Drugs Work

Music for a "Chill Room", circa 1995. So, slip on your "Phats", don that "Kandee", drop some "E", pour a "Smart Drink" for you and your "Lolli", and "trance" to some "dank cuts" from these Techno-Cyber-Shamen. Then, go out and get a job. Hippy.

Pick of the Litter 8-29

You can't afford to let this pass you by. Own the notorious Custer's Revenge, The first Porno Game for the Atari 2600!

Dust off your old game system, draw the blinds, and break out the kleenex, because things are going to get hot and heavy when you have this erotic scorcher in your home. Just check out this preview, played on an emulator by some perverted deviant:



In a plot that would make Sitting Bull proud, you play a naked General Custer who must dodge redskin arrows to have your way with a squaw tied to a post. What better way to exact revenge against the entire native american race?

Don't let the Smithsonian Institute outbid you. The auction starts at $50, which is probably no less than it cost to order-by-mail from Hustler magazine back in 1982. Adjusted for inflation, it's a bargain. Place your bid NOW.

Mold-A-Rama (organic/synthetic)

More mold here.



More Mold-A-Rama here. Locate one of these stunningly beautiful machines here. If there aren't any in your neighborhood, your only option is to purchase a machine here. You can even supply your own sculpture for a custom mold.

Do The Robo-Monkey

A monkey eats grapes by using brain signals to operate a robotic arm. Since this clip is short and silent, I've looped it and added a soundtrack.

"Stay. Good Dog."

From the Perpetual Pet website, an organization of benevolent ghouls which will grant your beloved companion immortality.
On a related note, rent Animal Love by Ulrich Seidl. It's on Netflix.

Pick of the Litter 8-25

Futurechimp would like to break the fourth wall of internet browsing. This new series will present a critic's pick of the week from the ebay auction site, so in addition to seeing it here in this inherently temporal form of media colloquially known as "cyberspace", you can place your bid and take it home for a lifetime of enjoyment.


"Kasuari99" of Java, the Michelangelo of Monstrosity, the Prometheus of Perversion, has created another Masterful Mount of TaxiTerror. This auction ends tommorow, so place your bid NOW!

17 Species of North American Mammals

Grizzly Bear :0 - :17
Harbor Seal :17 - :33
Dall's Sheep :33 - :44
Timber Wolf :44 - :51
Moose :51 - 1:22
Cougar/Mountain Lion 1:22 - 1:26
Sea Lion 1:26 - 1:51
Porcupine 1:51 - 1:58
Bison 1:58 - 3:26
Ringtail/Rodent 3:26 - 3:41
Musk Ox 3:41 - 4:11
Columbia Black Tail Deer 4:11 - 4:37
Caribou 4:37 - 5:06
Coyote 5:06 - 5:25
Mountain Goat 5:25 - 5:48
Peccary 5:48 - 6:26
Mule Deer 6:26 - 6:58

From Sonic Scenery, an exhibit I worked on at the natural history museum in Los Angeles a couple years ago. Composers were invited to record music specifically to be heard in wings of the museum. The visitor wears a headset, which plays the compositions when triggered by remote signals in the galleries. Experimental duo Matmos took it all the way by making audio environments for each of the seventeen dioramas in the North American Mammals hall. The timechart (above) was intended to cue the visitor to move from one window to the next, but you can read along for a similar effect.

artist statement:
In general, our work starts by taking an object, making sounds with that object, and working outward from those sounds in a free-associative manner, without a preconceived result or specifically targeted genre in mind.
In this case, we have had to reverse this process and have tried to think about the precise specifics of the North American Mammals hall and work to gather sounds that will evoke both the natural locale and the specific behaviors of the animals in the room. We decided to anchor our piece around the sounds of animals eating, breathing, and sniffing their environment, and to locate these noises of animal life against a backdrop of plateaulike drones generated with musical instruments associated with "Americana": pedal steel, acoustic guitar, banjo, harmonica, and autoharp. Feeding peanut butter to a friend's dog, we built up a basic library of mammalian lip-smacking, huffing, barking, whining, sniffling, and breathing noises, and combined this with a percussive battery of antler noises made by smacking deer antlers against each other and some softer rustling textures harvested by stroking and rubbing the pelt of a wolf.
The work is divided into miniature 'cells,' which stand in for the seventeen distinct dioramas/environments and animal species represented in the room, and this is split down the middle by a central section that corresponds to the large bison display at the far end of the room. Our work is intended to be a sound map of a walk through this room and is paced to coincide with a five-to-seven-minute counterclockwise walk through its contents - Matmos

More about the exhibit here.
And since I don't intend on dedicating a post to it, my latest unrelated project here.

It's Alive: Aye-Aye

The Aye-Aye is the largest nocturnal primate, as well as the oldest primate in the world. It's a seemingly impossible conflation of different animals: it taps on a tree with its little human hands to locate grubs, uses long, ratlike teeth to chew a hole into the bark, then uses its middle finger, which is three times as long as the others, to fish the grubs out.

Considering its appearance, it's no surprise that the locals of Madagascar (the only place where it can be found) freak out when they see one of these ugly little demonoids, and view it as an omen of death; If one points its elongated middle finger at you, you're good as dead. The only way to prevent your imminent demise is to kill the offending animal first. One tribe believes it murders sleeping villagers by puncturing the aorta with its finger. These superstitions, along with deforestation of habitat, have led to its status as one of the rarest animals in the world.

Four Bizarre Scenes from Ken Russell Films

Altered States (1980)


Tommy (1975)
Lots of standout scenes, but the "Church of Marilyn" sequence, with Eric Clapton giving booze-and-pills communion, is one of the strangest:


Lair of The White Worm (1988)
Beginning to see a recurring catholic theme?


Lisztomania (1975)
Franz Liszt destroys Richard Wagner with a laserblast from his spacecraft (powered by the sexual energy of his various lovers), then soars out to the cosmos while singing to a Rick Wakeman cover of "Liebestraum no. 3". In short, a pretty straightforward biography of the 19th century composer:

(I was hoping to have the "giant phallus" scene here, but it's restricted from my workplace computer)

Special mention goes to the "violation of christ" scene from The Devils (1971) (it's on youtube, but I couldn't bring myself to post it) and the entirety of Crimes of Passion (1984), one of the most laughably surreal films ever made.

Dr. Dino

If you're a reader of this blog, you're probably a chimp. Furthermore, you're a chimp who draws conclusions by examining evidence. Using this method, we can't help but conclude that evolution is a fact.

Unfortunately, some believe evolutionary science to be synonymous with atheism, and defend their ignorance with religion. We believe this obstinacy is founded not only in faith, but also in hubris; some creationists have too much conceit to believe they share a genetic connection with us chimps. But faith and science are only at odds if people choose them to be, and it should be pointed out that most scientists believe in a higher power of some kind.

Then there are the exceptionally annoying creationists who have the nerve to call themselves scientists, and talk an endless stream of pseudo-jargon to convince others (and possibly themselves) of the world as they wish it to be. Among the most notable of these jerkoffs is Kent Hovind, a.k.a. Dr. Dino.

Dr. Dino is no less a doctor than he is a dino. He never set foot in a science classroom. He got his education from a diploma mill called Patriot Bible University, which will sell you a master's degree in a few months. He's used these credentials to establish himself as the foremost authority of creationism, and has made a fortune by hawking books, home videos, and cheap casts of fossils. A major cash cow has been Dinosaur Adventure Land, a "theme park" (it doesn't have any mechanized rides) which persuades children to believe dinosaurs were created alongside humans 4,000 years ago and are still with us today, which explains the loch ness monster and other cryptids. The fact that Hovind believes in both creationism and cryptids makes him an exceptional double-idiot.

This theory (which he modestly calls "the Hovind theory") specifies that Noah and his dinosaurs boarded the ark just before two ice-meteors impacted the earth at the north and south poles. These cracked the earth's crust, unleashing a bunch of water (just go with it). Animals and plants were buried by the flooding, and immediately turned into oil and coal. Then the tectonic plates shifted, making mountains and forming the Grand Canyon in just a few days. After 500 years or so, the ice caps receded, forming the current ocean levels. this also increased radiation, which shortened human lifespan considerably from the standard 250-year expectancy of the biblical hebrews.

If you think this is all just the rantings of a harmless crackpot, consider this: in 2001, Hovind tried to pass an anti-evolution bill in the state of Arkansas, requiring public schools to discredit evolution as an unproven theory. He's also not only promoted and sold books that are strongly anti-semetic, but accuses the state of Israel and many individuals (mostly government officials who stand in his way) as part of a new world order, destined to dominate the planet. Also, our government masterminded 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombings, AIDS, etc. Regarding the democratic practice of any developed society, he puts it this way: "If Evolution is true, there is no Creator, so laws come from man's opinion. That is called a democracy, which is a terrible form of government. Democracies always degenerate into dictatorships. In America, it is sad to say, has become a democracy... (it) is evil and contrary to God's law." Hovind (who personally made at least 2 million dollars a year and owned at least ten houses) had this to say about taxes: "I sincerely believe that I am not a person required to file a Federal Income Tax Return. This belief is a result of extensive research that I have done." and, "Some will say, 'The Bible teaches us to obey the authority over us.' I agree and I do. The IRS is not the authority over me any more than the government of Japan is."

Apparently, the IRS doesn't agree; we are happy to report that Hovind is currently serving a ten year sentence in a federal correctional institution for 58 counts of tax offenses. For the next decade, we'll be relatively safe from his campaign of disinformation and hate speech. During trial, he tried to bribe his way out of the situation by suggesting, "If it's just money the IRS wants, there are thousands of people out there who will help pay the money they want so I can go back out there and preach." (soon after, he was busted for conspiring with his family to hide deeds to multiple houses and cars so the government wouldn't impound them). He was right; there are plenty of middle and lower-class Americans who would give money to a millionaire. Those same people think gay marriage is a bigger deal than wars or the economy, and will end up voting for McCain this November. But I digress.

On a lighter note, see Hovind get mocked by Ali G:



When I saw this a few years ago, I didn't know who Kent Hovind was, and I thought Ali was being inordinately abusive (even by his own standards). But this guy deserves far, far worse. He deserves worse than his ten years in prison, and if there is a God, maybe he'll end up getting his due.

Lots more info here.

Cryptid Corner: Bigfoot

It's official: Bigfoot is a reality, no longer the stuff of legend. Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer were hiking in Georgia when they happened upon the body of a seven-foot tall man-ape. They stuffed the corpse into a cooler, took a photo (seen here), and with it a firestorm was ignited on the web. A press conference was scheduled for last Friday, promising to disclose DNA evidence which would prove the corpse to be a legitimate Bigfoot. The fact that Whitton and Dyer also own a company that sells Bigfoot merchandise is pure serendipity.

Amidst media fanfare, they unleashed their evidence: an email from a scientist which showed their submitted blood sample to be 4% human and 96% opossum. This, they claimed, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bigfoot's last meal was an opossum.

The body in the photograph is said to resemble a widely-available Halloween costume, but let's just give these two entrepreneurs/hikers/possum-killers the benefit of the doubt. Fine work, gentlemen.
UPDATE!
8/21: Some chump bought the bigfoot body, took it home, thawed it out, and discovered it to be a rubber gorilla suit! Oof! For committing the fraud, Matthew Whitton has been fired from his job as a police officer. Details here.

Add N to (X)

My favorite "rock band" of the last ten years, Add N to (X) was a trio of analog synth players who used a live drummer, a belligerent sense of humor, and lots of drugs to create some of the most chaotic, impulsive and fun music to be classified as electronic. Often hated by critics, it may have been the hardest-rocking music to ever originate from circuitry, and each album was musically more sophisticated than the preceding one.
In 2003, Ann Shelton caved under pressure while in mid-tour and either quit or was fired. The other two members (plus their requisite live drummer) finished the tour and then disbanded. Barry 7 is now composing his own music, DJ'ing, and releasing compilations of forgotten soundtracks from the 70's. Steve Claydon has become a successful artist, having already exhibited his sculptures at the Tate, the Saatchi, the Gladstone gallery, and many others.
An okay documentary is here, and at your own risk, view their x-rated (if you think a cartoon can be x-rated) video for "metal fingers in my body"(a song inpired by that disturbing scene from the Demon Seed movie) here.

Troglodytes on Acid

Futurechimp Theater: Ro-Revus Talks about Worms

Chimp Roundup, 8-08

Let's spend a little time revisiting our chimpy friends. You can click the chimp's name if you'd like to read a previous post about him on this site.

Cheeta celebrated his 76th birthday on April 9th. Futurechimp apologizes for overlooking it. The world's oldest ape shares this special day with Charles Baudelaire, Marty Krofft, and Jenna Jameson. A video birthday card is here (turn the volume way, way down before playing this).
His "autobiography", titled Me Cheeta, was slated to be on the shelves this autumn, but the book's Amazon page specifies the release date as February 17, 2009. Perfectionist that he is, he probably demanded a rewrite. Updates to follow (this is the fifth Cheeta-related post, but he is the most esteemed chimp on the planet).

Oliver is happily living out his golden years at the Primarily Primates sanctuary. In April, a watermelon hootenanny was held for all the hominids; 80 watermelons were distributed to Oliver and his pals, who gleefully stomped, smashed and ate them in an hours-long orgy. Ah yes, fellow chimps, it was a joyous occasion. No longer isolated to his own living quarters, Oliver has bonded with a female named Raisin. Although blind, he's doing his best to communicate using vocalizations and displays. The two of them are now peacefully co-habitating, and it's relieving news about a chimp who's had a difficult life. See a detailed documentary starting here.

Moe (seen here just after being shot with a tranquilizer dart during a seperate escape in 1998) has now been missing for six weeks. He's believed to still be somewhere in the San Bernardino National Forest. The 42-year old has not only spent his whole life indoors, but also was accustomed to using a toilet and eating with utensils. A woman who got lost for two days on a hiking trip in mid-july claimed to have seen a chimp running ahead of her on the trail, but Moe's owners are skeptical due to her location (20 miles away and across numerous highways) and her description (wrong color and size). Experts have been called in to track the beast. Starting tomorrow (friday), exotic-animal specialists will attempt to find some shred of evidence regarding this poor creature. Goodnight Moe, wherever you are.

And now, a chimp washing a cat:

MicroMenagerie: Feline Freakout

Louis Wain was a Victorian artist who made cloying, nauseating depictions of anthropomorphised housecats. They wore human clothing, walked upright, played golf, and had fixed idiotic grins. Horrible work. Horrible.





He turned out several hundred of these atrocious drawings per year, but had poor business sense. He sold his work without demanding reproduction rights, so even if it was ubiquitous in children's books, magazines and postcards, he saw little reward. But he sure loved cats; for twelve years he presided over the National Cat Club, and was also a member of the Anti-Vivisection Society and the Society for the Protection of Cats. He is often credited, through the popularity of his work, with establishing the image of the cat as a member of the family, instead of just a rat-catcher.

Late in his career, Wain's art started looking very...different (see below):




It's a huge improvement over his earlier work, but shows signs of mental illness. Around this time, he started behaving unpredictably, sometimes violently. He suffered from delusions and became hostile, even towards his own family. He'd often lock himself in his room and spend hours writing illegible squiggly lines in his notebook. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and sent to an asylum, where he spent the rest of his days.





Toxoplasmosis is caused by Toxoplasma Gondii, the most common parasite in the world. It infects about two billion people (one-third of all humans)and is passed on congenitally to 1 in 5000 babies in the United States, causing vision loss, brain damage, and death.

The cat is a carrier, contracted from eating diseased mice. Millions of toxoplasmosis oocysts are found in an infected cat's excrement, and they can live in it for up to six months. Just one particle is enough to infect a person. That's why pregnant women shouldn't change the cat box. It's also a problem if you have AIDS, cancer, autoimmune disease, or anything else that weakens your immunity.

But even if you're in fine health, There's recent speculation that toxoplasmosis can potentially cause changes in your personality. Check this out:

Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women. On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls. In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens.

The rest is here. There isn't much evidence behind it, but it's an interesting theory (you can't help but be reminded of David Cronenberg's Shivers). It also makes sense; if the parasite makes a mouse more reckless, he's more likely to get caught by a cat, which perpetuates the organism in a larger carrier.

Most people seem to agree that toxoplasmosis increases the likelihood of developing schizophrenia. Louis Wain was around cats his whole life, often using them as live models. Was his descent into madness caused by cat turds? Research on the subject continues.

And for no reason at all, a video I shot of a cat tickling the ivory.

War of The Gargantuas

(op-ed movie review by Timmy, age 7)
"War of The Gargantuas" is a monster movie. It is a movie about two monsters. One is brown and one is green. They are brothers, and their dad is Frankenstein.

Brown Gargantua is nice. He likes people and lives in the mountains. He was small when he was a baby, but now he is bigger than a house.



Green Gargantua lives in the water. He is mean. He eats people, then spits out their clothes. That is because monsters do not eat clothes.



Green Gargantua goes to a party and watches a lady sing a song. Then he picks her up and then he drops her just to be mean.



Brown Gargantua finds Green Gargantua and they fight.



The army drops bombs on them and they both die. This is good for Green Gargantua because he is mean. But it is bad for Brown Gargantua because he is nice. But he was too big to live in a house and he would eat too much food. So maybe it is best for everyone. The end.

SnakeBait

Zoo Parade ran nationally from 1950 till 1957 and was hosted by Marlin Perkins, director of the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, where the program was also broadcast. While rehearsing a show shortly before airtime, Perkins was handling a live rattlesnake and was bitten on the finger. He immediately opened the bite with a knife and sucked out the venom as he was being loaded onto a gurney and sent to the hospital. An assistant hosted the live program that day, and Perkins spent three weeks recuperating. He wrote in his 1982 autobiography,

An interesting after-reaction to this episode is the fact that even today I meet people who in all seriousness tell me that they sat there in front of their television receivers and watched that rattlesnake sink his fangs into my finger. At first, I used to correct them and explain I wasn't on the show that day, that the bite occurred before we were on the air. But these people are so sure in their own minds that they have seen this thing happen that now I just let it pass and don't try to correct them. Perhaps this shows the power of suggestion.

Incredibly, Perkins was also bitten by a cottonmouth moccasin later in his career, and he held the distinction of being one of the few people on the planet to survive the bite of the deadly West African Gaboon Viper.

The nostalgic opening credits for his later program, Wild Kingdom:



At this point, the post was supposed to segue into an embedded video of Ren and Stimpy's Untamed World short, a hilarious and bizarre spoof of Wild Kingdom and their best episode. But of the hundreds of R&S clips on youtube, this one isn't available. If someone can find it or upload it, let me know.

and since this website is supposed to be about chimps, some recent footage of a Robo-Chimp and his Hu-Man slave, a Robo-Marlin Perkins:

Brian Eno and David Byrne

In recognition of their new album (the first in 30 years) and supporting tour, here's a short sampling of Brian Eno and David Byrne's Collaborations, selected from their landmark album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and two Talking Heads records: Fear of Music and Remain in Light.

It's Alive: Bufo Alvarius

The Bufo Alvarius, or Colorado River Toad, can easily be caught in riverbeds of Arizona's Sonoran Desert. After a few seconds of handling, the toad gets nervous and secretes venom from glands in his neck and limbs. This venom can be collected, dried, and smoked to produce potent psychoactive effects, if you're into that sort of thing. All you need to know about the details are here.

But here's the fascinating part: the frogs get stoned on the venom during mating. Small chemical differences between the male and female alvarius enables them to trip on each others' toxins. Large amounts of the venom are released during sex, and the two amphibians have a mind-bending psychedelic hippie carnal experience.

The venom contains 5-MeO-DMT (a legal ingredient also found in Amazonian ayahuasca) as well as bufotenin (which is a schedule 1 substance, like heroin). But it's perfectly legal to own up to ten Bufo Alvarius toads in the state of Arizona. Buy your own here.

A close relative to Bufo Alvarius is the Bufo Marinus (Cane Toad) a key ingredient of Haitian Zombie Powder. As described in Wade Davis' book The Serpent and The Rainbow, the toad is placed in a jar with a stinging sea worm. The two battle each other, agitating the toad to produce copious amounts of venom. This is collected, mixed with blowfish venom and human ashes, and mere skin contact puts the victim into a comatose state for three or four days.

Wir Sind Schaufensterpuppen

from 34-25-36, a feature film (in progress) about mannequins, which are postulated to be the modern-day saints of consumer culture. There's an annoying "gender studies" undercurrent, but at least we get to see mannequins being made. Visit the filmmaker's blog with links to other shorts here.

Futurechimp Theater: Primitive Man in a Modern World

Moondog

from wikipedia:
Moondog was the pseudonym of Louis Thomas Hardin (May 26, 1916–September 8, 1999), a blind American composer, musician, cosmologist, poet, and inventor of several musical instruments. Although these achievements would have been considered extraordinary for any blind person, Moondog further removed himself from society through his decision to make his home on the streets of New York for approximately twenty of the thirty years he spent in the city. Only in the final decades of Moondog's life did the public begin to appreciate the extent of this man's talents, primarily because of his stubborn refusal to wear anything other than his own home-made clothes, all based on his own interpretation of the Norse god Thor. Indeed, he was known for much of his life as 'The Viking of 6th Avenue'.