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Posts tagged as “Weird”

The mad animal animations of Cyriak

BoingBoing posted “Welcome to Kitty City” today and it’s the weirdest, most delightful thing I’ve seen in ages. That brought me to Cyriak’s Youtube page and from there I dove head first into his many insane geometric animal animations. And they are marvelous. Watch them all and then watch them again. So magnificently weird and devious and great. Really really great.

Chairlift’s “Amanaemonesia”

Today Charles invited me to a private alpha of a new site called This Is My Jam. The idea is that you post a song that you’re jamming to but you’re only allowed one song at a time. So as soon as you switch it, your old song goes away. Pretty interesting, I think. Anyway, just clicking around today I stumbled across this gem of a song.

I don’t know anything about the group except that they’re British, I think. But I know I love this song and the video. It’s so perfectly weird in a heartwarming, accessible way. I love the dance, I love the karaoke lyrics at the bottom, I love the lo-fi aesthetic. It’s just really great.

PONPONPON

So, uh, yeah. This is a thing. Christ, I don’t even know what to say about it. There sure is a lot of stuff going on.

Japan is really weird. I kind of love it. My only real complaint about this video is that the edit could have been tighter. There’s so much musical motivation for cuts, but they’re never quite on. Always a little late or a little early. Too bad. What is now a very good extremely weird thing could have been a great extremely weird thing.

Prepare to have this song stuck in your head for the rest of the week.

Yung Humma’s “Lemme Smang It” and others

I can’t tell if this is some elaborate joke or if these guys are serious. Just watching the video seems to point toward it being a joke. But then you go check out their Youtube channel and their website and their Twitter and it starts to get weird.

For example, take “Lemme Smang It”. This video is so patently retarded it can’t possibly be anything but parody. Everything is bad about it. So bad, in fact, that I thought it was deliberate, that they were making a joke. How could anyone look at this video and think, “Man, we are making some tremendous art here. The world will shudder when our magnum opus, ‘Lemme Smang It,’ is unleashed.” They didn’t. They couldn’t have. I just refuse to believe it.

Everything about the production screams “joke.” The zooms, the shitty composites, standard definition, the dancing, the fake beard, the titles, the faces they’re making. Christ, I’m still not convinced it’s not a joke.

And then you have “Fried or Fertilized”.

Again, same thing. So bad it MUST be a joke.

And then there’s “Happy Sexgiving” (Really.)

And “Can He Move It Like This”.

And finally, the real icing on this confusing cake, “Go Grab My Belt”.

Ok ok ok. Stop. Of course, all of this is a complete joke right? It has to be! It’s even a good joke. I am laughing! Ha! Ha! Ha….? Because then I watched this:

My faith in the sureness of the joke has been shaken. This guy is not joking. Not joking at all. He’s 100% dead serious about the music they’re making at Turquoise Jeep.

Holy living fuck.

Go over to their Youtube page and watch some more of these things and then tell me that they aren’t, in some perverse oddball way, totally serious about this stuff. Clearly, they’re having fun doing this, but they are also definitely taking it seriously. It makes me nervous.

“MAAAAAAAAAANNNN, I love those stretchy pants.”

He-Man and the Eating of Flesh, a random thought

This morning on the train I was staring through the subway window letting my brain go where ever the hell it is my brain wants to go when I’m well rested (read: all over the fucking place), when I remembered a scene from the 1987 live action He-Man film that, for some reason or another, has always stuck with me.

It goes something like this:

EXT. DAYTIME BUSHES – MAN AT ARMS, his DAUGHTER, and the little WIZARD dude are hiding in some bushes. TEENAGE LEAD approaches them with a bucket of fried chicken. They commence to eat said fried chicken while still hiding in the bush.

DAUGHTER
What is this? It’s quite delicious!

MAN AT ARMS
Chicken. Pretty good too.

DAUGHTER
A chicken? Like the animal?

MAN AT ARMS
Yup.

DAUGHTER
You mean this was alive? They eat animals?

MAN AT ARMS
Yup. We used to eat like this back in the war.

Daughter and little Wizard look disgusted an drop their chicken back into the bucket. Man At Arms keeps eating, enjoying every bite.

DAUGHTER
Barbaric!

I don’t know WHY this has always stuck with me. The movie is wholly unremarkable, even to a 7 year old. But there’s something about Man At Arm’s “fuck it” attitude here that resonated with young Joe. I have snippets of other stuff from the film—the time key, Courtney Cox, Skeletor turning into super Skeletor at the end, Dolph Lundgren—but this scene is easily the clearest.

Weird how that happens, eh?

Why the inclination to make everything I touch slightly evil?

This is not news, but a thought I had while waiting for Michael to show up. Any thoughts? A prime example is the last post. Within the very first paragraph I had blasphemed. Pretty awesome right? Here are some more examples.

This was the background to my Blackberry for a long time.

It’s Lucifer falling from Heaven.

Here’s the photo that greets you when you try and unlock my current phone.

Not evil, but pretty unsettling. And bad ass.

Here’s the background I had until I changed it yesterday.

Here’s what I changed it to.

Pretty awesome, huh? I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of other examples around here too. It’s funny, right? I don’t know why I am compelled to make everything I touch slightly more evil, but I am. There it is. Just a thought.

Tokyo’s oldest man…but he’s been dead for three decades.

It’s official: Japan is WEIRD AS FUCK.

Tokyo’s ‘oldest man’ had been dead for 30 years

He was thought to be the oldest man in Tokyo – but when officials went to congratulate Sogen Kato on his 111th birthday, they uncovered mummified skeletal remains lying in his bed.

Mr Kato may have been dead for 30 years according to Japanese authorities.

They grew suspicious when they went to honour Mr Kato at his address in Adachi ward, but his granddaughter told them he “doesn’t want to see anybody”.

Police are now investigating the family on possible fraud charges.

‘Living Buddha’

Welfare officials had tried to meet Mr Kato since early this year. But when they went to visit, family members repeatedly chased them away, according to Tomoko Iwamatsu, an Adachi ward official.

Authorities grew suspicious and sought an investigation by police, who forced their way into the house on Wednesday.

They discovered a mummified body, believed to be Kato, lying in his bed, wearing underwear and pyjamas, covered with a blanket.

Mr Kato’s relatives told police that he had “confined himself in his room more than 30 years ago and became a living Buddha,” according to a report by Jiji Press.

But the family had received 9.5 million yen ($109,000: £70,000) in widower’s pension payments via Mr Kato’s bank account since his wife died six years ago, and some of the money had recently been withdrawn.

The pension fund had long been unable to contact Mr Kato.

“His family must have known he has been dead all these years and acted as if nothing happened. It’s so eerie,” said Yutaka Muroi, a Tokyo metropolitan welfare official.

Original article here. And also, double ewe tea eff?

On eating and the single man.

There was a moment in my life when I regularly ate at home. I cooked (or cleaned) and there was dinner time and, on the weekends, often breakfast time and lunch time. I still shop like these things are a part of my life, but I recognized last night that they are not. It’s not that I cannot cook (I can) nor that I do not like to cook (I do), it’s more that my brain is constantly occupied with other things to the point where I will forget to eat for the whole day. Yeah, sure I get hunger pangs, but those are easily ignored as distractions to whatever the hell else I’m doing or staved off with an apple or crackers or something minor. I think the last time I actually cooked something at home was when Fiduk and I had our last mandate here, early in June. Granted, I was gone for most of June, but I sure as hell didn’t cook at my parents’ house which is odd since I usually do a lot of cooking there.

And it’s not like I’m eating out a lot, either. I mean, I eat out a couple times a week, but not every day. And I’m not working a lot of nights which would mean that my dinner was bought for me. Awesome job perk, I know. I’m just not eating. So weird.

And why not? It’s not for lack of food. Right now my pantry is amply stocked with pasta, rice, quinoa, crackers, granola, cereal, hot sauce, and a bunch of other crap that usually fills a pantry. My fridge has broccoli, pears, salami, cheese, tortillas, juice, and whatever. I’m not lacking. If it gets empty, I walk over to the grocery store half a block away and buy stuff for it. Done done done.

Yet, when faced with the idea of stopping to make dinner, I often give it a, “meh.” For example, it took serious, conscious thought just to make a stupid sandwich for dinner last night. Why?! It’s the easiest thing in the world. The only thing that made me actually do it was that I knew I had an 1/8th of a pound of pepper turkey in the fridge that needed to be used and that I’ve recently been thinking about my eating habits a lot. Drinking habits too, but that’s another post. A similar thought occurred to me this morning before I left for work: I have yogurt that is going to go bad. I’d better eat.

In the olden days when making dinner was a team effort, I knew I could get away with only doing half of the work. Either I cooked and didn’t clean, or she cooked and I cleaned. It was an equitable arrangement, and one in which I gladly participated. Screw having to cook AND clean though. I’m not into that at all. I guess that’s one barrier, but it’s pretty minor since it’s not an issue with easily prepared meals. And with cast iron. You’re not even supposed to clean that shit.

But what am I doing that’s so important that I neglect to eat? Nothing! Nothing at all! I’m not writing. I’m not posting a lot here. I’m not out taking photos. I’m just losing time into a black hole of doing stuff but not being sure about what I’m doing and then forgetting to eat. What is going on? Does anyone know? I sure as hell don’t.

Help? Does anyone want to be my nutritionist/personal chef? I can’t afford to pay you, but it’ll be real fun, I promise. I also kind of want this book: Two Dudes, One Pan.