Michael J. Fox, come home!

But the best headline of the day award has to go to Fark, which announced Bob Geldof‘s opening of a new stem cell research centre in Toronto with the words:

Tell me why I don’t like fundies.
Tell me why I don’t like fundies.

Geldof, self-deprecating about his scientific knowledge, said that staring at cells through a microscope, “you know absolutely that the secret of those desperately traitorous illnesses that so defeat us is in there. And these microscopes and these brilliant men and women are going to get at it.”

Among those brilliant men and women referred to by Geldof is Gordon Keller, who is coming home to Canada to head up the McEwen Centre after spending 16 years in the United States.

One of the world’s foremost stem cell researchers, the native of Melville, Sask., has spent the last seven years at New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where his lab has performed groundbreaking research generating various types of cells from embryonic stem cells.

Well, if he’s as smart as he seems, Michael J. Fox has got to be double-thinking his decision to become an American citizen. Even Metrotown‘s gotta be looking pretty good to a nouveu Yank facing six-figure medical bills and the certainty that, should a cure for Parkinson’s emerge from the most promising area of research, it is already illegal in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Grave of Democracy.

Japanese video madness

matangoI first saw Matango aka Attack of the Mushroom People at the long-lost and much-lamented Vancouver B Movie Festival. It was, without a doubt, the finest evocation of the Gilligan’s Island mythotype (Ginger, Professor and all!) in an hallucinogenic, nuclear-aware Japanese context that I have ever seen, then or since. In fact, since it appeared a couple of years before GI did, it can be considered the immediate predecessor thereof. Both are, apparently, descendants of William Hope Hodgson‘s short story, The Voice in the Night. There also exists the possibility that the whole thing resulted in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. There, don’t say ya never learned nuthin here.

I also recall the goofy first mate’s habit of greeting every surprising twist of events with his signature “Huh? Oh.” After the fourth time, the audience just chanted it along with him.

Just how freaky was this flick? Let me put it this way: the following video actually makes more sense than the film itself does, and here’s the vid writeup:

A music video set to Richard Cheese‘s lounge music version of Disturbed‘s “Down With the Sickness“, using footage from TOHO Studio‘s Matango. Don’t question it, you’ll be much happier.

True, dat.

“Down With The Sickness”Can you feel that?
Ah, shit
Drowning deep in my sea of loathing
Broken your servant I kneel
(Will you give in to me?)
It seems what’s left of my human side
Is slowly changing in me
(Will you give in to me?)

Looking at my own reflection
When suddenly it changesDruillet illustration of Hodgson's works
Violently it changes (oh no)
There is no turning back now
You’ve woken up the demon in me

[Chorus:]
Get up, come on get down with the sickness [x3]
Open up your hate, and let it flow into me
Get up, come on get down with the sickness
You mother get up come on get down with the sickness
You fucker get up come on get down with the sickness
Madness is the gift, that has been given to me

I can see inside you, the sickness is rising
Don’t try to deny what you feel
(Will you give in to me?)
It seems that all that was good has died
And is decaying in me
(Will you give in to me?)

It seems you’re having some trouble
In dealing with these changes
Living with these changes (oh no)
The world is a scary place
Now that you’ve woken up the demon in me

More Hodgson O Rama, courtesy of demented French comic books[Chorus]

(And when I dream) [x4]
No mommy, don’t do it again
Don’t do it again
I’ll be a good boy
I’ll be a good boy, I promise
No mommy don’t hit me
Why did you have to hit me like that, mommy?
Don’t do it, you’re hurting me
Why did you have to be such a bitch
Why don’t you,
Why don’t you just fuck off and die
Why can’t you just fuck off and die
Why can’t you just leave here and die
Never stick your hand in my face again bitch
FUCK YOU
I don’t need this shit
You stupid sadistic abusive fucking whore
How would you like to see how it feels mommy
Here it comes, get ready to die

[Chorus (last line changed to “Madness has now come over me”)]

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pic o’ the day: do they serve kamikazes?

Happiest Happy Hour south of Ground Zero!

From nine till eleven!!!

from Gawker, where the Jersey Devil is reminded that the only way to get to Dachau is by train. Ah, good times, good times…

the T factor: Blame France!

absolut gaultier, absolut paris, absolut not anywhere near as terrifying as a glimpse of the ultimate horror that bubbles and blasphemes at the center of the universe forever... 

Already this year, Japan‘s embassy in Paris has had to repatriate at least four visitors — including two women who believed their hotel room was being bugged and there was a plot against them…cases include a man convinced he was the French “Sun King”, Louis XIV, and a woman who believed she was being attacked with microwaves…

Ch’yeah, it’s Paris’s fault. Look, I may not be the best example in the world, so don’t look at me (can you believe I just said that?) but lots and lots of people go to Paris every year and don’t end up baying at the moon or invading Russia. It don’t matter what the Journal du Dimanche says, Paris is infuriating, but it does not have quite the same effect as an overnight in Innsmouth. Let’s talk about pre-existing conditions, here.

Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

“A third of patients get better immediately, a third suffer relapses and the rest have psychoses,” Yousef Mahmoudia, a psychologist at the Hotel-Dieu hospital, next to Notre Dame cathedral, told the newspaper Journal du Dimanche.

Has anyone considered the possibility that Japan is simply offshoring a lot of unstable people recently?

oooh, somebody forgot her tampon!

note to self: on strolls

Bag Lady Barbie...but if it were me, those would all be Armani and Holt's ya know! 

Next time I decide to head out for a stroll and get some fresh air, make sure:

  1. it isn’t pouring (which means deferring pedestrianation till May)
  2. I spend less than $50
  3. it takes less than six hours

Actually, it only takes that long since I only windowshop when I have money, so it can be months between windowshopping expeditions. In my current impecunious state it’s irresponsible of me to spend $3 on a single pumpkin spice truffle from Godiva, but less so than spending $5 on meth, so there you have the hierarchy of the Downtown EastSide. We all throw our money away, but when we’re done I am the bag lady with the Holt’s totes.