when i was in elementary school i would have a koogle sandwich everyday. i wonder what my mom was thinking, i mean basically this is like a reeses peeces sandwich. ah, but so delicious. it was a sad day for me when they stopped making it. but now thanks to this site, i can relive alot of my childhood memories(and not just the food!). via everlasting blort.

via coudal i discovered the lost and found issue of dodge magazine. i think this only exists as a web magazine, but it's the kind of thing i prefer to hold in my hand and thumb through as opposed to just seeing it on line(though better on line than not at all).

from dodge i discovered this cool site about a film called rustboy, you can see quicktime selections from the film as well as test shots for the film on their page. i'm still exploring the site, but it seems like the kind of film i'd buy if it's ever released on dvd.

jonny on the exoticalist posted this wonderful link to a page about library music. library music is music written to be used in films or televsion but not for a particular show or film. so if you have a car chase scene, you can just drop in this library music in the background. some of it is very interesting. luke vibert has put out two compilations of this kind of music as has barry 7. there are a lot of comps on this site i've never heard of before. i somehow think they are probably out of print though, but something to keep my eyes open for.

yesterday i hit some toy stores i hadn't been to in a long time, and to my amazement a few of them had tin robots. i ended up buying two. they were a bit more expensive than i usually like to spend on toys, but the boss gave me a discount for buying two and after seeing the orange one walk, i knew i had to have it. the artwork on the boxes they came in is quite nice as well. though i think the box for the moon explorer doesn't quite match the actual toy inside.

last night i went to shilin and picked up this set of small gatchaman toys for peter. they've been selling these in gumball machines here, but when you buy it from a machine like that you never know what you will end up with. but this toy shop in the shilin nightmarket sells them all together as one set. one of peter's sister's friends was so impressed with the set she wanted to know where she could go to buy a set for herself.

robots a-z a nifty site of robots seen in tv and in movies. via quiddity.

apparently driving two vans and a white panel truck is enough to get you pulled over as suspected terrorists as god speed you black emperor recently found out. via die puny humans.

paul has decided to give up his blog. sad as i really enjoyed his book reviews. since his blog is no more, i've decided to update my blog links. adding delicado and quiddity. delicado is a dangerous blog for me because his record reviews always make me want to go spend my entire paycheck at dusty groove.

in one of my classes we were discussing old customs and superstitions and my students told me the following:

if you whistle after dark it will attract ghosts.

you should never take a picture of three girls/women.

you shouldn't whistle because the ghosts will bring you bad luck and you'll have to go to a temple to get a charm so they'll leave you alone. you shouldn't take a picture of three girls because it looks like the chinese character for rape(this character is made up of three woman characters). most of my students said that no one really follows or believes these things anymore, but then another of my students spoke up and said a friend of hers had the ghost problem, and recently had to get a charm so it would leave him alone. i guess it's a good thing i'm not in the habit of whistling after dark.

kevin sites blog from inside iraq has been forced to stop publishing. from his blog:


I've been asked to suspend my war blogging for awhile.

But I don't want let you down -- I'm chronicling the events of my war experiences,
the same as I always have, and hope to come to agreement with CNN in the near
future to make them available to you in some shape or form, perhaps on this site.

sounds like the mighty CNN has spoken. well, here's another reason why i distrust CNN. via die puny humans.

last night peter and i watched the vcd for serial mom. i wish we had this on dvd, but it's only available here on low quality vcd. it was great to see this again. i always forget how much i love this movie. it may not be as outrageous as john waters early films, but it's still out there compared to most tame hollywood movies.

years ago when i was still in seattle i had a portion of the crank call from this film on my answering machine. one day i came home to find 30 messages on my machine. most were people hanging up, one was someone cussing back at my phone, and one was from a hotel. two people had called to listen to the messge and discuss what to do with "the problem", you see my number was identicle to the number of a hotel, except to get the hotel you had to dial 800 first. some would not do that and would get all offended at my message. after they listened to my message, they forgot to hang up their phone so i got to hear their conversation about what to do about the situation(ie me). one of them laughed after they heard the message because they knew where it came from, but the other person was more serious. but really what could they do? it wasn't my fault that their customers were stupid enough to call the wrong number and think they'd gotten a hotel. i half expected them to send me a letter asking me to change my message, but i never heard from them.

awhile back i had mentioned charles and ray eames. well now the library of congress has a really nice on line exhibition called the works of charles and ray eames the legacy of invention. via girl hacker's random log.

why are americans so afraid of sex? i'm sure we'll see more scary things like this now that the war has started. i just hope other countries don't follow the u.s. example. via follow me here.

recently die puny humans mentioned that there was a new captain scarlet program in the works, but this time using computer animation. so i headed over to fanderson to check out the details and it is indeed true. i also discovered they are working on a live action film version of thunderbirds. why is it that instead of being excited by this, i'm well, disappointed or disgusted? there was a time when i would of thought such news was cool, fine and dandy. with captain scarlet, why don't they use the new technology with a new story instead of just rehashing the old one? it may turn out being really cool in the end i'll have to wait and see, but my misgivings are still there. updating of old tv shows just seems like a way to attract an audience based on a familiar name even when the end product has very little to do with the original idea. hopefully that won't be the case here, but i'm not so sure.

the boombox museum. from birth to the mighty fall of the boombox. a sort of illustrated guide. the picture above is from one of the first models, but the site includes shots of all kinds of different boom boxes. via idle type.

the playsoundz discs i ordered awhile back have come in and i've been having a good time listening to them. how could i not love something that has occassional bloopy electronics and songs about being a tooth, having a milk mustache, or skeletons? they do remind me of perrey and kingsley and bruce haack, but they also remind me of some early 80s electronic music. but i haven't quite figured out who. i don't just mean the kraftwerk influence, which of course is there, but someone else.

the oddmusic gallery of instruments has pictures of various unusual instruments, such as the cello theremin(pictured above). they offer sound samples for a lot of the instruments, but none for the cello theremin unfortunately. they do however, have a whole section devoted to the theremin which features an interview with leon theremin himself. via j-walk.

the other day i came across the hong bao(red envelope with money inside) that work had given me for chinese new year. so i decided to splurge on a book at eslite. i picked up ray johnson correspondences. ray johnson is largely considered the father of mail art. the book is full of essays on his work as well as lots of pictures. while i was buying this book i saw books on joseph cornell and yoshitoma nara i would love to have. it's very tempting especially since eslite is having a 15% off sale.

last night was the last episode of the bad son(or the crystal boys). the series was 20 episodes long, so in the middle i stopped watching it. i hate feeling forced to watch something every night. they are now going to repeat the series every saturday night from 12-2am showing two episodes a week.

apparenlty the show has been really popular. peter said the website recieved 200,000 hits. i'm not sure how many people actually watched the tv show, but it's rare that any asian tv show like this will even deal with gay topics(a lot of what is on television these days comes from japan or korea, neither of those being particularly queer friendly - korea in particular where i was told that a star there came out and was fired from his televsion show because of this).

the times that you see anything gay on tv(excluding western shows), it tends to be the old flaming stereotype. this is one thing i liked about this series, it showed all kinds of people as being gay, not one particular type. during this episode words went up the edge of the screen that said "wen wen(terry) contact your auntie or mom and dad, we don't blame you." it sounds like someone's parents had seen the show and realized being gay is no crime and want their son to come home who they probably couldn't accept before. i don't know if it's true, but i'd like to believe such a thing is possible.

recently, in one of my classes we were discussing different kinds of news(international news, local news, sports ...) and one of my students said she liked to watch international news. and when i asked her why, she said because they(other countries) are more open about things like homosexuality. it's an odd thing, the news will often report about gay pride events around the world or gossip on what foreign stars are gay or allegedly so, but won't report on such stories locally. or not very often at least.

well, i'm still here. but that lovely atypical pneumonia has been discovered here in taiwan as well. i knew it was just a matter of time considering how many people routinely travel to hk, or china from here. now just as long as my cold doesn't turn into pneumonia...

if i should suddenly disappear you can assume this lovely disease has crossed over from hong kong to taiwan.

last night i met up with one of my old roomates and another friend, in the hsimen mrt(subway) station we saw this sign on a door. what exactly are they mixing with the air?

a few days ago i recieved my first set of artist trading cards in the mail. months ago i'd sent off a set of cards to be included in the ongoing copy left editon of trading cards. you send in 20 artist cards you have made and you get a set of 20 back from different artists. i thought my cards had gotten lost as it took a long time for me to get a set back. but they arrived. i've already sent in another set of cards, so i supsect i'll have another set coming my way in a matter of months.

once upon a time there was a blog named neohomo. sadly, one day it went away. good news is it is back with a new name, rambunctious.org.

experimental filmaker stan brakhage is dead at 70. criterion will be releasing a dvd of some of his work in may. brakhage may not be a household name to most people, but no doubt most people have seen something that has been influenced by his work.

last night i was feeling a bit bored, then i remembered that jean had a link to a web comic i hadn't investigated yet. so i went to take a look, and read this amazing comic called same difference. if i discover anymore cool comics like this i may have to break down and try to find a place that sells comics in english here. it was funny to read the comments people had left on the comic, as quite a few wanted everything wrapped up nice and neat like in some hollywood movie. i liked the ending, but i'd like to see an offshoot comic made from this story, but about the ben character.

there's a poem by william s. burroughs where at the beginning he says for john dillinger, in the hope he's still alive. i never really thought about that dedication before, but the other day i decided to find out who exactly john dillinger was. apparently he was a notorious bank robber. funnily enough, john and his gang weren't neccesarily seen as the bad guys by the american public, as bank robbers often times would destroy the mortgage reciepts at the banks. so if people were about to lose their house(a common thing in the depression) the bank wouldn't be able to take it back without the proper reciepts. they were in some ways a darker version of robin hood.

a nifty site here of game show adverts from old issues of tv guide(via quiddity). most come from the 70s, but there are some from the 50s and 60s as well. weird to see an ad for the price is right with no mention of bob barker.

someone on the exoticalist posted about this. the ibm 1403 printer, that plays music! they even have songs you can download such as raindrops keep falling on my head, born free, blue danube waltz all played on the printer.

the other day i was talking with one of my students about the situation in the states and she mentioned some interesting things.

one of these things was that the price of a visa to the states has gone up. it used to be around 40 u.s. dollars, but now it's well over a 100 u.s. dollars. i suspect if they deny your visa you will still be out the money. her company will be attending a conference in hawaii soon. she said the travel agent handling the visas told the company if there was anyone under 30 attending they might consider getting a group visa instead of an individual visa. she said she had a client recently who is 23 and he was to attend some sort of conference and the visa office denied him on the grounds he was too young! 23 is too young to attend a conference?! apparently that won't be as noticeable if you are part of a group, but if you are denied an individual visa you won't be able to apply for the group visa.

my student then went on to say how she used to think the u.s. were the good guys, but she certainly doesn't feel that way anymore, especially with the way the u.s. is insisting on a war with iraq, and the way it's treating both foriengers and its citizens within its borders these days.

i was never a huge comic book fan. but lately i've found myself getting interested in them, especially after reading some on line like super idol and nowhere girl(both found via die puny humans). i'm not sure if super idol is a complete work in itself or if what is available on line is merely a preview of a longer piece. i hope it's just a preview, cause i'd like to see more.

today was peter's birthday. so we ate cake and he opened the gift i gave him. i gave him a box set(5 dvds) of the gatchaman animated series. one of his favourite cartoons. we've watched a little of that tonight and now we're all going around the apartment singing bits from the theme.

an online java version of the powers of ten, inspired by the film by charles and ray eames(via deep fun things).

tom glazer is dead. he may be important for writing songs sung by perry como, frank sinatra, and the kingston trio, but in my eyes nothing could be more important than the fact that he wrote on top of old spaghetti.

an interesting article here on how the cmj has been misreporting college radio stations' playlists(via off on a tangent). it doesn't paint a pretty picture. of course there is no college radio in taiwan, at least not like it exists in north america. i know there are some good college radio stations out there, but why do these playlists or the indie radio top 40 look so boring with just the same old bands? whenever i look at lists like these i just think of all the good releases that have gone unnoticed. are sonic youth still relevant or are they just popping up on these lists because they have been around forever?

i've no idea what this is, but i'm certainly fascinated. via everlasting blort.