Dr. Kevlittle

You might recall me writing about my camouflage coffee mug not too long ago, and the squirrels mentioned there in. There is more to this story than meets the eye, as mentioned in the comments, but I was wary to tell it, but tell it I must. A lot of you might think this is another one of my sarcastic jokes, but I assure you it is not. This really happened.

You need to understand that many medium-sized squirrels populate my university’s campus. Somewhere around 3 years ago, walking home as usual, I happened to pass one of the fury rodents. This is by no means uncommon. On this particular day however, I did something that’d I’d never done before. I attempted to communicate with a squirrel. Trying my best to imitate their language I clicked my tongue in various ways and popped air out of my mouth all very rapidly while making quick, inquisitive, head movements. To my great surprise, the squirrel responded, it immediately perked up on its hind legs and stared at me with those beady black within black eyes. I was shocked to be sure, but I didn’t want to lose whatever connection we had, so I kept on clicking, doing my best to speak more Squirrelish. As I did so he kept coming a few feet closer, standing up on its hind legs, its little hands resting near its chest. Eventually the squirrel was literally inches from my feet. I got frightened of what he might do, and what he thought I was saying, and quickly ran off. Subsequently, I’ve communicated with numerous squirrels on campus, one yesterday in fact, though admittedly, I have no idea what I’m saying to them, and I’ve never found out what would happen if I keep speaking it when they are inches away from me.

I’ve also designed a concept for a squirrel helmet. A simple device with three shocking probes, one in the back and one on each side. The helmet is connected to a remote control, like one used for remote control cars, only without reverse. When you push forward on the remote it electrocutes the squirrel in the back of its head. You keep shocking it until he moves forward, at which point you stop (classic conditioning). You push the left and it shocks him on the right, and the right to shock him on the left. The idea is that he runs the direction away from where he was shocked. Remote control squirrel. Imagine hundreds upon hundreds of squirrels with helmets, all hooked up to one remote… it would be like commanding a tidal wave in the ocean to strike where you see fit. Oh bliss, oh beautiful remote control squirrel bliss!

No risk.

Aha! So I was playing risk over the Thanksgiving break with my brother and sister. My sister was out first, and my brother and I were the only ones left… although, admittedly, I was losing. A friend came over, and I had him take over for me while I was in the shower.

Sitting there with the hot water running down my face I wondered how the game was going… although I didn’t really care either way. If my friend lost, it would be his loss not mine, although, how could he feel bad about losing a game he never started? He never had to start the war, and I never had to lose it. It’s a win, win, situation. I realized that it’s the same thing going on with Iraq. It won’t matter to Bush if we lose the war after he’s not president, and it won’t matter to whoever the new president is if we lose a war he never started. Bingo bango bungo. It’s also the same thing that happened in Vietnam with Johnson and Nixon. Maybe this just happens all the time, and I never really understood it until that game of Risk a few days ago.

A Flaming Cup of Potter’s Vodka.

Most people were pretty excited about the latest from the boy wizard franchise, myself included, but did it live up to all the hype? No. Not really.

There are elements of the film that are really great. The Hungarian Horntail dragon fight particularly, Ron dancing with professor Mcgonagall, the silly dress robes, and Michael Gambon being the scariest most awesome Dumbledore imaginable.

I think the big flaw here though was really Mike Newell, the films director. Azkaban was a great film in any regards, Harry Potter aside. It was so magical and just seethed with blue-tinted grime, authentic creepiness, and it had an excellent ensemble cast, including David Thewlis and Gary Oldman, which never seemed sporadic or disconnected.

The Goblet of Fire, however, seems so incoherent and rushed. Granted there was a lot of plot to be covered, but a film is not a book, and if you’re looking for a faithful adaptation perhaps you should read the book again. They cut some plot elements that seemed crucial, while adding or spending extra time on others that seem uncecessary. Also the mood and general aesthetic of the film was no where near as good as that of The Prisoner of Azkaban’s. The graveyard at the end of the film felt like something out of Scooby-Doo or Batman and Robin, and shouldn’t have been green lit with purple highlights on rounded cartoon shaped headstones with perfectly cut grass. It should have used dirty shades of blue and grey, the grass should have been over-run with moldy leaves, and the headstones should have been chipped, sharp, and menacing. Also there is a scene when a character dies, but the film never gives us the proper set up to actually care about the loss. It’s not a bad movie, I like it better than the first film, less than the third, and would say it about ties with The Chamber of Secrets. It’s only a disappointment because I had high (Harry Pothead) expectations.

On a really positive note, I feel that the ethnicity issue mentioned earlier was properly solved. Even though there were random minorities in the backgrounds and foregrounds, they were adequately mixed and were given characters and speaking parts that didn’t feel contrived. 8/10.

Do not squint, it could damage your vision.

I know you guys think I’m stupid for posting a picture of grass, but I assure you there is more to this picture than meets the eye. If you look extra closely, you might, if you are perceptive enough, be able to distinguish from the photograph the impression of a travel coffee mug.

Did you see it? No? Well, I assure you it’s there. The lengths the creators of this coffee mug went to assure it would be camouflaged completely are in fact incredible. The real boggling question at hand however is, “Why would someone need a camouflaged coffee mug?” It’s all pretty obvious really. Especially in a city like mine, which is overrun with insane coffee craving squirrels? I used to have a cup that had a large acorn on it which I would drink coffee with hazelnut flavoring in. Things got a little out of control, however, when legions of the small rodents leaped onto my arm, bit my eyeballs, and did everything in their furry power to get the tasty beverage from me. Now, at last, I can walk through campus safely with my camouflage Jifi Stop coffee mug.

Pinko Russian Arab Commie Terrorists

I just got out of seeing George Clooney’s second directorial effort, Good Night and Good Luck. It’s about McCarthyism in the 50’s, the red scare, and the communist blacklist. How people were being tried and labeled as communists without merit, trials, or evidence, and how anyone who opposed McCarthy’s methods was subsequently labeled as a communist, pinko, what have you. Anyway, the movies in black and white, a little slow, terrifically acted, etc.

What’s really interesting about it though is how Clooney (a degenerate commie himself), comments on our current political situation, without actually commenting on it. Unlike Michael Moore, and his I’m-going-to-beat-you-over-the-head-with-a-stick-till-
you-get-it method, Clooney does it more discreetly. He shows us how ridiculous McCarthy was in his unfounded accusations, and even though he may have been right with a few of his accusations, for a large majority of them he was wrong. We start making connections, maybe subconsciously, to Dubya and his terrorism campaign, his secret prisons, and his war of ideologies he could never hope to fully grasp. Maybe though, Clooney is only preaching to the choir, and it will never make a difference, because the only people who will see this film are the ones who probably already knew the points anyway.

Is this our plight? To be ruled by the stupid masses who don’t comprehend their own beliefs? Unfortunately I think so. For those who hope that they can change the mind of a person who doesn’t really know why he/she has his/her beliefs in the first place, it’s a sad circumstance. Like civil union (gay marriage). How can we explain the hypocrisies and false logic to someone whose beliefs are defined by a book written 2000 years ago? Or to someone who only wants to believe in their own ways without actually thinking about them. I don’t know, maybe television commercials, or if we could start subtly slipping in messages into popular reality TV shows. Maybe then, and with a few generations, we could make a change. Until then, good night, and good luck.

Servants of Voldermort?

Who are these mysteriously nameless black faces that cloud almost every frame of Harry Potter? It seems that every person on screen who isn’t a character is some minority or another. In the picture above, from left to right, we have Fred, Ron, Hermione, Harry (who had just been hospitalized from Quidditch), and this black girl? Who is she? She certainly isn’t a character in the books, and isn’t really given any development (or name) in the movie. Is she in frame because she knows Harry personally like the other 3 do, and is seriously concerned with his health? Is it coincidence that she’s Black, or is there something more conspicuous at work? The photo below shows Seamus Finnigan, Fred and George, Harry, Hermione, Nevell, and more random minorities.

I’m not saying the J.K. Rowling is racist. On the contrary, she’s probably race-less. When she was writing the book, she was probably writing it for herself, or for her kids, and had no idea what a cultural phenomenon it would become, and wasn’t even thinking about race. Isn’t it more racist to be thinking about our differences at all times rather than none of the time?

Now though, when Warner Bros. fears the accusing fingers of the NAACP and wants to market Harry Potter to the widest audience possible, they insert these nameless Black and Hispanic extras, seldom with speaking parts, to let the kids know that you don’t have to be white to be a wizard. Partially this is a very good thing. It would be depressing and culturally detrimental to not have multi-ethnic characters in these films. Imagine a Black child watching an all-white Harry Potter movie. Could he dream of someday going to Hogwarts? All children aspire to be wizards, and all kids who see Harry Potter wish it was real, but it would appear impossible for a Black child to have these dreams if he got done watching a movie without any minority representation.

My complaint isn’t that there shouldn’t be ethnicity in the world of Harry Potter. My complaint is that they are stuck into the movie in such a blatant and obvious way that it is doing more harm than good. It is so contrived and forced that child or grownup, consciously or subconsciously, we are noticing it.

Toilet stickers for people you hate.

Now I haven’t exactly gotten the patent on this just yet, so please, if you pursue my invention kick me back some of the cash. Thank you.

Imagine this… you had a rough night of drinking bourbon and eating chili… you wake up the morning to take a piss, vomit, and shit, like you’ve never done before. Something fierce. How much better would said experience be, if you were excrementing on the person you hated most? It’d be so much fun that the next time you’d just go ahead and mix the bourbon with the chili so you didn’t have to wait till the next morning… seriously. These could be customizable and ink-jet printer friendly. It could be the professor of yours that never treats you like a human being, your ex-girlfriend/boyfriend… I mean, the possibilities are virtually endless. George Lucas, Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay, Condoleezza Rice, the list goes on.

French People Wishing They Had Guns.

Not sure if you guys have been noticing, but people are going a little nutzo in gay Paris (pronounced “Paree” when preceded by the word "gay") right now. This exclusive Naked Brain News photo shown above was taken just yesterday.

Rioting in the streets, sparked by the deaths of two French, non-white, teenagers, who were reportedly running from le police, ran into a power plant and got the Halle Berry shocked out of them ala “Do you know what happens to toads when they get struck by lightning?” And I don’t mean they committed suicide after hearing such a bad one-liner either. There are these slums outside France called the Clichy-sous-Bois, inhabited entirely by immigrants and their descendants. Les Arabs and les Blacks got all le pissed off about it, because they felt it was les polices fault these teens got electrocuted, plus the fact that they live in poverty and aren’t treated equally politically or economically, and started to le fuck shit up (I’d say pardon my French here, but that would probably be too obvious). The rioting has lasted almost two weeks now, and the French are all like “Sacré bleu, les Arabs and les Blacks are le tearing our shit up and stuff.”

I consider my self on an expert on French culture, having seen Amelie, and believed that all French people work in quaint cafés surrounded by quirky yet likeable characters. At first I was afraid that this wasn’t the case, but I was relieved to find out that in France, the most liberal of nations, only les Blacks and les Arabs don’t work in des deux Moulins (that’s the two windmills for those of you who don’t parle Francais).

Le unfortunately for them, they don’t have the convenience of a trusty shotgun, or why not an entire armory of assault rifles, tear gas, what have you, to protect themselves and their property like we do ala crawdad Creole New Orleans style. In New Orleans the good and sin free white people all had AK47s and could just shoot the evil sinning Black people (who were being treated like Rwandans), have another glass of blood, eat some bones, and chill on the righteous shoulder of Jesus while waiting to someday dye of lung cancer. I don’t care what a left-wing liberal gun-hater you are, when the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina thing was happening you were praying that the hand of god would reach down and hand you a 12 gage, and trust me, so are the French, with their scrumptious egg-dipped toast and slivers of potato fried to golden perfection. Viva la France.

Rules? There are no rules.

In the photograph on the left you will see a picture of my colleague Mr. Gilcrhist, riding one fashionable Deborah Butterfield horse. We took a trip to this foundry in Walla Walla, Washington where they cast Butterfield’s stick-esque horseys in Bronze, paint them, and then sell them for upwards of $200,000. That’s a lot of money for what I see as a glorified form of a pink flamingo or garden gnome. They are cast bronze sculptures, produced in multiples, and are undoubtedly bought by rich people who use them to decorate their yards.

We left the foundry and went to the Whitman College where they have one of these lawn ornaments in the courtyard. “We must ride this brave and mighty animal, and thus photograph it for visual record,” I suggested to the Beast. However, he was a tad low on courage sauce, and so I had to hop on the mighty $200,000 sculpture first. Like Tom Sawyer and painting the picket fence, the Beast got his courage, and road the fierce steed. I photographed it in the most Napoleonic way possible. Then came a lady dressed in black with a look of disapproval cast over her ancient white visage. “These horses are art, and are therefore, not for riding,” bellowed the old woman. We had completed our task, and secured the photographs that we needed, so we complied with the cunning witch. Was not us photographing ourselves riding the Butterfield horse not art as well? And was this bronze sculpture forged by craftsmen, later to be signed by the artist, really art? Or is it just kitschy and expensive decoration no different than a plastic pink flamingo, faded by sunlight, in the yard of some track in some suburb?

No, I will not live by rules! Did Napoleon live by rules? If he were here would he of not hopped up on this metal statue with us, slowly swivel his gaze eastward, and command a non-existent army in a thick French accent? "Onvard mis soljiers! Do var! Do var! Do vickoree!" Yes, yes he would indeed, and so would I. Especially if I couldn’t foresee any serious consequences.

It’s like waiting for a red light at a four way stop at 11:00p.m., when you are the only car in sight, and you know it would be perfectly safe for you to proceed… but no. You sit there, waiting for it to turn green, because you’re supposed to, because it’s a rule. What a waste.

Do not attempt to blend.

So, the other day I was in the supermarket, you know, the market where Wolverine, Spiderman, the Flash, and awkwardly enough Steven Hawking shop, and I noticed the National Inquirers headline for this week was “Julia Robert’s Marriage on the Rocks.” I do enjoy trying new things, so I opened it up, and looked inside and there weren’t any directions anywhere. I was kind of upset to be honest, I know I wasn’t planning on buying it anyway, but I really feel bad for those who did unknowingly. So I figured it’s my duty to fill in the magazines gap, and create the drink as I feel it should be made.

Julia Robert’s Marriage on the Rocks

Pour over ice in a margarita size glass

4 oz. cheap white wine (Pretty Woman style)

2 shots cheapest bourbon possible (Erin Brockovich style)

Half a Mikes Hard Lemonade (For reinforcing the gay stereotypes perpetuated in My Best Friends Wedding)

1 shot cheap tequila (For even considering being in a stupid movie like The Mexican)

2 shots of Amaretto (For a couple of the good movies she’s been in like Confessions of A Dangerous Mind and Closer)

A dash of grenadine and a maraschino cherry (for being an infamous redhead)

Slap yourself hard (For making a movie like Mona Lisa Smile), and drink as fast as possible.

If you’re a real sissy you'll probably try and blend it, but I’m not guaranteeing it’s going to taste any good, so you know, blend at your own risk. I’m working on creating a Mike Meyer’s Rum and Coke, among others. I’ll get them to you when they’ve been properly user tested. Remember, drink responsibly and if you drive, do it blindfolded, then they can’t blame the inevitable accident on alcohol, and no one wants a DUI. Trust me, it will work.