WAKU WAKU

One of the central theories i'm developing here in the world of the GOBLINKO BRAIN STORM, is that ephemera & trash culture should transcend their trashiness & actually be hidden gateways into advanced levels of thinking. OR, that given the correct psychology, children or whoever can use the imaginary worlds of trash culture & ephemera to transcend the mundane existence that is constantly being pushed into our lives by parents, school teachers, bureaucrats, politicians & other weiners along those lines. A cereal box shouldn't just hold cereal, it should contain cultural elements that retain meaning for you for the rest of your life (because they will anyway). That's the second part of the argument, which is that once things are created, they are eternal. Therefore, shouldn't they be eternal in design? Shouldn't it be understood that you aren't just creating some kind of bullshit but a piece of human history & culture? Something that will last in one way or another FOR ETERNITY!?!?! Alot of this thinking comes from the way that parents approach children's trash culture. It's very easy to just give in to whatever spinal impulses are driving children to want to purchase the newest latest pieces of crap, & it's also easy to similarly dismiss what children consume as meaningless garbage, but the fact is, by taking the time to understand what the products are, trash culture can actually be very significant for kids. Initiated adults must be the gatekeepers & do their job correctly. So that stuff like this is let out of the gate! Whoever did the design work for Pac Man (Toru Iwatani), Donkey Kong (Shigeru Miyamoto), Super Mario Bros (Shigeru Miyamoto) & the Legend of Zelda (Shigeru Miyamoto) has a primal understanding of what people like. I applaud these lil' Japsters for their apparent love of humanity with gifts to us like these.


Taking the Nerds split packaging concept into the world of cereal was the Nintendo CEREAL SYSTEM. I'm not sure if it's just packaging enthusiasts like me, but i'm pretty sure that all kids like the packaging of Nerds & thus, the packaging of the Nintendo Cereal System. Also, calling your cereal a system is brazen & ballzy, even if it's just emulating the Nintendo Entertainment System, a cereal system is high conceptual logic & deserves recognition & probably emulation. I'm not eating breakfast, i'm eating a breakfast system! I'm organized & ready to go! I've got my octorok bowl, my triforce spoon, my mario cup with bowzer orange juice, i'm reading Nintendo Power #EARTHBOUND. I'm SET@!


While i like tanks, planes, bombs & guns just as much as the next guy, we would be much better served as a nation to use this ad agency in order to conquer our enemies. This might be the best ad i've seen EVER?!

An Age Of Extreme Conservatism - pt 1

by John K.
"CONSERVATIVE" AND "LIBERAL" HAVE LOST THEIR MEANINGS
I have never seen a deeper uglier form of extreme conservatism than what exists today. I don't mean conservatism as in "the conservative party". All parties are conservative today, in the literal meaning of the word "conservative". READ THE REST HERE.

SORCEROR NEWS: TANZANIAN WITCHDOCTORS FLOUT BAN

Tanzania witchdoctors flout ban. From the BBC. Original article here. Thanks again to Jason McKay for the heads up in the world of SORCERORS!

Tanzania's only albino MP has been trying to fight prejudice. Witchdoctors in Tanzania are defying a government ban announced on Friday, intended to stop the killings of people with albinism for ritual medicine. A BBC correspondent has seen at least 10 witchdoctors are working openly. It comes days after the latest murder of an albino man in Tanzania brought the national death toll to at least 40 since mid-2007. The killers reportedly sell albino body parts - including limbs, hair, skin and genitals - to witchdoctors. Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda said on Friday the government was revoking the licences of all traditional healers with immediate effect. "These witchdoctors are big liars," he said at a rally in the northern Shinyanga region. But the BBC's Vicky Ntetema said it was business as usual for the traditional healers she visited on Monday just outside the biggest city Dar es Salaam.

A spokesman for a traditional healers' association has criticised the ban. Arusha-based herbalist Haruna Kifimbo told the Citizen newspaper: "We are legally registered, they should be dealing with some state organs who have not done much to stop the wave of albino killings." He claimed members of his association were offering services to more than 30% of the country's population. "We have so many patients and clients who depend on us," he told the Citizen. "I believe it would have been better if the PM had consulted us before announcing the ban." In the most recent case last Wednesday an albino man - named as Jonas Maduka - was killed in Sogoso village in the north-western Mwanza region. He was reportedly eating dinner at home when some people called and asked for his help. When he went outside he was strangled, before his assailants chopped off his leg and made away with the limb.
The Tanzanian authorities have arrested more than 90 people in recent months - including four police officers - on suspicion of killing albinos or of trading in their body parts. There are thought to be more than 200,000 albinos in the country, which has a total population of 40 million. The killings have spread to neighbouring states, with at least one albino murder each in Burundi and Kenya last year.

SORCEROR NEWS: GOAT DETAINED OVER ARMED ROBBERY

LAGOS (Reuters) - Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery. (original article) Thanks to Jason McKay for the heads up! Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

"The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat," Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone. "We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat," he said.

Belief in witchcraft is widespread in parts of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. Residents came to the police station to see the goat, photographed in one national newspaper on its knees next to a pile of straw.

SUPER MARIO BANANA OBAMA

Here at Goblinko, i have made a very strong push for an end to "being offended" & have been working to usher in an age of "minding your own business" & "live & let live". I totally understand the inverse of all this, but it is largely inexcusable & completely annoying. Today i was made aware of this awesome Japanese Super Mario Bros. Bunraku puppet show briefly showing a Japanese guy in black face as president Barack "Banana" Obama. The Neojapanisme blog was very insistent that Japan cease to attempt to portray Obama in blackface because it isn't socially acceptable in the West. Momus on iMomus (which has largely been a useless blog for many years but was once a pretty good read) counters in his sort of post-identity, secretly pushing for a one-world socialist state (which i'm all for, as long as i'm in charge) about "the metonymy of the worst", which uses the word metonymy, but is essentially saying that "Political correctness brings with it a kind of misanthropy -- the "metonymy of the worst" I mention in the piece. All motives and all representations become guilty and hateful ones; all Germans become Hitler, and all blacks shackled slaves. Forever. As a result, reductiveness, essentialism and misanthropy rule the day, even as we proclaim our hatred of these things.." Excellent point! Me? I was too busy enjoying one of the better novelty youtube clips i've seen involving old videogames to care one way or another. I figure that impersonating a black person is no big deal, & that using the soft underbelly of sensitivity argument all the time wrecks the culture, encourages black folks to be emotionally vulnerable & weak & assumes that people should care in the first place.

WWF HALLOWEEN SPECIAL

Sent to me by Uncle Oronzo. This clip shows the glory of professional wrestling. Many idiots will tell you, "it's not real", which is about as astute a statement as "cartoons aren't real" or as obvious as "never trust car salesmen or politicians" used to be. Anyhow, that is not the issue, the issue is that professional wrestling can be a rich & chocolaty entertainment form, with its heart very close to the vaudeville ideal. Wrestling has gotten very far from this ideal, & that's why you don't see so many old grannies watching it anymore, at least in this country. Check out the pie eating contest. I feel very privileged to have cut my wrestling teeth on the classic WWF 80s lineup, which has the most entertaining wrestling characters maybe of all time. Watching today, it's hard to put a finger on who the different wrestlers are. "Buff guy with pony-tail" vs. "huge buff guy with sparkley pants".

Speaking of which, if you want to understand politics, watch alot of wrestling & learn as much as you can about the Mafia. Learn about the ideas of the face & the heel & the turn. You'll be off on a good foot.

OH YEAH!!!

Merchandising characters that crash through walls & impose their will on their audience are guaranteed winners. Special bonus if you can guess why i'm posting a thing about drinking kool-aid on THIS HISTORIC DAY.

NEW! JUST ADDED! WACKY WILD KOOL AID STYLE!




This is the late 80s advertising style of total craziness. Part of the reason why Pee-Wee's Playhouse was allowed on the air.


Kool montage of Kool-Aid ads. The Monkees one is particularly exciting. The Wacky Warehouse commercial is just a little nuts.

IMPORTANT BANANA NEWS!!!

Straight from the Neon Wizard's Crypt! What are the odds that Obama's inaugural speech will include the word "banana" According to the Swedish gambling site Betsson, the answer is 1,000-to-1. READ FULL STORY HERE. This is just about the biggest BANANA NEWS since the "bananas going extinct" scare of 2000.

LOST LOST RAP: RHYMING DICTIONARY

"You ask me did I like Arsenio? About as much as the bicentennial." Ice Cube has written alot of my favorite rhymes & this is the most amazing just in terms of seeming non-sequiturs & near nonsense. I'm wondering how the hell he came up with it! More importantly, it's always in my head, probably pops up once a week (what is wrong with me!? NO, ICE CUBE SHOULD BE WRITING ADVERTISING JINGLES!) Anyhow, welcome to a new mini-feature of THE LOST LOST RAP: RHYMING DICTIONARY.

From the track: Ice Cube: THE N*GGA YOU LOVE TO HATE from the album AMERIKKKA'S MOST WANTED. Great record by the way, one of the best RAP albums of all time. Get it if you don't have it.


I think i was mentioning the whole Hip House thing earlier. Technotronic are an obvious & pervasive force in that style. More on this later.

THE LOST LOST RAP: CD RAPPER & SHABBADOO

The total absurdity of alot of TV is easy to dismiss as merely absurd, but occasionally, the absurdity is cloaking actual important nodes of cultural information. I'm not enough of a pencil necked geek academic to go into how it works, you know it when you see it is good enough for me. Anyhow, i figure that if i still remember & am amused by Barney Rubble dressing up as "CD RAPPER" & am almost dying while watching Shabba Doo teach Captain Lou Albano & Danny Wells how to breakdance. The insane level of sound effects added on in that last bit is the high point.

THE LOST LOST RAP: BUCKWHEAT THE REBEL

Runnin' down the street gotta Squeezit in your hand. BUCKWHEAT. REBEL WITHOUT A SOUL! I taped this song off the radio in 1990 or so, never taped over it because of the sheer HIGH IMPACT NOVELTY VALUE of this LOST LOST RAP. I don't even know if the lyrics are about Squeezits, or squeegees, which would make more sense, but as far as i'm concerned, the image of Buckwheat running through the streets with a Squeezit is way more golden. Anyhow, the whole category of dance music with rap is largely over-looked these days, & might be part of the LOST LOST RAP milieu. I can't find much info on Unity 2, except that they were/are members of THE TOASTERS & had a bigger hit with Shirlee. Shirlee reveals the mystery of the ubiquitous dancehall rap thing in late 80s/early 90s songs. I just emailed Sean Cavo from Unity 2, maybe we'll clear up the whole Squeezit issue...

& here it is!

"Hey Sean...yeah, it was squeegee, as the song was about a friend of ours who became a crackhead. And yeah, we came out of the Toasters in '89 and signed with warners. Lionel and I were already known as The Unity 2 when we were fronting the Toasters (since '85). I was singer and songwriter on many of the songs from Skaboom and Thrill me Up LPs. The Buckwheat version that blew up in dance clubs was a remix by Steve Silk Hurley, and the album version is much different. We weren't really a 'dance' group, but the label wanted that remix done and it worked. Unity 2 was a 7 piece band with a DJ scratching - I think the first lineup like that ever!
Hope that helps dude. Peace, Cavo."





My gradeschool banned Squeezits for being "TOO AWESOME", something that most schools do after getting a clue about a trend. "They like it too much, let's get rid of it." Consider it cleared.

BANANA GANG

Q. What would you call two banana peels?
A. A pair of slippers.

Q. Have you heard about the new president Barack Banana?
A. Yes, word on the street is he has a peel.

Let's take a look at the concept of BANANA. There's something about it. Something optimistic. Something YELLOW. Something BANANA. Something exotic yet as ordinary as can be. Are they from outer space? BANANAS are ENERGETIC! BANANAS ARE VIRILE & MASCULINE, YET, STRANGELY FEMININE (yellow)! Bananas are considerate, because they come pre-wrapped, yet, the wrapper is the number one culprit for slipping on the street.





I think BANANARAMA were part of an early interest i had called "pile of girls". This was initially inspired by the Girls Just Wanna Have Fun vid (Cyndi Lauper), then went on to BANANARAMA, not sure if i was actually attracted to them, but regardless, BANANAS, & later would transfer to the SPICE GIRLS, who were just plain glorious, yet ordinary, much like the BANANAS, which come in a BUNCH.

BIO BURGER

In the future, when we're living in space ships or space colonies or underground or whatever, eating animals will become a very rarified delicacy for those that can afford it, while most people will be eating vat-grown protein from a variety of genetically modified sources. This is just the inevitable truth, & in the spirit of this, i invented BIO-BURGER. It competes with BURGER PUPPET & is owned by the same MEGA-CORP that owns UNCLE CHEEZY'S PIZZA. The recent news about violence at Chuck E. Cheese's has been really exciting to me. It unfortunately isn't about PIZZA GANGS, but seems to be about the tension produced by family's having birthday outings & losing it. My mom always hated the place, but i love the overwhelmtion of it all.

ALSO, on the relevance of CUBE. "Cube symolises the 80's,since it's been used as a symbol by advertisements, games just think about "Rubiks Cube".In addition,there's coming a new TV system called "Cube System",which makes possible to watch foreign tv cahnels and programs in Italy. So Cube is a synthesis of every kind of things."

MUSICAL APPRECIATION

A great clip of Giorgio Moroder's process, not really informative, but superficially pleasant & exemplary of why i like the early electro music.


Yellow Magic Orchestra use the same sort of gear & techniques. Here's the video for Tong Poo. When we saw Ryuichi Sakamoto perform this live it was too much for me to deal with.

THE LOST LOST RAP: SPYDOR

You don't see commercials like these for kids anymore. This is out of hand. Stylistically, this commercial is just like Ratt's "Round & Round" video, smoke machines, dramatic lighting, funny angles, totally awesome early 80s horror video style. Also, it has the memorable pitch: "Some guys got it, some guys don't." which i immediately remembered as soon as i found this video. I'm also glad they use an actual commercial voice guy to do the rap instead of trying to find some rap guy. Of course, Spydor would probably be better served by a heavy metal song you know?



Here's Round & Round for you just because. Featuring Milton Berle whose nephew Marshall Berle was managing Ratt at the time of the video's release. This, just for history's sake was my favorite song when it came out.

THE LOST LOST RAP

My little brother Danny James made up this rap called "The Lost Lost Rap", about a rap that had been lost when we were drawing comics in Lake Merritt park smokin' some bammer many years ago. The concept quickly developed into the idea that there are "Lost Raps" which must be unearthed & decoded for their esoteric knowledge. I loved Rap when it came out & for about ten years or so until it became what it is today. Market-saturated, pervasive, boring & boring. So, when something loses all meaning & relevance like Rap or Black slang has, it actually transcends culture & time & becomes something new. It can become something universal & something amazing. This Fruity Pebbles commercial proves my point, by introducing the word "Fruit-a-rooty". So, enjoy this new feature of BRAIN STORM: THE LOST LOST RAP. Speaking of which, my central New Year's Resolution was to more effectively blog, so i'm concentrating on BRAIN STORM as my central blog & creating some features & trying to get a post up here every day. You can reciprocate by commenting more often & becoming a FOLLOWER of DER BRAIN STORM! Happy New Year.

Mr. Sean's Art Classes for Winter/Spring 2009

Mr. Sean's Art Classes start up again in a couple of weeks. As usual, these are the COOLEST ART CLASSES FOR KIDS. PERIOD. If you want your kid to get in on some next level work taught by a seasoned professional who is ON THE SIDE OF THE KIDS & THEIR SUCCESS, then these are the classes for you. Held at the Amazon Community Center here in Eugene, Oregon. Click on the RECENROLL link at the bottom to enroll online. Or call Amazon 682-5373. Each class can be identified by the number. Amazon Community Center 2700 Hilyard St., 97405 682-5373

Clay/Stop Animation Workshop Ages 7-12 Five Classes $55
Make 3D characters in clay or other materials. Shoot a stop-motion film using a digital still camera; edit using Apple's imovie. Teams create story boards, build characters with plasticine clay, build backdrops, film shots and edit in the computer! Receive a DVD of all the finished short films from class.

82920 Fri 01-16-2009 - 02-13-2009 3:30PM - 5:30PM
83349 Sat 01-17-2009 - 02-14-2009 10:00AM - 12:00PM
82921 Fri 02-20-2009 - 03-20-2009 3:30PM - 5:30PM
83350 Sat 02-21-2009 - 03-21-2009 10:00AM - 12:00PM
82922 Fri 04-10-2009 - 05-08-2009 3:30PM - 5:30PM
83351 Sat 04-11-2009 - 05-09-2009 10:00AM - 12:00PM
82923 Fri 05-15-2009 - 06-12-2009 3:30PM - 5:30PM
83352 Sat 05-16-2009 - 06-13-2009 10:00AM - 12:00PM

Monster Art (Monsters, Weirdos & Creeps) Ages 8-12 five classes 30$
Tackle a new art medium each week as you learn to draw Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy, paint Japanese monsters, and make big-mouthed, snaggle toothed, bug-eyed creeps, and weirdos from clay and more! Also make your own creepy characters and comics starring them. You will even make some slime!

82859 Monster Art Tue 01-20-2009 - 02-17-2009 3:30PM - 4:30PM
82860 Monster Art Tue 02-24-2009 - 03-24-2009 3:30PM - 4:30PM
82862 Monster Art Tue 04-14-2009 - 05-12-2009 3:30PM - 4:30PM
82863 Monster Art Tue 05-19-2009 - 06-16-2009 3:30PM - 4:30PM

Street Styles Ages 12-16 Four Classes $24
Street art is a global sensation that has electrified the art world for 30 years! Learn how to draw cool letters, spray paint, make knock-out characters, make stickers, draw with markers, stencils, wheat pasting, graphic design and more!

82893 Street Styles Mon 01-12-2009 - 02-09-2009 3:30PM - 4:30PM
82894 Street Styles Mon 02-23-2009 - 03-16-2009 3:30PM - 4:30PM
82897 Street Styles Mon 05-11-2009 - 06-15-2009 3:30PM - 4:30PM

RECENROLL