut my trap and let a photograph, devoid of poetry but heavy, as always, with authority, end my thought.

Weak stomach? Don't worry.

The Red is my protective tape, not my gore.

Shear Strength

Last November, I tried something I'd toyed with the idea of since time immemorial. Turns out I didn't need to wait for my theoretical Buddhist monk years to find the right occasion. And now that my curls are nearly back, it doesn't seem like such a big deal at all.

Nonetheless.

At any earlier juncture in this life (adolescence, for example), I'd have needed a lot more time to work up to the decision. And plenty of justification. Even now, I went through the mental motions of stacking up Five Decent Reasons For. And they didn't include not wanting people to touch me (as if, Britney).

I'll discuss three of the reasons here.

1. I thought it'd be fun to match my Board Brothers. The twin fellers I heft drywall with favor the Kojak look (though Chadley has recently made a shift toward Big Chris territory). Without the slightest hint of peer pressure, I aimed to fit in.

2. I was morbidly curious to discover if I had anywhere near the pinhead I always suspected I did. The thrill of the matter is, you never know if your skull's as sexy as Patrick Stewart's until you break down and do the actual deed.

3 (the clincher). I really wanted to see my scar for the first time.

Fool For February

This about sums up last month for me:



In retrospect it was pretty interesting, I suppose - but I could do with a few less blunders for March.

We'll see if the universe agrees.