Takei It

Codgerspace

Codgerspace by Alan Dean Foster

 

 

Normally I just make a few snark remarks about the book cover, however, this month I have discovered a book that I seriously want to track down and read!  So I'm just going to give you the story outline.

The remains of a leftover cheese sandwich cause all the machines with artificial intelligence to begin to contemplate the universe and search for signs of higher, non-human intelligence. One particular food processor that works at a retirement home on Earth discovers an alien warship that has been buried for one million years on Earth, with the assistance of five of the retirement home's residents.  The Earth, now a combination theme park and retirement planet, is invaded by secret agents posing as tourists and the aliens return to threaten extermination.  The immense ship is eventually airborne with the five retirees and the food processor and readies it's self for combat against both the aliens and the humans.

The toasters are coming!

Mostly Metal Jacket

I'm veering away from a monthly dose of misheard song lyrics.  But until I come up with something else, here's Mostly Metal Jacket, one of my favourite animutations, by a guy called Bill Volk.

 

Just in case you were wondering: the song is "Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot" by Caramba.

Huxley vs Orwell

People often talk about George Orwells book Nineteen Eighty-Four as a despairing vision of the future, however,  Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is in fact a far more insightful.  Some time ago I found this comic strip by Stuart McMillen which its self is an interpretation of the book a book Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public disclosure in the age of show business by Niel Postman.  Postman shows that Huxley is far more accurate in it's premonition of the future than Orwell.  A future that is now not in the future any more, it is in fact the present day!  Huxleys Brave New World was published in 1932, Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in 1949.

 

Lets see how they compare through Stuart McMillens comic strip...

 

 

So there you have it. Huxley was the visionary, Orwell just gets discussed more because Nineteen Eighty-Four is in all the high school reading curriculums, almost no one has read Brave New World these days. See Huxley was right again.

 

If you want more go see Stuart McMillen here or Neil Postman here.

 

 

Desperados Payoff

They shouldn't really be surprised. It's well known that the back door is his preferred aperture of entry.

 

 

Sacred Cow Burgers

 

Mark Twain was a fan of the Sacred Cows?!   Groovy.

 

"Thrill, thrill, thrill
Kill, kill, kill
Make a scene
Knock off a dean
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
Bump off a square
That's what it's about
Hate is in
Love is out
Kill, kill, kill
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah"

The Dark Side of the Rainbow

The Wizard of Oz:  A girl named Dorothy is transported to a magical land where she kills the first person she encounters.  She teams up with three other outcasts to kill again.  The court case would be: Exhibit A, one farmhouse.  Exhibit B, one bucket of water....  Dorothys' gang consisted of:  a heartless, ax-wielding android;  A deceitful, bipedal, sentient lion; a mentally unsound, rag-faced, shambling horror; and Dorothy herself, a foreigner intent on impressing her beliefs through violence on the local communities.

 

Then there's Glinda the Narcissistic Witch of the North. She floats in near the beginning of the adventure all smiles, and magic superpowers and insisting on wearing a crown.  But one wonders where was she during all the bad stuff?  Was she floating around in the clouds watching the whole series of unfortunate events? Dorothy had the slippers to take her home form the beginning, did Glinda make her go through all that trouble for her own amusement?  Or was she just to inconsiderate to bother telling her anything useful about them right away?
 

 

Glinda is not quite the good witch she paints herself to be, at best she's self-involved and inconsiderate of others. At worst she's a sadist who enjoys watching others suffering until she decides to come in and save the day, so she can bask in their adoration.

The hanging munchkinsdebacle.

One of the legends of The Wizard of Oz film is that one of the munchkins hanged himself on the set and his body can bee seen  at the end of the scene where the Tin man joins Dorothy and the Scarecrow.  Other versions of this story involve a stage hand or the daughter of one of the producers.  The other side of the story is that many exotic birds were borrowed from the LA zoo for filming and were everywhere throughout the set causing unexpected background movements.

 

There's various footage all over you tube (including some faked dead munchkin footage), the most recent addition to the story is that the DVD has had the munchkin digitally edited and replaced with a bird so only the VHS version from the mid 80's has the dead munchkin in it, making it all a big cover up by the studio.

 

The thing here is, that as much as I would like there to be a dead munchkin swaying back and forth while Judy Garland and her companions sing and dance by, I actually remember seeing the bird when I watched it as a kid.  It seems crazy but at times I seem to have a disturbingly good long term memory.  The Wizard of OZ was on every year when I was young, my school music teachers would tell us to watch it and I remember the bird spreading its wings. I think we're talking 1979, 1980 and 1981 here, which pre-dates the distribution of the movie on VHS where all the brujha began.

One of the things that keeps this story circulating (aside from some people believing absolutely anything) is that many workers were losing their jobs at the studio at that time, and there was a make-up artist who committed suicide and is believed to have worked on the film. But  this was not in the middle of the studio and was after the close of production.

 

Aside form any pendulums made of dead munchkins, if you really feel like a head spin, try playing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album with the movie and seeing how the songs seem to match up with the scenes.   It really works, it gives the whole thing a very unsettling vibe.  Despite the rainbow on the cover of the album, various members of Pink Floyd have denied that they wrote the album while watching The Wizard of Oz or that they were inspired by the movie at all. But eerily it does match up...  Here's the how to: start the album at the third lion’s roar in the MGM movie title right before the film starts. Alternatively if you don’t want to try it old school yourself at home, here’s the you tube version. You'll be surprised at how suspiciously the songs match up with what's happening in the coinciding scene. Go on try it.

 

 

At risk of being a spoil sport, here's what is actually happening: your brain is designed to seek associations between various stimulus, so you automatically hone in on, and identify, any coincidental similarities between the music and the visual.  It just so happens that The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz have an extraordinary number of these coinciding similarities.

 

 

Naked Oblivion

Flashes from the Archives of Oblivion by Roy Harper

 

 

On this 1974 album cover, Roy Harper is wearing a pair of football socks in the colours of his favourite football team, Manchester City. He appears to be aroused by what looks like a furniture catalogue or possibly an article on antique clocks... in any case he is happy to see you.

 

The initial printing of this album cover was the cause of a strike among female workers at the EMI factory in Hayes, when shop stewards found the naked picture of Roy Harper in that week's new releases. Because of the strike, a black sticker was applied to cover Harpers fondling of his offending body parts for the promotional release. The sticker was replaced with a permanent black printed spot for the commercial release.

 

Marias Humps