Mr. Pong's Satanic Panda

Mr. Pong's Satanic Panda close-up
Originally uploaded by gloom.

Satanic pandas are so kewl.

iTunes Canada: WTF?

Apple's Canadian iTunes Store does not carry tracks released by Sub Pop, Beggars Group (XL Recordings, Matador, 4AD, etc.), Emperor Norton, Rough Trade, ANTI-, or V2. Only label I found available on iTunes Canada was Nonesuch. This means you can't get The Shins, Peaches, Belle & Sebastian, Dizzee Rascal, Hot Hot Heat, Ratatat, Call and Response, or The White Stripes. Gaahh!

Please, please make indie labels available. If you don't, I can't promise you that I won't kidnap Steve Jobs and make him watch a continous loop of footages from Con Air.

When tards attack

If you still haven't read Jane Smiley's article on Slate, you seriously should check it out. Of all the post-election discourses, I found Smiley's article to be the most daring, and also the most honest. I didn't think what she wrote about red-staters was true when I first read it, although I can see where she's coming from. (I grew up in a tiny town approximately 25 minutes away from Stockwell Day's riding.)

Now, I still don't believe things she wrote to be true, the conviction with which I disbelieve her is beginnning to wade. Just look at this, this, this, and hundreds more like them here.

I am just going to assume that those crazy stuffs were written by thirteen year olds. Otherwise, it would be just too depressing.

Rescue Americans!

Marry them.

FUCK

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

John Kerry leading in early exit polls

John Kerry is currently leading in exit polls, according to Slate.

Well, yay!!! I hope it holds up.

Terry Richardson

Terry Richardson is, umm, so crazy. I just can't help but love how he makes everything look like cheap porno. I really should have impulse-purchased that issue of Arktip.

FBI seizes Indymedia servers

It appears that FBI has seized Indymedia UK's servers, just a few days before the election.

I want to die

A Google image search for "i want to die".

God, I guess it is not possible to avoid Kurt Cobain, the eternal talentless fuck, for more than three days at a time. I was just so close. Why did I have to search "i want to die"? I want to die.

The Shins on CBC Radio 3

Yay! The Shins are on CBC Radio 3 this week! I really like the Shins despite the fact that they are so very, very old.

I miss Toronto

I miss Toronto. Being 4109.9 km away from Toronto sucks.

I really wanted to go to the RESFEST and see kozyndan's show at Magic Pony. Uhrghh!

Well, it's only four months and twelve days before I am back in Waterloo. I hope that crazy crack whore lady and the senile street preacher dude are still hanging out around Queen and Lansdowne.

Beck's album delayed

The album's release date has been pushed to early 2005 from Fall 2004. This makes me feel very sad.

It's been a while

It's been a while since the last post.

Time sure does go fast when you eat ice cream and Jello everyday.

"Mr. Wizard - The Legend of Speed"

I got the current issue of RES a couple days ago, and along with it came the Nike "Art of Speed" DVD containing a collection of short films (about the "speed") commissioned by Nike. I watched it my sister, and I liked it very much. I know I am supposed to throw it away in disgust or at least be very blasé about it, but I was extremely bored and all the pretty colours on the DVD slipcase excited me too much.

The best short was "Mr. Wizard - The Legend of Speed" by Friends With You. Its ending is just absolutely mind-bending.


This is the craziest thing I have seen in last three months. 

While most of the shorts were pretty good or at the least worth watching it once, a few were just terrible. Yeah, shame on you Associates in Science; your short is just crap. (These people also made the crap Interpol video. It won't be long before they find themselves on trial at the International Court of Justice.)

Meet you at the CEIT Dofasco Entrance Foyer

Have you been to CEIT lately? I went to CEIT to milk that sweet free wireless Internet connection a few weeks ago and made a startling discovery; every major part of the building has been named after a corporation. Take for example the March Networks Exhibit Atrium.


You can look at pretty rocks and then commit suicide too. 

I, for one, think it is just fantastic that a company that sells techno-fascist digital surveillance systems to civil-rights-stomping police forces around the world supports our university.


Boo! 

I don't like Hamilton, so I automatically dislike Dofasco.


What? Theater? Theater?! It's theatre, T-H-E-A-T-R-E. Jesus. 

First they change their name from Royal Bank of Canada to RBC, and now they (or the sign company) spell theatre, "theater." Argg! I have to go and vandalize the local "RBC Royal Bank" branch now.

My new favourite word

I finally got to actually reading the copy of Tokion that I bought a month ago. My favourite article so far is the one called "Megacities"; it's a discussion on the acceleration of urbanization by a group of experts (well, they sounded like experts) that included Kengo Kuma. The reason I like it so much is because the discussion panel uses words like "McMansion", "homo movents", and "Corbusierian".

The word I definitely liked the most is "techno-fascist". I've heard "fascist techno", but "techno-fascist"? It's just such a great word; I mean, you could use it everywhere. Here's an example:

Girl 1: What are you doing?
Girl 2: Taking care of my techno-fascist blackheads.
Girl 1: But, you don't have any techno-fascist blackheads.
Girl 2: Exactly.
Voice-over: Clean & Clear, under control.

Besides the crazy (made-up) words, I really liked Kengo Kuma's completely unrealistic and insanely fucked-up architectural drawings. After all, he's the guy who designed the Bamboo House.

Fun with Webalizer

If you don't already know what Webalizer is, here's a brief intro: Webalizer is an application that reads web server logs and spit out reports on the site's visitors. It can tell you who visited your site, which section of the site was visited most often, and what files used up the most bandwidth.

I was bored yesterday and decided to do a google search to find some Webalizer reports on uwaterloo.ca sites.

The most interesting reports were the ones for www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca and www.student.math.uwaterloo.ca. According to the report on the CS student server, roughly 30 GB of bandwidth were used in August so far to transfer the sweet ballads of Bryan Adams, Jessica Simpson, and Britney Spears. The report for the Math server shows downloads of weird wrestling videos using up a bit less than 7 GB of bandwidth (again, in August so far). These files, in my opinion, need to be taken down immediately: maybe not the wrestling videos, but the music downloads are definitely abusive usages. More importantly, bad taste in music should not be tolerated.

There were some other interesting discoveries besides the above abuses. Some guy has posted a flash movie about some hockey players. I didn't get it because I don't follow hockey at all, but I thought people who do follow hockey might find it funny (or not funny or disgusting or Kafkaesque or sadomasochistic). And, Lino Demasi, the beloved leader of the Mathsoc has apparently created a nifty script to allow anyone with an Internet connection to see his mailbox. Well, thank you Lino Demasi for taking a major leap in increasing the transparency of the Mathsoc and your personal affairs.

The exams left you frustrated, and you want to die?

Well, first, please don't kill yourself. I mean, at least you didn't drive into the Kinko's. (If you're the guy who drove into the Kinko's, well, umm, at least you are not this guy.)

But, if you one day found your life completely unlivable beyond any doubt, you have the comfort of knowing that your school, the University of Waterloo, provides plenty of places for easy, quick suicide. This, in my opinion, almost makes up for the horrible teachers, abysmal co-op job prospect, and vitriolic service at the Housing Office.

Now, here are some of the fine places where you can end your life.


Davis Centre 2 has a set of special doors to help frustrated grad students make their problems go away instantly. 


CEIT has this garden thingy on the second floor. I think you can jump off from there. (I might be mistaken; it's been a while since I've been there.) 


CEIT also has a balcony overlooking the March Networks^® Exhibit Atrium^TM. 


MC balcony on the third floor can serve more than 87 people per minute. 


Jumping onto the sculptures will guarantee your death. Avoid those embarassing post-failed-suicide-moments with friends and family. 

So fucking hot

I am back in the Okanagan, the home to Sun-Rype apple juice, Big White, and, well, Stockwell Day.

The temperature outside right now (4:00 p.m.) is 36° C, and the night temperature hovers around 24° C.

Anyhow, here are some pictures from my travel home.


The old Terminal 1 at Pearson is being torn down. A part of Terminal 2 also has been torn down. 


The freaky, Disneyesque moving installations(?) at the Calgary airport. 


Background: the Calgary downtown. Foreground: a plane from the Northwest Airlines, the yuckiest airline in North America. 


The WestJet cargo bins. 


The Kelowna "airport." 

Leaving tomorrow

I'll be leaving Waterloo tomorrow. I bought Kellogg's Frosted Flakes Cereal & Milk Bars to eat on the planes. (Why won't WestJet serve meals on their planes? Arggg.)

Also, I realized that shipping my stuffs back home (by regular mail, not Priority Platinum Chrysanthemum Express Same-Day Mega-Deluxe) set me back almost two-hundred dollars.

Well, I hope my plane doesn't get delayed seventeen hours like the last time.

Anyhow, I saw a guy who looks like Morrissey wearing a Morrissey t-shirt on Tuesday. I thought it was really creepy. It was almost as creepy as the guy who looks and speaks just like Karl Lagerfeld I saw in Toronto (somewhere between Spadina and Dufferin on Queen St. to be specific).

Thumbsucker

An excerpt from Deformer, a short film by Mike Mills:

Girl:
Empty hearts lack blood. Feel with your tongue.
I love everyone; I mean I love girls and boys; I probably even love you.
Love is really wonderful, especially if you love a lot of people, just not one.
One is lonely; a lot is fun.
I like fun; I like love. Love, love, love love.

Do you know who Mike Mills is? If you answered yes, then congratulations! You are officially a hipster; you may now collect your certificate.

If you said no, Mike Mills is, selon moi, one of the greatest commercial and music video directors. Among the videos he directed are Air's "Kelly Watch the Star" and "Sexy Boy." Air loved his work so much, they named one of the tracks from their new album "Mike Mills." Also, he created the Volkswagen commercial that doesn't actually show the car (which is one of my most favourite commercials) and the Adidas "Forever Sport" campaign. Yeah, and he makes 85-dollar pillows.

Not everything about Mike Mills is fine and dandy though. He also created of one of the most reviled campaign in recent memory: the Gap West Side Story. Even more disturbing is the fact that he did commercials for DuPont (one of America's coporate Satans), the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (the propaganda arm of tobacco and alcohol industry), and American Express.

A while ago, Mills decided to follow the steps of two other commercial/music video greats Spike Jonze (who is the ex-husband of Sofia Coppola, a parter of Mills' production company the Director's Bureau) and Michel Gondry (who is a friend to both Sofia Coppola and Spike Jonze) and direct a feature film. The film, titled Thumbsucker after the book it is based on, stars Keanu Reeves and Vince Vaughn and features soundtrack by Air and The Polyphonic Spree (two of my most favourite bands).

Now, if you haven't suspected already, I am a huge Mike Mills fanboy, and I want to see the movie so very very badly. What's extremely worrying is the fact that the film has been stuck in post-production stage for almost a year when it is not rich in effects at all. Moreover, Focus Features, the movie's production company, does not have the film listed in the "Coming Soon" section. I am beginning to think the film may have been axed (or maybe not). This really pisses me off. I want the soundtrack (which I expect to be an aural orgy), and I want it NOW. If they -- I am not sure who -- kill the soundtrack, I will hit them with blunt instruments until they die.

The bizarre behive lady

As you can very well see, this lady's hair is totally fucked.

Does anyone know who this lady is or when or where this picture was taken?

And, is she singing or something? Wouldn't that be a blatant violation of the Singing-While-Looking-Like-Marge-Simpson Ban Treaty?

I can't stop looking at this picture; I think this is the most disgusting single act of human perversion I have ever witnessed.

God is dead. 

Wow, almost a week without posting

I've been quite busy recently.

I had to sleep, eat, eat, sleep, eat, sleep every day. It was very exhausting.

Yeah, and I went to Toronto on Thursday and bought an Ugly Doll.

Well, I have to go back to pretending to study. Bye!

"Guys Gone Wild"?

Salon.com is running a story about Guys Gone Wild, a spin-off of the Girls Gone Wild franchise. While the company that produced Guys Gone Wild fervently maintains that the indended audience are straight women, the consensus is that it's really a gay porn. Salon.com's reviewers didn't sound like they bought into the company's claim.

Here's an excerpt:

Nathan: OK, first of all, do straight guys shave their pubic hair like that?
Jen: That's gay.
Nathan: Super gay. That guy's shaved too. Maybe straight guys are doing this now.
Jen: No.

The article goes on to inform the readers that the makers of Girls Gone Wild "has sold $100 million worth of DVDs." Who's buying these craps? Judging from the late-night informercials, Girls Gone Wild is very, very boring, has lower T&A per minute than most shows on Showcase, and only features people in dire need of extensive plastic surgeries.

Here's another excerpt:

Jen: Oh yeah. And look at his tiny little penis! This one looks like he knows what he's doing. He's totally a stripper. OK, and why is it that men make that move?
Nathan: What move?
Jen: That shaking-the-dick-around move.
Nathan: Dunno. Again with the shaved pubes!
...
Nathan: And these are not manly men. They're man-boys. That's much more the erotic territory of the homo. Look: shaved again. Now they're doing "dick tricks." And it looks like the girls behind the camera are into the ass slapping too. Are you into ass? Are girls into guy ass?

So, uhh, well, what's with the "dick trick" stuff? People do this? That's just disturbing.

Vote now for your new global overlord

Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, the San Francisco artist of the 60x1.com and MaoDonald/Jesus bin Laden fame, have set up a site where you can vote for your favourite global overlord, or Global President, if you prefer.

It looks like Hung has been doing a lot of work recently (for example, the cover art for Rem Koolhaas' new book). This makes me glad (I thought he got mauled to death by rabid dittoheads or something when the updates stopped).

Well, so who are you going to vote for? I voted for Idi Amin; I think we need more leaders who knows how to appreciate some good human flesh.

The mystery of the missing sculptures

The mystery of missing sculptures at Hagey has been solved!

Well, I knew where they were for quite a while now; I saw them a few weeks ago while chasing the squirrels. I just didn't have the time to go take the pictures.

Anyhow, they are safe and sound at the General Services Complex parking lot.

Now that the renovation to accomodate Stalin's pickled body has been completed, the sculptures should go back to their original places. That is, once the fine people at Raytheon have fitted them with death rays. (You just don't know what these greedy pig fascists are going to do, you know.)

Where did the sculptures go? 

Hagey Hall before the construction began. 

Oh, what are those? 

The sculptures, yay! 

400 Philip St.: the happiest place on Earth. 

FYI, J.G. Hagey Hall of the Humanities will be renamed J. Stalin Hall against the Humanities. 

Finger Eleven is, like, so rad!

I didn't have anything to do Friday, so I decided to go to the Kitchener Best Buy and witness the breaking of the Guiness World Record (see the post from July 12, 2004).

I arrived at the Fairview Park Mall bus stop slightly before 5 p.m., so I decided to browse the mall, and, well, I got distracted at the Gap. It was already 6 p.m. when I got to Best Buy.

I had real hard time finding Finger Eleven in the store. They were just standing at the back corner, getting pictures taken by the tards (there were only about twenty of them - no world records broken here).

Later, I was in Kitchener downtown to pick up some magazines at KW Bookstore and to see how many tards have lined up for Finger Eleven. There were only thirty-one in the line. Thirty-one! I was quite disapponted to not see the Guiness World Records for most tards per square feet broken.

It was still a good day though. I got Tokion, Giant Robot, ReadyMade, and a $54.50 Gap shirt for $19.99.

Best Buy: God's Gift to the Mankind(TM). 

Line-up for Finger Eleven's show at the Element in Kitchener downtown. 

Travis, u r my sk8er boi

I don't know if you have, but I've recently noticed a poster taped to a window at Chemistry 2.

Could it be an Avril Lavigne poster?

Ahh! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! It is an Avril Lavigne poster! And, it says "my skater boi." Boi, with an 'i'.

I have never seen anything as disgusting as this.

With the help of Google, I was able to find the culprit of this abhorrent act: this dude.

My heartfelt condolence to those who will be taking CHEM 421 in Winter 2005.

WTF? 

"Skater Boi"? Isn't it supposed to be Sk8er Boi? I guess silly Avril just forgot how the title of her second single is spelled.