such dutch!

coming from australia, sometimes it's hard to understand exactly why the dutch are so reviled throughout europe. and then you see something like this, and all becomes clear.

they call it shit-hop

now i, like many other stridently white young males, enjoy a good ol' fashioned slab of hometown hip-hop now and then. however unlike many of the aforementioned stridently white young males, my taste in hip-hop tends to run towards the cheerlessly esoteric, problematically white end of the ledger. for example soft atlas by 13 & god (mediafire. why anyone uses zshare is truly beyond me), a collaboration between a german synth-pop group and a collective of canadian improv rap poets, is my idea of an almost perfect hip-hop song. but that possibly turgid example of arthouse hip-hop doesn't mean that i don't know how to get down with the kids when required. i can dance. i can get funky. i can, and do, recite the entirety of boom! shake the room by jazzy jeff and the fresh prince. no matter how inappropriate the occasion. hell, i don't come to the block party, i am the block party!

whatever that means. something to do with lego?



yeah. something like that. so, shit-hop. because once you get over the shootings and misogyny and what not, hip-hop is, in the words of the great tobias funke, ripe for parody. two small offerings:

first to flight of the conchords, two musical comics of new zealand extraction who now have a rather nifty showon HBO in the states, which our house has recently been getting amorously involved with. being musically inclined, they occasionally sing songs. one of them was a little bit hip-hop.



and second, i recently ran across this small scene from the late 80s masterpiece teen witch, a snippet which (ha!) someone described as being the moment in which (ha?) hip-hop died. i'd like to throw into the murderous bargain its wholesale slaughter of perms, hats, pushbikes, the colour pink, singlets, vests, sidekicks, witches the word 'funky' and that awesome tough guy arm-folding thing you used to be able to do where you leaned back and used your top hand to clasp your shoulder. man. they're so hardcore. and white. like me.

litmus test of what is funny

i defy you to watch the following video without laughing:



Its a freaking MONKEY WASHING A CAT!!!!1!

Obey the law! Post-surgery madness!

The following clips provided me with a great deal of solace and confusion (in equal parts) whilst i was coming down from surgery and its assorted painkillery badnesses. Mixed in with a dash of courage and three teaspoons of pants, what does that spell?

COURAGE!

Enjoy.







(drum solo)

small art objects

i wish i could draw, but it was clear to all from an early age that it was not to be. considering i was the last person in my class to be granted a pen licence, ambitions towards figurative representation were fairly low on the agenda. i also think my (to this day) ongoing inability to cut in a straight line was a dead give away. for various reasons my mum still has hung on the wall a Roman-esque profile i drew of her at the tender age of 7. this crayon laced masterpiece has her inexplicably clad in a rusty t-shirt and topped by a head that resembles nothing so much as a horizontal traffic cone with hair. she also, for reasons that continue to escape me, has three sets of teeth. above her head are the words 'my mum', spaced so that i ran out of room and had to do the 'u' and 'm' on an increasingly precipitous angle down the canvas (read: A4 paper). given that this remains the only artwork of mine still adorning the house, i can only presume that this was the apex of my artistic career.

hence the fact that i generally let other people be creative for me.



in the grand new tradition of feed the head comes treasure box, another casually beautiful slab of flash tomfoolery. whittle away a few minutes with low end surrealism.

also currently impressing is this stop motion wall animation by blu. he has another one entitled walking, which is similarly impressive, as is his general collection of street art



[both courtesy of the wooster collective]

black ghosts film clip

the film clip for "some way through this", by the black ghosts, is awesome.

politically incorrect kids' alphabet

this took my fancy. remember how a was for a apple, b was for ball, and i was for indian? well it ain't any more! political correctness gone too far? perhaps. political incorrectness gone hilariously too far? this politically incorrect alphabet certainly is.

some flash flash

in an annoying attempt to further distract my roommate, who is trying oh so diligently to complete his honours thesis, i present a list of wonderful time-wasting flash toys.

this list is by no means complete and will be updated in regular installments....

flow is a game best played in full-screen mode. it is a beautiful amoebic world where you eat things and evolve towards the dark depths of the ocean. if you hit the ` key you can enter a "cheat" mode where pushing keys can do suprising things.


in pictaps you draw something, and it dances, to a boppy beat. completely pointless, but strangely addictive.

flash tron was a game we once incorporated into our radio show after I had so much trouble getting past level 3. apparently it is possible. see if you can reach tron omega!

boomshine is a game where you click in a space to cause an explosion, which when touching one of the coloured balls on-screen, creates a chain reaction. the higher the levels the more of a chain reaction you need to create. i passed this game, and i feel a strange sense of achievement because of that fact.


shuffle is an institution in our house. last exams there were many-er cry of "just one more game then i'll begin studying". it is fucking addictive.


this i love death cartoon is the most offensive in its first 10-seconds. after that it is interesting, funny, shocking and strangely poignant. not a game. not addictive.


no post on flash by me would be complete without a reference to desktop defense. it is by no means a new game concept, but it is the best flash recreation on the web to date. and believe me, i have researched. each game (start to finish) takes around 50 minutes. be warned.

You tell 'em!

Not many people leap to the defense of Britney, everyone's least favorite manitou. But here's footage of a really compelling... well, i'll let you guys be the judge.



Now i know it's almost become unhip to bag her on account of the obviousness of it all. When she was at least making money, as opposed to living off her own fatty deposits and prowling LA at night guzzling stray cats, there were certain elements of her career and/or look that had their merits, scant though they were. Now, however, it's like shooting fat, ugly fish in a barrel of fat, ugly has-beens. It's bizarre - she looks sticky. Like, all of the time. Like some school fete lollipop of indeterminate make and brand which rolled under the car seat, got covered in fluff, and grabbed by your dog. The dog, it should be noted, coughed it out three seconds after making contact with it, and several minutes later the car backed over it, leaving a twisted strip of plastic and shards of furry sugary gunk.

Which, for me, pretty much sums up Britney Spears.

the future

i liked it back when the future was the future. when every piece of novel technology came with lots of flashing lights and ambient humming. when flying cars jetted through the sky, the latest synth pop hit blaring from its casette deck. yeah, that's right. flying cars with casette decks. holy shit, the future is awesome. remember the transformers soundwave and blaster? (individual articles on both of them. wikipedia continues to impress) somehow technology had evolved to the point where the production of an entire race of giant, sentient robots was a feasible option, yet cassettes remained the recording technology of choice. maybe it had vintage charm. or maybe the transformers had been subject to crippling budget cutbacks. either way, as the picture above clearly shows, those guys knew how to throw a good ol' fashioned cybertron block party. when they weren't trying to kill each other.

but all of this is but glazing on the main event: computers!



yes, that's right for the paltry sum of $3495 you, yes you, could be the proud owner of 10MB of hard drive POWER. just think of all the binary pieces you'd be able to store in 10MB of POWER. 10 MILLION pieces of binary! you'd be the envy of the entire neighbourhood. but what's that, computers are only going to get more powerful? but it's 1967, surely technology has already gone as far as it can. or has it?

movie tidbits

movies. yay.

first up: let's revisit some childhood trauma. now, i get the feeling that i wasn't the only person whose parents confidently sat them down in front of 'return to oz' expecting another gleeful romp through dorothy's musically driven hypercolor wonderland. only to then discover a dark, brooding reversion of events, with far less music, and far more electroshock therapy. jesus. this is the kind of shit that stays with you as a kid. to this day, screeching sounds, a la the wheelers, still put me on edge. as this clip shows, with good cause:



my mother was so confident in her choice that she left me, as a four year old, in front of this film by myself. i'm still recovering.



and secondly: anyone remember this film? because i barely do (it's michael mann's 'heat'... which sounds saucier than it actually is). i only mention it because during and after its rather spectacular pacino-de niro showdown it plays host to a beautiful musical segue that features a moby (before he got shit) tune called 'god moving over the face of waters' coming out of a piece by the kronos quartet (who, as far as i can tell, didn't get shit). it works awesomely in the film, but stands by itself as an amazing piece of emotive minimalism, full of cascading arpeggios and surging string washes. as i've been studying i've been listening to it almost on repeat for the past few days, and can imagine that i'll be getting increasingly obsessed as the due date of my thesis draws ever closer. eep. you can find it here

[courtesy of selective service]

big call

perez hilton has scans of avril lavigne's "ten commandments". holy shit, it is one of the funniest things ever. a few are below, but seriously, check them all out

calvin and hobbes

i grew up on a steady diet of calvin and hobbes. steady like a long term marriage with two children and not a hint of gay scandal in the air. it was thick on the ground. it took over where the low end atrocities of garfield and footrot flats left off (jesus christ, those two smack of mis-spent youth) and worked in double tandem (trandem?) with the far side and herman for the rest of my print cartoon reading life. but fuck: calvin and hobbes man. the characters, humour, artwork, ideas, commentary and emotion were, and remain, so far beyond anything else i've seen in the medium, and bill watterson's commitment to his artistic integrity was refreshing when set against jim davis' regurgitated lasagne shtick hell smear. now there's a phrase you're probably never going to see again. but anyway, the point of all this nostalgic frippery?

here is a collection of every calvin and hobbes strip, presented terribly and arrayed by month, but that is, nonetheless, pretty fucking awesome. of course if one was really committed, one would purchase the three volume hardcover collection, but that would likely depend on one's financial status. or lack thereof. FUND ME.

p.s. fuck i hate garfield. it's a bit old now, but this 'random garfield generator' gives you a fair idea why it deserves our loathing. and is also markedly more entertaining than the real thing.

the beat goes on

apple's latest press conference unveiled such goodies as a 160 gig ipod and the new ipod touch which is basically an iphone without phone. plus a deal with starbucks which sounds cool in a "the world gets a little more like the future" kind of way, but scary in a "starbucks is evil" ("and their coffee is average") kind of way.

the blow-by-blow account is at endgadget.

ninja turtle art

el gran fiktion sets itself a theme every month and then the readership make art based on the theme. one theme was teenage mutant ninja turtles and some of the artwork was awesome. via notcot.

lego hawking

LUKE'S SUGGESTED ADDENDUM:
From our hero, Shaun Micallef

no amount of explaining....

cars!!!!%2$!!!

i've always hated cars. well, not so much hated them, as have found almost everything that one could say or do with them of profound disinterest. to my mind it's a piece of metal that goes, and as long as it continues to go, i am a happy chappy.

but now that all seems set to change. i present to you the M200G.



that's right, it's a flying saucer...ish. and evidently comes with a natty helmet and speed stripes up the front. me wantee. although in it's stead i may just settle for the delorean re-release coming through next year.



coming up next, the boeing millenium falcon. awesome.

postscript: and now i've discovered a proposed dubai car powered by a horse on a conveyor belt. it's named naturcar. because there ain't nothing more natural than a horse on a conveyor belt. the auto industry continues to amaze.