Amateur Filmmaker, Author, Cartoonist, Musician and defictionalizer (Finding truth in fiction), mostly here to promote my music to indie developers that need it.
It's been a while since I did a newspost on this, but I thought I'd talk about this now.
I was born in 1991. 1 year after 1990. Specifically 1 year after the Cold War has ended. Because people were having a much needed break that lasted for a decade, it really made us all believe that the worst was over. That was until the Towers got hit. I was a kid at the time, but I saw it live on TV the second plane crashing into the second of the World Trade Center buildings. It does not remotely compare to what the people seen in public, but it was horrifying enough. Wars big and small continued to rage on and even with the deaths of Osama and Saddam, we were duped into believing that the worst was truly over. Then the Pandemic hit and just when things began to stablize the Russia/Ukraine conflict happened.
Now as much as I hate war, conflict and disaster I have come to a very messed up, yet still sensible conclusion. I believe we are on what I like to call a Darwinian Repeat. One that we failed many times over the past centuries.
For those who do not know what I am talking about hear me out.
Darwin. Whom many of you know as the guy that came up with the idea that Humans evolved from Primates, had other theories he was well known for. "Survival of The Fittest."
Now whenever someone in the modern world. Hell even someone centuries before during and after those words were written, hear these words. They like many other patrons, interpret it their own way. In this case the bulk of the world thinks it means that you're stronger if you kill anyone and anything else to get ahead. It's that mentality that is one of the main causes not just of this war, but ALL WARS!!
What it really means is that strength is tested through the hardships of life itself.
When the shit hits the fan for us, be it a minor infraction or a major disaster, there are two kinds of people. Some with the drive to keep moving forward and some with no will that would rather stay behind and die.
It's one of many reasons why this world is eroding. Because we repeat the misinterpreted bullshit version of those words and will continue to do so, until the world dies with us.
However. There have been times when people come close to breaking that cycle. Many soldiers turning the tides in war when the odds are against them being the big examples.
They weren't trying to kill the people in their way, that's incidental, they were trying to survive and make it home to their families and these people just happen to be in the way of that. They were surviving not just for themselves, but for other people in their hearts.
The same applies here. Putin pretty much threw everything they could at Ukraine, not because they want them all dead, but they want them all to surrender. Yet time and again, not only does Ukraine fight back, they'd rather die than rejoin Russia. Those threats to nuke are just empty threats, a last desperate resort from a scared, dickless dictator who can't comprehend why Ukraine doesn't want him in their country. Which is why ultimately he'll lose.
Everything he did up to that point was scare tactics.
So instead of trying to talk him out of it I suggest everyone and you're gonna think I'm nuts for this. Every single person around the world, egg him on. Show him that we'd rather die than let him rule over everything, since Ukraine isn't his only target.
I'll even get it started.
Go on Putin. Enter the code. Turn the Key. Push that red button. I fucking dare you. What are you waiting for. Do it. Easy target right here, I might be vaporized if I get lucky. Go on. DO IT!!! DO IT YOU DICKLESS PRICK!!!
Someone with no remorse and real balls would have done it by the time it was posted. He can't nuke anyone because he knows the Radiation would risk polluting any resources he'd need from the countries he wants. Take Canada for example. He may have fucked us regarding the Oil imports, but we fucked him right back. We have more natural resources. Things that the rest of the world would kill each other for, if he were to nuke us or God forbid, Nuke the states, he'd risk destroying our trees, water and irradiating any ore he'd need for metal. Nuclear winter goes a long way after all. If he didn't care about those needs and he does, we'd all be history by now.
He's a coward. Show him what true survival of the fittest is. The strength to move forward no matter what he throws.
Every time you see a news report of him devastating another city, mock him as though you could do that in your sleep.
Every time you hear a speech from him that justify his actions. Imagine his pants catching on fire, because he's a fucking liar.
Point being, you have to downplay everything he does, not because it upsets others who are victims of it, but to show said victims just how pathetic he is. Give them the drive to move forward and mock him all the same. It's not too late.
We've been spending too much time trying to figure out how to fight this fucker and help the victims, when we should have spent time showing his true image.
"The enemy has only images and illusions behind which he hides his true motives. Destroy the image, and you will break the enemy." -Bruce Lee
I woke up this afternoon and saw my notifications lighting up I go to check and aside from the usual likes and comments from my work I stumbled upon this:
I myself did a list of them. More or less to let the funny bone out every now and then. Which can be seen here:
Now, first I was featured in the Phonograph:
That was cool, but I took that as a fluke. Then I was featured on their artist news section advertising my album at the time:
Now I would have been just fine if every now and then I was featured in those posts, depending on the opinion of the writers and editors. But the point being was I wanted to go for what hockey players call The Hat Trick. In which I was featured in that article three times. So needless to say, I was hoping my name would pop up again, but I never expected to be on the tagline. The literal top of the fucking page. This was my reaction:
In terms of press fame even on websites like this, that is about as on top as one can get. No innuendo intended. I mean holy shit. I know I bitch about not being successful financially, but in terms of critical and press, I don't undermine it. Any further and I'd probably be writing articles for it myself. That is of course if they would accept it.
First of all I would like to thank @The-Great-One. If you didn't find that tagline funny, it probably wouldn't have made it on there. Second of all I wish to thank @EscapistProductions who also found the ideas funny. And anyone from @TheTankTriibune I missed, thank you too. I would like to also congratulate those who are also featured even if I made enemies from some of you, I'm in too much of a good mood right now that it matters.
Most of all, I would like to thank my fans. Regardless of what happens, you have gotten me this far and I will not forget it.
420 has had a lot of meanings in weed culture. It is the date that Celebrates both the advocation and legalization of Marijuana in all it's forms. It's the slang people use when they want to smoke a joint or do a bong hit. It is also the day most dispensaries and pot shops offer discounts for their products. Who would have thought the thing that has been protested against for almost 85 years in the United States and nearly 100 years in Canada, is now a huge staple in world culture all over.
Up until 2018 in Canada and 1996 in California, everyone from Police, to Politicians to Radical Christian Moral Groups have done everything in their power to destroy this thing, despite it having better benefits than hazards. Saying everything from it funding terrorism to I kid you not, making you Gay, back when Homosexuality was also considered evil by the status quo. In the case of the states, the whole thing started with this fucking movie:
Made in 1936, 1 year before Weed was officially criminalized. While I've first heard of it in a salute to B movies called It Came From Hollywood, I didn't officially watch it until a few months ago. I was lucky enough to even watch it in colour. While this movie was meant to convey the "Dangers" of weed use in a serious manner, there was some over the top shit that would at worst make people laugh and at best make them want to smoke the weed, just to see it. For example. When the movie came out in black and white, they couldn't distinguish Weed Smoke from Cigarette smoke. So when they colourized it, they took extra special care to make the smoke a different colour. When I saw them take the first puff, the smoke was green. Here I thought "Ok, stupid, but a good way to distinguish." However when more and more people are smoking it all sorts of funny colours come out. Initially I thought "What the fuck? Do each of the colours represent a different strain? Like Pink for Pink Kush and Yellow for Hawaiian?" But that's just the tip of the iceberg. According to this movie, those who smoke, dance and laugh uncontrollably, engage in criminal behaviour or in the case of the antagonist, make them play the piano faster:
I want whatever they're really smoking.
Still, that being said as much as I like 420, I think they were asking for trouble when they picked that day. Granted they probably meant nothing by it, but it's a double whammy as April 20 is not only Hitler's Birthday, but the date of the Columbine Massacre. Needless to say much like they latched onto Rock and Roll, Violent Video Games and Movies, the Moral Police latched on to weed. Claiming you support Hitler if you smoke it or you're gonna shoot kids in school if you smoke it.
If Hitler actually smoked Weed, (Judging by how he yells a lot he was heavy into cocaine.), he'd be too stoned, too lazy and too hungry to try to kill 11 million people. As for Dylan and Eric, if anything they didn't smoke enough. Had this shit stayed legal, it would have solved many problems. Not to mention it'd be in abundance by the time a lot of world tragedies came about. You poor fellow, Suffering from the Great Depression? Have a joint. Even if things don't go well and the market stays crashed, you'll at least be in a better mood to deal with them. Hey Osama, pissed off at the people that trained you and your buddies in Afghanistan during the Cold War? Rip a bong between you all. That way you'd be in no condition to hijack a plane and you'd not be a known terrorist and pariah.
Hell honestly, I think whatever problems Putin had that made him nuts, would have been solved a lot quicker if he lifted the ban on weed in Russia and had some parties with his comrades. You'd be surprised how well weed goes with vodka. He'd be passin the joints before Putin them out.
And that's just personal problems. Weed has helped a great deal with various medical and mental health problems as well. THC helps cancer patients eat more, while CBD eases their pains. Indica is a great way to deal with insomnia and Sativa is a great way to deal with lethargy. The possibilities are still endless and ongoing.
That being said, the anti-Pot stuff is not all cringe. Because the people who make the PSAs have no fucking clue on how weed works, there have often been hilarious gems. Such as the classic:
Ya I got a question. What are you on? That's a frying pan with an egg.
Now they use the blanket term drugs in most of these, but I often notice that whenever they go into the specifics, Weed comes up first in every one of them. Higher priority than Cocaine, Crack, Heroin, Speed, Meth. You name it. They treat this shit like it not only kills you by itself, but also leads you to harder and dangerous drugs. Yet THESE SAME FUCKING PEOPLE SINCE THIS WHOLE THING STARTED NUDGE YOU CLOSER TO SMOKING CIGARETTES AND DRINKING ALCOHOL!!! Now I smoke and drink, don't get me wrong, but what the fuck?
My personal favourite was not too long before Justin Trudeau started his campaign for Prime Minister. The major angle he had to get in was the legalization of weed in Canada. The only good thing he's done in my opinion save for his part in aiding Ukraine against the Russian army. So knowing they'd be out of a job soon this PSA shows up:
Now to their credit, they did handle the brain thing better here. Using a glass effigy of a human brain with the weed stains representing damage. That was cool even if it was bullshit. The thing that baffled me though was the main message that Weed today is 300 - 400% Stronger than it was 30 years before this PSA was made. How is that gonna stop people from smoking it? If anything it would make them want to find it more. I saw this commercial in 2014 and even I want that stuff. You said it was stronger so where the fuck is it?
Point being is that as much as some parts of the world changed for the worse, it can't be denied that some parts changed for the better. Especially not listening to stupid shit like that.
Many don't know this about me, but I am a huge fan of the Bill and Ted series. For those who don't know or only watched the third movie around this time Spoilers.
Bill and Ted was a series of buddy adventure comedies starring Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston Esquire and Keanu Reeves as Ted Theodore Logan. It was the movie that put Keanu Reeves on the map years before he made it big as an action star on Point Break and The Matrix.
The series was as follows.
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure:
Two well meaning yet dim-witted High School Slackers named Bill and Ted are struggling in school and trying to put their band Wyld Stallyns on the map. Ted is especially under pressure, because if he fails History class, his dad plans to send him to Military School. Running out of hope they meet a time traveller named Rufus, who comes from the future using a Time Travelling Phonebooth. He comes to help them pass history, by actually going back in time and watching it unfold. Using the machine, Bill and Ted decide to snag important figures. Figures like Socrates, William "Billy The Kid" Bonney, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Joan of Ark, Sigmund Freud and Joan of Ark. After a mishap or two, they pass their test with flying colors. As it turns out in the future, their band not only succeeds, but their music is so great that, it brings both the world and the universe peace. Still even after passing History, they have a long way to go. Still, they have a pair of babes from Medieval England that will stay by their side as girlfriends and bandmates at their most excellent time of need.
Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey:
Five years after the event of the first movie. Bill and Ted are still struggling with their music, but as luck would have it, they have been invited to compete in the battle of the bands. Should they win, they'll be put on the map as the rockstars they dreamed of being. Meanwhile back in the future, Rufus, is teaching history to future students, taking inspiration from the boys by bringing figures in. However before class can begin, his former gym teacher Chuck De Nomolos, has a sinister plan to be rid of the duo. See while they did unanimously bring peace, there are just some people who don't like their music. People like De Nomolos who are willing to go as far as kill just to be rid of it. They send two robot duplicates of the duo to kill them and ruin their moment in their place. Now normally in a situation like this, the protagonists do get out of it or barring that, the movie would end on a down ending, they would have been erased from existence causing the future to be evil. However it's wrong on both accounts.
For starters the robots kill them in the most Bill and Ted way imaginable:
Which btw explains very well why they didn't use the word in the third movie.
Second Death isn't the end of them:
After meeting and Melvining Death (Basically wedgied him and run off.), Bill and Ted desperately try to find a way to at least warn their girlfriends. However they fail twice. The first time, they tried possessing Ted's Dad. Since he's a cop, they think just telling them, that Bill and Ted are killed would get them to do something. Of course, that doesn't work. So they go to their mutual Stepmom/Former Classmate Missy, who was hosting a seance. However upon being mistaken for demons, Missy sends them straight to Hell. They try to endure it by looking at their own personal Hell's but when they couldn't handle a scary Grandmother (Also played by Winters), an angry Easter Bunny and a military school Colonel, who's wordplay would put Sergeant Hartman to shame, they try to flee. I love this part, because while I dislike Homophobia, I do think a certain F word is highly appropriate this one time and I'll tell you why.
Just when they escape their separate Hell's, the Devil demands they "Choose their Eternity." To which Ted responds "Choose your own, you Fag!!" causing him to be flinged down the corridor, with Bill chiming in "You ugly!! Red!! Source of all Evil!!" Now the reason why I defend this one is the following. Let's say Hypothetically there is a Hell and whether you deserve it or not, you're going there. You may as well let everything out even if you're the most tolerant person. As Red Foreman once said when he contemplated kicking Bob's ass in the afterlife "We're going to Hell anyway." Plus who can be more deserving of that title than the red guy that inspired Christians to go after Homosexuals in the first place.
Anywho, they make it out of Hell by challenging the Reaper. They beat him in games like Battleship, Electric Football, Clue and Twister. Which not only frees them from their demise, but allows them to command Death. With the help of Death, God and two Martian Technicians named Station, Bill and Ted race to the Battle of The Band, build two good robot versions of them which destroy their evil robot duplicates and face off against De Nomolos in a time game, which they win. However time is running out and they still don't know how to play. So they use the booth to travel half a year ahead of time, get married, have kids and learn to play their hearts out in a spectacular cover of Kiss' song God Gave Rock and Roll To You:
However while initially this was meant to be the final movie, fans wanted more. It took them 19 years to give us the epic finale we needed.
Bill and Ted Face The Music:
Now this one I expected to be funny, I did not expect it to be awesome. The movie itself takes place in 2020. 19 years after the events of Bogus Journey. After many attempts they failed to deliver on the song that is supposed to unite the universe. Not only that, but their marriage is on the rocks. After a visit from Rufus' daughter, they are given a deadline to finish the song lest the universe as we know it collapses. As shown when different people from different timelines have been shuffled around. They hatch a plan to go a few years ahead in time to get the song while it's finished. All the while their kids Theodora "Thea" "Little Ted" Preston Esquire and Wilhemina "Billie" "Little Bill" Logan, decide to help their dads out by doing what they did decades ago. Only their plan is to gather famous musicians to help them out. After many mishaps including but not limited facing their future selves and going to Hell again, Bill, Ted, Joanne, Elizabeth, Death, the Kids all reuinite on a highway and play their hearts out. As it turns out that while Bill and Ted are the figureheads of universe peace, they find out they wouldn't have succeeded without their kids help. Just as time runs out and the universe is on total collapse, Bill and Ted split themselves into infinite versions of themselves to travel through out time and space and have everyone and I mean EVERYONE, play the song that saves the universe, keeping the future intact. The movie ends with Old Bill and Ted having one last jam session before they die.
The song itself was called Face The Music:
When I heard this song, both the studio and the end movie version I was stoked. This literally felt like a world uniting song. In a way the world did unite. With so many uniting against a common enemy, it brought the world together the first time in a long time in a positive way, when the past decades were spent using the internet to bring the world together in the negative.
I implore everyone to listen and spread this song. And remember. Be Excellent To Each Other and Party On Dudes.
I wanted to expand my brand by going beyond music and art and narrating audiobooks. To test it out, I decided to start with a very famous, yet still very public domain horror story. Written by one of my favourite authors H.P. Lovecraft.
Happy Easter. Fun fact, the day I was born, was not only April Fools Day, but also happened upon an Easter Monday.
Now according to some Christian text, Easter is the celebration of the ressurection of Jesus Christ. With Good Friday being the symbolic day of his death and the coming weekend celebrating the three days it took for him to rise from the dead. While I treat this Holiday with the greatest respect, there are a few things that bother me.
Most of the time depending on the year, Easter gets switched between months. Sometimes it happens in March. Other times it happens in April. Why the fuck do they do that? It's often very confusing.
The other thing though is like other Holidays, such as Christmas and April Fools Day, Christians appropriated this from a Pagan Holiday. I'm Pagan myself and that surprised the Hell out of me. The specific holiday is called, Eostre. Which celebrates the Holiday with a big feast. There have been theories that Hares and Eggs came from that specific holiday.
But none the less, I believe in the spirit of the Holiday in all it's forms even outside my own and as long as Chocolate is allowed either way, I'm golden.
Recently customers have been complaining about illness linked to Lucky Charms cereal. The Food and Drug Administration stepped in. You know that Leprechaun has made it big if even the FDA is after his Lucky Charms.
