Rabaelthazar

Happy birthday, mate. Have a drink and jump online.

Coonskin looks great. The end scene of that clip reminded me a lot of the Garden of Eden scene from Allegro Non Troppo.

Very generous.

I've always loved R. Crumb. Fritz the Cat is definitely worth a watch, but it's his pen and ink stills that hold the real magic. Yep, they depict some pretty horrendous stuff, but it's really all in the name of satire. I have a coffee table book of his stuff somewhere, that has some incredible work. One cartoon (that I just tried unsuccessfully to find on the web) was a three panel job: First panel is a guy sitting in front of the tele with a hotdog in one hand and his dick in the other having a lazy wank with a thought bubble showing him being intimate with a woman. Second panel is the same, but the expression on his face is a little more intense and the thought bubble now shows some pretty rough sex happening. Third panel shows him coming, while the thought bubble shows him smashing the woman's face to a pulp. The expression on his face is absolute horror. Now, you could look at that and say it's depicting sexual violence, or you can look at it and say that it's depicting a man's moral struggle. I tend to go with the latter. Here's a memorable scene from Fritz. The whole thing seems to be on Youtube, if anyone's interested.

Yeah, thanks DarkSpark. Doing some quality audio recordings has been on the agenda for a while but it's been hard finding the time. We've actually booked in next weekend at a small studio to try and get something happening. Watch this space. Cheers.

No offence intended here, but do you guys seriously get a kick out this? I just googled minecraft to see what this was all about, saw that 16 million people and counting are using this program and watched a vid on what it's about. Am I wrong, or is it a very time consuming way of building digital 3D models? If I've judged it correctly, I'd have trouble even imagining a bigger waste of time. Please enlighten me.

Thanks again, all. And a special thanks to DarkSpark for the plug. Cheers.

There was an episode of "House' that had this as a central theme a few years back. Usual plot. Baby comes in sick, test for dissease, realise it's something completely obscure, treatment begins, no imporvement, House looks troubled and retreats to his special place and emerges witht he epiphany that the child's parents were vegan and killing the child. The baby lived. House got wasted on Vicodin. The end.

Thanks again, anonymous guys, for the show of support. I'd thank you individually, but I don't know who most of you are. A couple of people I do know, so thanks to you guys as well. Much appreciated. :)

Your story, Drifta, reminds me of a time when I was at a warehouse party, having consumed a couple of purple dots. Things had been pretty strange, but I was past the most intense part of it and was able to have coherent conversation for the first time in a few hours. Anyway, I got chatting to this guy who was operating the lighting show. He was great, quite a bit older, telling me about earlier parties and how he'd gotten into light work. Anyway, after a few minutes of chatting, I realised he had flippers for arms, as though he was born to a mother who had taken thalidomide. He'd bend his body down and use his flipper to control the lights and it was so natural. As i was still in a pretty heavy head space, this was full on for me. A part of me couldn't bear to see such disfiguration but the other part of me, the part hat won out the internal battle was to look inside this guy's heart and forget about his deformity. I started feeling so much respect for this guy who had been born with such an ailment and had managed to be woking in a really interesting job and not seeming at all concerned about his disability. We chatted for about half an hour and it was such an interesting time of self reflection from my part, contemplating the human spirit and the ability to overcome hardship. Anyway, finally it was time to part company and we said our good byes and he extended his flipper, which telescoped out into a completely normal arm. I did a quick double take and realised this thalidomide baby was actually physically normal in every sense. We shook hands and I left, somewhat wiser and more confused.

A few years ago, I would've been. An ashtray up top with a half dangling fag.

Hang on.... this quote is from the Zodiac thread.... Something's amis here.

"Burn a hole in my pocket" "On my last lonely dollar" "Bank account is minus" "Stretch that dollar" "My wallet's anorexic" "Cannot pay my rent the next month" "If the bank man calls just tell him I'm free, I just spent all my money" Yeah, this is a statement, I'm sure.

Ummmm.... I actually see this in the completely opposite light. I think this is a statement about the dangers of debt. If you listen to the lyrics, it's almost as if they're talking in character of people who are spending above their means on material things. Combined with the imagery, I really think this is a song with a positive message. It's subtle, but it's sort of saying the opposite of what it's actually saying, you know what I mean? Can you watch it again, Qualia, and see if you can see what I'm seeing? Maybe I'm just an optimist.

Nice one, Quill. Nice one Sharxx.

Word to that. I'm heading to Indo in April next year, but have to take a group of people for work so it's going to be far from my ideal trip. Haven't planned an itinerary yet, but I get the feeling I won't be too popular if I take the group out for BBQ'd boars rectum. Also, I'm a vege, so the actual rectum doesn't appeal too much but street food is the bomb. I can't stand travelling to a place filled with fat, inconsiderate caucasians who demand everything to be chilli free.

Thanks Marcel. PM me if you get stuck in Sydney. I can probably put you in touch with someone. Thanks to you other anons as well. Much appreciated. :)

Fair enough. You gotta do what you gotta do. Glad I read it while it was still in existence.

There was a great thread from Tripsis a while back, but it seems to have been deleted.

If you were talking about the vid you posted, then I'd tend to agree. But you're right... Watching the video of the old man on the beach again... that's definitely K. Good pick up.

The old guys?!?

While we're on the topic of drunk people,

I bid 60, cos it's for a such a good cause.

I can't really tell from the Youtube clips... is there actually a benefit (from a sonic perspective) to using plasma speakers? They seem to have a limited frequency range? or is that just what's come across in the clips? They certainly look cool, but has anyone heard one in real life? Is it just a novelty?

I think a trading rep thread/subforum could get waterry pretty quickly. I can imagine that after a while, you'd need to wade back through a number of pages to find what you're looking for. We have a comments section on our profiles... if we want testimonials, why not ask people we've traded with to give us a quick thankyou that way. If I trade with someone I'm not regularly in contact with, I always check their profile as a starting point and chekc their posting history to get an idea of who I'm dealing with. If I were to see half a dozen positive comments from other people on the forum that I know, then I'd feel more comfortable going ahead with a trade. Similarly, if there were negative comments I would be hesitant. This way, we can take some sort of control over our own reputation by requesting other leave feedback (similar to ebay). The information would be public but only viewable by going to the person's profile. . . . hmmm... just realised one issue - we can delete comments so negative feedback won't hang around. Based just on positive feedback though, it would be a simple and effective way to display trading rep without having to create a new dedicated section.