Potty Putter.


This is NOT a joke. I mean... it's not a joke in the sense that it's a real product, and it's really for sale. Clearly the purveyors of this nonsense are taking a mildly sardonic tone in their advertising, but that doesn't make it any less insane or horrible. There are people all over this country calling in to buy it as a joke gift for dad. "He'll think it HILARIOUS!!!!!!!" I am slack jawed. This is how low we've sunk. I'm thinking of buying it as a gift, possibly for Megan's dad...
- posted by Mason @ 6:19 PM (0) comments

Saftey Scans



I bought a packet full of amazing paper junk (what I believe bitchy hipster girls refer to as ephemera) at a crazy estate sale last Saturday. I've scanned all of it, but the processing will take some time, owing less to any degree of difficulty and more to my unabashed laziness. It's almost a shame that this art is so prefect. It's almost a parody of itself, given the putrid ripoff pop advertising pulled on it's own grandfather in the 90's. Sadly our generation has come to associate this style of early post war advertising with frat boy posters on the subject of toxic levels of alcohol consumption and cheap Old Navy t-shirts.




- posted by Mason @ 4:05 PM (0) comments

Happy Birthday Nanny!


i accidentally wasn't smiling in this one, but all of the others have too much glare

I drove up to OKC for my grandmother's birthday. On the way up I listened to some stories from the new Stephen King short story collection. I enjoyed it thoroughly. King's work, especially his short fiction, is perfect for car trips. When I was working at the call center and driving 60 mile round trips a day I listened to a number of books on tape (remember, the green blazer had a cassette deck), some of which were his. I've digressed.

There was much merriment at the cookout - I grilled big port mushroom caps and ate them on sprouted wheat buns. There were also beef burgers and white buns... mmm... colon cancer...


mom's lebanese potato salad, my mushroom burger,
coleslaw (behind the potatoes), some squash I grilled.


two homemade cobblers (with vegan crusts!) i asked for a little of each [blueberry and peach]
and I got two full plates... well, of course i fucking at them, what do you think?
- posted by Mason @ 10:10 PM (0) comments

1,000th Post!



Three years of blog and 1000 posts. That's a lot of posts. Thanks for indulging me. I realize how incredibly self absorbed and meglomaniacal the whole construct of having a blog has become. "Don't you want to know what I think????" If I wasn't so smug and self-important it might make me feel bad.

Anyhow, pleased be to enjoy this picture I took of me and my parent's dog Scruffy. FART!
- posted by Mason @ 10:09 PM (4) comments

DogFight.



I thought I'd give it a few days before I started posting snippy things about pop culture again. So in the mean time, watch this video of Riker and Digby [The Littlest Biggest Dog in the World] fighting.

I'm in awe of the completely weird sounds Digby makes when he gets excited. Maybe I'll sample them, slice them and build the hook for a rap song out of them.
- posted by Mason @ 3:14 PM (0) comments

Not that this is breaking news in any way...



I'd be remiss if I chose not comment on the death of the most famous person in the world. Artists should be commemorated for their body of work, not lampooned for their deeply complicated personal lives. Lots of people are fucking assholes or selfish pricks or cruel and manipulative megalomaniacs, and while Jackson was a profoundly odd and damaged person, he never seemed to act out of malice in any way.

As an inhabitant of planet earth born between 1950 and 1999, I can't help but have been influenced by Jackson's music, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who's ever been within 100 feet of a radio after 1965 who couldn't say the same.

I'm sure that there are tons of forchan loving gamer assholes who will get their "lolz" this week by poking fun at Michael via the internet. I'm not saying that I haven't made my share of jokes at Jackson's expense over the last decade, but I've never been a detractor and have always vociferously defended his work. So fuck off xbox playing high school kids, Michael was 1000% more genius than you could ever hope to be.
- posted by Mason @ 6:35 PM (0) comments

Red Box Is a Terrible Service



Redbox owes me $4+tax and a dollars worth of gas. I tried four different kiosks to return the bad movies we rented. Three of them were "FULL" and not accepting returns and the fourth was broken. It took two extra days for me to find one that would take my movies back. What sort of fucked up system is that? I'm sure they make hundreds of thousands of extra dollars a year by not emptying kiosks often enough. 15,000 locations nationwide - how many people are actually going to wait on hold to get their money refunded (I gave up after ten minutes)? So FUCK YOU REDBOX. I'll never rent another shitty Hollywood romantic comedy from you again. From now on I'm going to use the knock off machine at Fiesta instead.
- posted by Mason @ 6:20 PM (0) comments

Larry Norman? Fucking Genius.



I want to start by saying that Christianity isn't real. Jesus doesn't exist and the bible isn't true. With that out of the way, I am going on record that I think Larry Norman was a total fucking genius. A Folk-Rock god. While he's clearly no Neil Young or Warren Zevon, it would not be untoward to speak his name in an antecedent sentence to one mentioning them.

I've been listening to "Upon This Rock", "Only Visiting This Planet" and "In Another Land" quite a bit this week. I only like about 1/2 the songs on any given album, but the good ones are great. Nay, fucking awesome. Maybe I'll just make myself a comp. It makes me deeply sad that Norman wasted his prodigious gift on christian rock (though I'm sure he wouldn't call it a waste). There's a new doc out about him that I'm interested in seeing, it's called Fallen Angel.


- posted by Mason @ 10:49 PM (0) comments

Shoegasam.



My parents bought me a pair of shoes three years ago. 2006 Merrell Continuum Waterpro Aqua-Sports. I've worn the down, but not out. As you can see below, this is the first pair of shoes I've ever worn the fucking soles off. For the last several months, I've been trying to find a replacement pair. They don't make them anymore (of course), and I've tried on a lot of mildly comparable trail runners/aqua runners at REI and other outdoor stores, but I haven't liked any of them.



Fortunately, that Megan girl I know is the god-damned Ebay wizard. She found a pair (in the dark blue) for $59 plus $10 shipping. I flipped my fucking wig when she told me. They came in the mail today. I put them on. Having a brand new pair of the best shoes I've ever owned grants me an unbelievable new lease of on my life. That sounds asinine, but it's true. I'd been feeling horribly dejected about the prospect of getting a new pair of shoes, and now I feel much better. The first pair has lasted three years so far and will probably hold up for another 2. We'll be keeping an eye out for another pair that I can keep in the box until 2012 when my current pair starts to fall apart. That should give me until about 2015 to find another kind of shoe that I don't hate.

For hikes this winter I scored a free pair of warm and puffy Merrells from a guy we'd done some work for over the last few weeks. I'm set regarding shoes, motherfucker.
- posted by Mason @ 5:13 PM (0) comments

Z-Grade Movie Rebel Assault



Richard Harrison spent a lot time in Hong Kong and the Philippines in the 80's. Of course he spent a lot time in Italy in the 60's, doing bad spaghetti westerns and spy movies (he famously passed on the lead in A Fistful of Dollars). Ninja the Protector is one of LOTS of bad ninja movies that he made while trapped in Asia. I'm primarily interested in the box cover of this video nightmare, and not the actual movie so much. I only skimmed through the tape while it was ripping, but I don't believe the pictured combat motorcycles actually appear anywhere in the film. What a disappointment...

I uploaded the full cover scan and the side crop that you can use for an avatar.

On a side note, I feel that 20something gamerz [read: drink Ballz and watch G4 exclusively] who post on 4chan and use phrases like "epic fail" have ruined ninjas for the rest of us. Pirates as well. It makes me deeply unhappy. I suppose that I'll just have to be contented watching episodes of Felicity and Judging Amy edited together into two hour, multi-storyline tv movies.
- posted by Mason @ 4:55 PM (0) comments

I'm a Control Freak.



For a while now, I've been trying to figure out how to achieve more control over my Gakken synth without spending a fortune. Sure, I could go the midi controller route, but a c/v to midi kit is $50. I'd read some stuff online about making ribbon controllers so I thought I'd take a shot at it. You know that I'm lazy and don't like carefully executing well planned out projects, so it's no surprise that the end result is less than professional.

What you will need for this project:
a cardboard box or a 3 foot piece of wood
double stick tape
four alligator clip leads
regular point tip test lead
a sharpie
a chromatic guitar tuner
an old data backup tape/pro-grade vhs tape/dat tape

Cut the flaps off the box and fold it down into a strip (or just find a 3 foot piece of cardboard). Run the double stick tape down the middle of the cardboard. Crack open the tape case and pull out about 50% more than the length of the cardboard. Stick the magnetic tape (dull side up) on the length of the sticky tape. Place the clips on each end of the tape (now stuck to the cardboard). Unscrew the two leads from the Gakken's carbon strip [the thing you play it with]. Clip each lead to the respective ends of the cardboard. Using the extra clip leads and test lead, extend the Gakken's stylus so you can reach the cardboard strip. You can now play the gakken by touching the stylus to the strip of mag tape. Look how much more range you have!

Now comes the tedious part. Hook the tuner up to the output on the gakken. Touch the lower left end of the mag strip with the stylus and look at the note it produces. It may be so low that it's silent. Move the stylus to the right until you get a low C. Mark it with a line and the note. Now keep going right and marking every half step. At some point (probably about 3/4 of the way up) the notes will be so high that you probably won't even want to play them. I can't guarantee the scale will be the same for everyone - different brands and grades of tape will have different levels of resistance. I couldn't be more pleased about the outcome of this project. Instead of spending $50.00 - I spend maybe $0.05 - if you include the sharpie I used.

So congrats, your tiny monophonic analog synth is now actually playable. Bueno, no?
- posted by Mason @ 8:02 PM (0) comments

i want to die....



Wow. This is awful. I've missed, by only 55 minutes, one of the best craigslist deals of all time. Check this bullshit:

New fx and vintage recording (Plano) $60
Like new, in box:
Boss CS-3 Compression/Sustainer: $40.00
Behringer DC-9 (MXR Dyna-Comp clone): $15.00
Vintage recording:
Yamaha MT400 8-input 4 track cassette portastudio: $10.00
Yamaha MT100II 4-input 4 track cassette portastudio: $10.00
Roland CR68 "Compurhythm" first-generation drum machine: $5.00

Or, take it all home in one box for $60.00

WHAT?!?!?!?! That's the craziest deal I've ever seen anywhere. Now, admittedly, it was the 68, not the 78 [the difference? one is worth $300, the other $700 - the 78 is programmable]. But a $5 dollar vintage drum machine. Come on. You know me, and you know how much that hurts me. And 2 four tracks for $20? This just rips my motherfucking guts out. I just hope whatever bastard snagged this box of stuff appreciates it. I'm sure it will go on ebay instantly.


It hurts so much to not have gotten this for a finback.

On the uptick, we've started watching every episode of Felicity in order. It's awful. Just truly fucking horrid - you know I love it. It's like Dawson's Creek 2, but with less endearing characters. Adding insult to injury, you know my feelings on curly hair. Puke. Maybe someday I'll go through so many televison series that I'll be forced to watch The Commish. But I hope not.
- posted by Mason @ 10:17 PM (0) comments

One. Month. Off.



So I took a month off... so fucking what? You know what I did in that month? I finished the best creative work I've ever done as an adult. The new Moon Mission Death Squad album, "My Joke is Ruining Your Joke" is the only record we've ever done where I felt 100% satisfied with our end result. If you'd like to hear it before it "drops" [artwork won't be done until later this summer] you can check it out here:

the mp3 version -
http://www.tinyurl.com/mmds2009mp3

the flac version -
http://www.tinyurl.com/mmds2009flac

(if you don't know, which one you want, you want the mp3s)

Get the lyrics here. Yeah, it's a text file.

Also, you should give a listen to Daniel's sweet new band ¡Qué suerte! - I think they're excellent. It's by and far the best non-solo project he's been involved in.
- posted by Mason @ 9:06 PM (0) comments