Archive

6.14.2006

"And when the wombat comes, he will find me gone..."

I was thinking about Wombats today, about what they really are, what they do, what they mean in the overall scheme of things. I don't know. But I do know they're very underrated creatures, so underrated in fact that no one really cares about them, not even Google - who gives the first search result to the Women's Mountain Bike and Tea Society...even better, if you type in just "Wombat" and hit the 'I'm feeling lucky' button you get the Australian search engine Web Wombat which currently outranks South America's Slothsearcher.com. Type in a search there and the engine pokes at your inquiry for a while, then takes a cube shaped crap on it.
All this lack of appreciation started to concern me of a possible conspiracy to suppress the wombat. A question arose...why are all the other Australian marsupials so popular and loved, while the wombat, not? Kangaroos: they get their own brand of shoe, co-star in the Winnie the Pooh cartoons and books, get over fifty songs written about them (only 3 about wombats), thirty tv shows and movies...including Captain Kangaroo and their starring role in this gem "The Warriors of Virtue" aka 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: The New Age Kangaroos'.Next are Koalas: they get their own delicious chocolate filled cookie, the classic nickelodeon cartoon 'The Noozles' and its ripoff 'The Little Koala'.
Wallabies? They're even smaller, cuter and more loveable than kangaroos, 'nuff said there. People love em! They want em!
Bandicoots - Crash Bandicoot. That ring a bell? No? Remember Sonic the Hedgehog? Yeah? Well Crash was the 3D Sonic ripoff for the Playstation, quite popular too, lots of crappy spinoffs.
And finally...opossums, well, they get plenty of attention due to the fact that they're hideous, stupid, disgusting and always laying dead on the side of the road. One day I was driving along and one of these things was just standing there in the middle of the road, perched on its hind legs, just staring at my oncoming vehicle. I was just about to hit the gas because I hate them, but I also feel sorry for them, and there's no way I could bring myself to (knowingly) run over any creature, even a stupid possum.
Anyway...
WOMBATS...they get nothing! "Why"? you say. Why do they deserve any attention? Who cares anyway? It's just a fat, dumb animal...possums down under...
WHY!?!...BECAUSE! I had a dog once as you might remember, his name was Watson and he was part wombat. Well, Watson was the wisest animal I've ever met in my life. That's right, he was fat, he was slow, he had short legs, he liked to dig with his snout...
See the resemblence? Even our other dog looked oddly similar to another famous Australian monster.
My very loosely supported argument is THIS...if wombats are even half as wonderful as my old dog was, well, then they deserve twice as many shows, twice as many shoes, twice as many video games, twice as many cookie brands and twice as many songs as the other marsupials who get hit by cars FAR more than the wombat, fact. So who's fat and slow now? Jerks.
That is all. Good day sir.

Patrick Bateman's "Song of the Day":
Today's Song:
Take Me With U by Prince.
"I think this is one of Prince's more brilliant pop songs that isn't included on any of his greatest hits, which I find highly regrettable. For me, too much of his later work was overy sexualized and catered to the heavy R&B scene, which I find difficult to relate to. Along the lines of his classic 1985 hit "Raspberry Beret" this elegantly arranged tune is one of his rare acoustic-rock driven numbers. It starts out with a rousing drum roll that gently carries the listener down into the vocal harmony accompanied by a bouncy string section and acoustic guitar. At first the lyrics and tune seem absurdly simple and sing-songy but it quickly manages to find sharp focus thanks to Prince's consistent vocal delivery and backup vocals by Apollonia Kotera, who contributes an innocent and sharp quality, as well as added dimension. Here, Prince and his lover, Appollonia, sing of the simplicity of romance, really getting to the heart of the matter in their plea to one another that time, location and subject matter are frivolous. All they truly need is one another. Profound, to say the least.


Photos From
"Holding the Wombat" http://astro.berkeley.edu/wombat/wombat2.jpg
"Tazmanian Devil with Babies" http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d84/JohnCampanelli/TasmanianDevil01.jpg
"Wombat Peeking Over Log" http://www.dbmi.columbia.edu/~elc7001/pics/australia/wombat.jpg

6.12.2006

Here I Am...Rock You Like a Hurricane

Hey y'all, I'm back, from outer space.
Anyway so yeah, I got a new deodorant recently, true story...
Let me just turn off the lights and project my thoughts for a moment...
It was two or three months ago that I had settled on the "fresh" scent of invisible solid Right Guard as my antiperspirant of choice. In fact I liked it so much that I bought two of them, because once the first ran out I didn't want to wait (and Paula Cole agrees). Then, a few mornings ago I was winding down to the last little bit of the stick, desperately wiping my underarm to prolong its glorious life. But then before I could give it one last hurrah it fell off the stick, gliding gently to the floor, to its death. So, a few sad days later I made a special trip to Wal-Mart with only one thing in mind, to see if they started carrying Maxim again, BUT ALSO to stock up on my own, my deodorant, myyyy preciousssssss. I scoured the aisles for it, I wanted it, I NEEDED it. I began fervently looking everywhere for that black stick with the cool blue writing; "fresh"...ohhhhhh yeaaahhh! My eyes were directed to the small Right Guard section...but...but, where is it? Turns out the A holes at the Gillette company discontinued that certain scent...so I look for whatever appears to be the closest new-version substitute and all they have is "Sport". Generally I steer clear of any products that have the suffix 'sport', or 'xtreme', especially when it comes to deodorants since my last experience wasn't good, and since I don't usually "sport". I swear the stuff is like paint primer. When you're in the shower washing your pits there's no getting it off, it's there to stay, it's disgusting.
I wasn't going to get it but I decided to sniff anyway... and, what I smelled nearly changed my life, it's like every beautiful smell of life combined into one scent. A perfect Irish spring morn, dancing with hundreds of leprechauns all singing the 'Safety Dance' while being showered in golden rain. It's like if Yankee Candle made a deodorant and called it "smell 'O' heaven". It's like a thousand fresh laundries with a thousand Snugglebears reenacting the battle of Endor. And so now, I have a new "my" deodorant, until they change it to Xtreme, which is always the next unavoidable stage of the Right Guard cycle. Right Guard>Right Guard 24 hr>Right Guard shield>Right Guard sport>Right Guard Extreme protection>Right Guard Xtreme Maximum Power>Right Guard Everlasting Sweatstopper>
Repeat cycle.

Uh huh, I told you it was a good story.

In other news, I finally listened to Genesis' 'Lamb Lies Down On Broadway' all the way through WHILE reading the lyrics carefully. In general I'm a pretty crappy listener when it comes to music. I rarely pay attention to lyrics, especially if they aren't blatantly obvious. I've heard the album numerous times and, of course, it's a story about a Puerto Rican kid in New York City named Rael who is "magically" transported to an alternate dimension within the city. This other "reality/existence" is filled with strange and unsual things ala Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland...the problem for me was that I never actually followed the happenings of the story lyrically or payed much attention to subtle themes and commentary, which it's loaded with. This time, however, I experienced the story as a whole and can now see the important dimension I missed before, the real brilliance of the work, which lies in clever and insightful way that of spirituality and self-image are dealt with. Before, I simply enjoyed this as loosely connected and good songs...like I do with too many other records, always missing the message...but now it's almost a cinematic experience for me. The climax and finale function just like a movie really, and there's a part toward the very end during 'In the Rapids' when Gabriel sings
And when the waters slow down
The dark and the deep
have no-one, no-one, no-one, no-one
no-one left to keep.
Hang on John! We're out of this at last.
Somethings changed, that's not your face.
It's mine - it's mine!
which immediately segues into the last song "It" to create a genuinely moving moment. So good.

Ergo, visa vi, concordantly...if you have not heard this masterpiece then you need to check it out. Even if you're not a fan of Genesis it's still a fun-filled and imaginative experience, not to mention it's just a classic album that any music fan should hear at some point.

Welp, that's all I got for now, so to quote some Christian band, "you've got the choice, you get to choose, so go ahead and have fun" Or somethin somethin. Oh yeah, if anyone's having trouble seeing all of the blog, please tell me, I widened the margins but I'm not sure if that fits into everyone's monitor, not sure how that works.
Buh-Bye