✷

Author: Happy

  • THREE CHEERS FOR OUR NORTHERN NEIGHBORS: ANIMATION IN CANADA ROCKS

    If you also had no access to cable television, chances are you watched Qubo at some point in your life.

    Hip-hip-hooray to ION Television for their very own kid’s block, which lasted from 2006 all the way until 2021. A legend in poor children’s entertainment will be missed (*Sniff ).

    Qubo was truly, uh, something else. Given that it’s a budget channel on public access television, they had none of the shit your friends would be talking about at school, but a fairly solid catalogue, nonetheless. Most of its shows were, in fact, imported from Canada!

    Ah, Canada. Maybe you guys get ignored by the rest of the world, but you’ll always mean something special to me.

    Seriously though, where’s the love for our northern neighbors? I suppose it’s because they generally tend to mind their business up there, but their contributions to the animation scene go widely unappreciated!

    Especially since it gave most of us our childhoods! Canadian animation has the unfortunate brand of being that show you know you’ve watched, but just can’t remember the name of (popular ones like Total Drama Island and Johnny Test aside). The footage and characters ring a bell, but darn! You just can’t remember what it is.

    And it gets clowned on for having niche shit that no one’s heard about, because for the most part…yeah. Canadian animation always tends to be as hit-or-miss as a DreamWorks film.

    But, come on, when it does land? Oh man, absolute gold. Detentionaire has to be the shining example in the beauty of shows up north. It’s an absolute shame it got snubbed and cancelled, because it’s an underrate gem of its own kind (speaking of which, now that they’ve returned all the episodes to YouTube, I’ll need to get around to rewatching it past the first episode…Looks like an entry for another day!). By the way, how often do you see an animated show cited as being a mystery thriller on its Wikipedia page? God, I wish we had more horror-thriller animated content out here in the West!

    Even their stuff that isn’t as beautifully written still bangs. I was a big fan of Grojband as a kid, yet again another show that got cancelled, though in this case, I can kind of understand why. Hell, I even checked out some of Todd Kaufman’s other works, Looped also being among a childhood favorite of mine (and I can still remember the theme songs for both! Nevermind that I have a good memory…).

    The other day, I took a small trip down memory lane after I got a Grossology review recommended to me on YouTube. I don’t think I ever caught full episodes of it on television, but I was at least familiar with the show and, to say I’m such germaphobe nowadays, I actually did like the show (and, had I seen that episode with Kid Rot/Chester in it as a kid, I’m fairly certain I would’ve had a crush on him. Also guarantee that he would’ve been a Tumblr favorite had the show been more mainstream!).

    Also obligatory “someone on that show had a fetish” comment goes here. Still slaps though.

    Then that video got me scrolling all the way down Qubo’s catalogue, and I was surprised by the amount of positive impressions I had from the shows there: Jacob Two-Two, Willa’s Wild Life, Pearlie, Being Ian, and so on. Even the ones I didn’t necessarily like I still regard fondly. More than a few Canadian titles are my guilty pleasure shows (Looking at you, Jimmy Two-Shoes)…

    You know what was probably my favorite out of all of them? Sally Bollywood. GOD I loved that show. Other than the weird DeviantArt fetish recolors, I really love how there’s absolute radio silence for that show. That one came from Australia though! I know the animation scene isn’t as active over there, because between that and SheZow, I’m not really sure what else they’ve made, so that’ll have to be a post for another day! (I’ve already promised two additional posts here; I need to slow down!)

    I’ve started bouncing all over the place more than enough now, so I’ll end myself here before I go on any longer! Remember to give a little more love to Canada for giving you a proper, well-rounded childhood! Where would we be without them?

    Addendum: And how could I forget my one of my favorite Canadian show of all time, Carl Squared? Loved that show, man! May have to rewatch it sometime…

  • HOW MANY ALMONDS TO DIE?

    For the last couple of days, my mouth has been obsessed with M&Ms. I’m pretty sure I mentioned this on a previous post, where my meals nowadays consist of a crunchy candy supplement.

    My favorites used to be the regular brown bag M&Ms, and then a few months ago I developed a sudden hankering for the peanut ones (probably because they called my name from behind the vending machine glass). I’m pretty sure I spent a good amount on buying them during break time for my night classes, but it was well worth it, because I was already a soldier having to attend class until 10:30 at night.

    And until the other day, where I did a small grocery store run, I stayed faithful to said yellow bag. But they were out the other day, and I was craving more candy, so I looked between the flavors on the shelves.

    There were the tried and true brown bag ones, but I wanted something bigger. I wanted something my teeth could really sink into. They also had fun little flavors, and for a brief moment, I picked up the Cold Brew Latte flavor (which, by the way, yum! That sounds delicious, wtf?!), and while I was going to get them (and, after exiting the store, actually thought I did get them), I didn’t want to get too experimental, just in case they tasted bad (which they probably didn’t, ’cause they’re M&Ms).

    Hence, we have almond. Oh almond. Glorious almond. I chose them because I knew, texture-wise, they’d taste and feel most similar to the peanut M&Ms, and boy, I wasn’t disappointed. These are better than those. These are a heavenly flavor unlike any other. Better yet, they come in the big resealable bags for $5! Why wouldn’t I decide to indulge in more of these?

    I’m playing a dangerous game. I never had a sweet tooth before I started college, but these might just be the reason why it gets sustained. I’m exaggerating, of course, but I can definitely see myself buying at least two bags of these in the near future. Y’know, for sustenance.

    Also, my teeth have started feeling gross after all the sugar I’ve had lately. I like sugar as much as the next guy, but man, after having too much of it, it’s like this film builds up on your teeth. Yet another reason I probably won’t be continuing this sugar addiction after college; I’m too much of a dental hygienist freak for that. Plus, I feel like it’s getting in the way of absorbing water, but that’s the pseudoscientific part of me talking.

    I do quite miss salt, though. But almond M&Ms…mmmhhh. Anyway, I can’t afford any more time talking about how much candy; I’ve got a project to work on! And with us losing an hour tonight, it’ll be a real time crunch! (Ha, get it?)

    (And, for the record, sweet almonds, the kinds they sell in grocery stores, won’t kill you. You can eat them to your heart’s desire! <3)

  • WASTE MY TIME

    In other lost media news, here we have partially-lost audio obscurity, “Waste My Time,” preformed by an unknown band.

    I’d actually never heard until just the other day, when one of my friends posted this in our Discord server in our audio channel. Today was a great day to check out music recommendations, because this one goes pretty hard!

    By far, this is my favorite out of all the lost media songs. For one, it only has a crediting problem, so we have the benefit of listening to the full thing instead of a sound clip. Plus, it just bangs. Seriously. This is something I’d rip to a cassette tape (once I have the time, I sure as hell will).

    And also, its origins, I feel, are by far the most straightforward: this absolutely has to be a demo recording from the late 1990s-early 2000s (leaning more towards the 00s). I know next to nothing about the search for this song, so this is just my first impression of the song here. Apparently it was ripped from an indie recording on the radio in 2010, which tracks, but based on the sometimes nonsensical nature of the lyrics, I believe this was never even meant to hit the radio. It’s pretty common practice to sub in gibberish lyrics until something permanent can be found.

    Since we have the full audio sample, this falls to pretty low priority on the lost media search list, but maybe one day it’ll randomly be identified. Most likely by the performers themselves!

    Update 3/9/24: According to this Soundcloud page¹, a commenter said the song originates from the band “Sparkplug,” which their friend Michael was apart of in 2010. Is it true? Who knows! I’m willing to believe it is. The way it’s written feels too specific to lie about. And it’s not like anyone’s actively searching for this songs, right? So this guess is as good as any! My mind is at ease, and this I shall accept as fact until proven otherwise.

    (I snagged a screenshot of the thread, too, just in case it gets purged from time. Maybe I should add it on the Wayback Machine, too? I’ve always wanted to contribute to that thing, hahaha.)

  • PRAY FOR DAVE

    I love hearing about the #PrayforDave thing. Considering I stumbled upon it back when it was just a mere Craigslist post a few years ago, I feel an almost special connection to it.

    Would you believe me if I said I was one of the earliest people to find out about it? Probably not, but it’s true. Well, it wasn’t really me who found out about it. If I recall correctly, my mother was browsing Craigslist, and she flipped her laptop over to me because of one really bizarre post she found: #PrayforDave. I still remember the body text, too:

    Her bookshop breaks before the drill!

    000 000 000 000 000

    #PrayForDave

    504-383-4398

    I wasn’t quite brave enough to call the number at the bottom, but I was intrigued enough to search a little more. I was already a fan of ARGs, and having come fresh off of the New Noology Network (which, now that I think about it, may have been around the same time as this one), but what made #PrayforDave so confusing was that…it was very hard to tell if it were an ARG, at first.

    I found local forums and even a few Reddit threads asking about it, but honestly, everything about it was so nonsensical that it was really hard to figure out exactly what you were supposed to do with what you learned.

    I got as far as deciphering the Morse code in one of the videos and finding out the boy was a picture of Keanu Reeves, but that was about it. I even called up the number, and since this was back in 2019 I really don’t remember what was on the other line, but I do remember it was a voicemail.

    Even weirder, I could’ve sworn I’ve seen this number before. Even in 2024 it still looks really familiar, which leads me to believe that the answer is more obvious than I initially realized.

    Part of me sort of deep-down still wants to investigate a little into #PrayforDave, but I’ll probably never end up getting around to it. I even drafted up a video script and saved a few screenshots from back in the day (maybe I can pull them from my old computer), but ultimately set it on the backburner until someone else came along and did a full deep-dive a few years later (grrr, curse my procrastination! I could’ve been the first reporter on the scene). Even that video couldn’t really make sense of anything going on. The entire thing seemed like one big confusing mess.

    Tonight was when I found a new video, though, one that expands on what was established in the other uploader’s report. And boy, I can’t wait to watch that one! Apparently it solves like, what, eight other ARGs? And if it turns out to be that intricately woven into everything else after all that, then that would be impressive!

  • THE HEART-STOPPING CAMERA FILM

    One day, and I think this would be really funny, I want to go out with a group of friends to like the woods somewhere, right? We find a forest and we’re gonna do a photoshoot where we gets tons of fake blood and props and make it look like we’ve brutally murdered one of them. Then we take it all on a disposable camera, fill up the whole roll, and drop it off somewhere and let someone discover it later down the line, then let the chaos ensue.

    For obvious reasons, this is just a joke, done in good fun. I’ve always wanted to leave something creepy lying around somewhere! It’ll be a fun little riddle to include somewhere, to let everyone know there’s nothing to worry about : )

  • DINNER OF M&Ms

    Ahh, it’s that time of year in every young college kid’s life where their dinner starts being composed of nonsense thrown together from the fridge. Or drawer, in this case.

    That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. I’m at the edge of the quarter where I’m starting to run out of meal credits, and since I haven’t had time to catch the bus for groceries, I’ve started enjoying heavenly dishes of Lay’s potato chips and yellow bags of peanut M&Ms and whatever else I can find at my nearby Family Dollar that doesn’t require freezing or refrigeration.

    I never get to eat junk of any kind, so it’s actually quite nice! For now. My teeth are already starting to get that film feeling, so this will probably only last as long as my chocolate craving sticks around. It’s finals week; I deserve to have a little fun!

    Honestly, between all the work I want to do and the Blumhouse internship I want to apply for, I probably won’t have the time to run to the store at all. Or even finish my hair. But hey! I have water, an electric kettle and creamer for my coffee, and prime motivation that comes from reignited love for what I do. And I don’t have to attend any writer’s room meetings this week, so there’s more time for me! More time to make things better, that is. And by Thursday, I’ll be catching a plane back home to see my mom again. Well, that’s not the point of the trip. The actual point is for me to file paperwork to register my car (oh yeah, I bought a car! Long story, that one), but I consider the main highlight of the trip to be my mom. And then one more week of finals before I hit spring break!

    No plans at the moment, but of course, you never know! X’)

  • I GOT TO READ SAW (2004) FOR CLASS

    Like the new changes around here? Yeah, the website’s still under construction, but so far, I’m pretty down with all the new décor around here. Plus I hope you enjoy the lack of adverts now. I’m out $48 for the most limited features ever, but now I get to have my own special customized domain.

    What was I talking about again? Oh yeah. I’ve been killing it in my screenwriting class lately. And by killing it, I mean enjoying it! Seriously, I’ve been SO much happier in all my classes ever since I changed majors. My projects get to flourish under reasonable and achievable deadlines, and I get to make and engage with work I enjoy. And in my screenwriting class, for an assignment the other day, we were tasked with picking a script from a list and reading from it. And guess what they had on there?

    That’s right: SAW (2004)!!!!!

    Now, admittedly, considering that I am a hardcore Saw fan, I have read the script before. But, like, it’s different when you get to read it for CLASS. I was doubting there’d be anything I’d want to read. When you have to pick from lists, it’s never the stuff that actually interests you, y’know? But I was really surprised that they’d actually categorized all the screenplays by genre, and under horror, there it was in all it’s beauty, deserved kudos and all.

    Actually, right before I saw it, I was scrolling for anything that I was at least remotely familiar with (because, even though it wasn’t the point of the assignment, I wanted something I could compare script-to-screen on my own), I’d already gotten pretty excited seeing that they had Insidious (2010) up there. and, as we know, Leigh Whannell and James Wan were also the brains behind that one as well, so I was perfectly satisfied at least having something that I’d enjoy reading.

    And then I saw it. And I knew I just couldn’t pass that chance up.

    It may have also been driven by the fact I’d never actually finished reading the script. It’s not like we had to read all of it– just the first 25 pages– but since I wanted to go above and beyond, I figured I’d read the whole thing since it already felt lazy choosing something I was already familiar with. I did it out of passion, though. I really, really love that film. Maybe I’ll make it a lifelong dream of mine to get a printed copy signed by Leigh Whannell. Sighs dreamily…I’d probably commits acts that end with blood on my hands if it meant a chance at meeting Leigh Whannell.

    If I ever do, I promise you that I’d never sell that copy ever. I don’t believe in participating in the trade of celebrity signatures for monetary gain, anyway. Sorry ladies.

  • LESSON LEARNED

    You ever feel like you narrowly avoided something bad happening to you?

    I’ve walked that route back to my dorm a dozen times, but that night was the first time I ever felt like something was wrong.

    I’ve never been scared of walking at night. On guard, yes, but never frightened. That night I was scared out of my mind. Despite there being no one in my immediate vicinity, I felt like I was being watched the whole time. There’s this real distinct difference I’ll get when something has been manufactured by my imagination and paranoia vs. when something is real. I think my stomach started twisting because I could tell it was the latter.

    I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way before. It was a sobering feeling, all at once, I realized how foolish it was walking by myself at night when I had other (albeit limited) options. I started regretting it the second I crossed the street, and for that entire 20 minute walk, the feeling didn’t go away.

    Even two days later, I’m still deeply unsettled by that experience. It was like a weird sensation of alarm bells filled every inch of my body to warn me of my impending demise. I think what made it even scarier was, just that morning, I’d been extra appreciative of my life that day. That would be the perfect kind of irony to end a day on.

    You would be right to assume I prayed the whole time there, asking for mercy just one more time. I’ve done some stupid things but I’ve never regretted something more. Almost immediately I thought of my mom, how she would be devastated if something happened to me, and it only made me pray harder.

    I took the bus back. Even after all that it broke my habit of walking at night. I got scared straight, if you will. Perhaps I should feel some sort of care for my safety, not getting caught up in the complacency of protection time and time again.

    We serve a merciful God, one who sometimes ensures we don’t have to learn a lesson the hard way.

  • I GET IT FROM MY MOM

    My mother, too, is incredibly determined to find things once she gets fixated. According to her, the Lord took her those detective gifts and gave them to me twofold.

    My grandparents, I don’t think, have ever seen themselves young. Not adult young. Teenager young. Child young. I’m pretty sure they’ve never seen any pictures of themselves as children, and for the longest time, the youngest photo we ever had of them is from their wedding-honeymoon, where they were freshly turned 21.

    We’ve definitely tried to retrieve more, though. Often times it leads to nowhere, especially since the public usually doesn’t have the same level of access to archived physical things. Their graduating class even has a Facebook group dedicated to making a yearbook of their own, and you want to know why? The funny thing is, there are entire yearbook scans uploaded on the internet from their time at high school. And the sad part? The Class of 67, sandwiched between the misfortune of Classes 66 and 68, never got yearbooks due to a hurricane. Another subsequent hurricane many years down the line destroyed the beautiful watercolor rendition of my grandfather’s graduation photo. Out of the members of my immediate family, my mom was the only one to see it. We have never seen my grandparents any younger than twenty-one.

    On Friday night, I was browsing the obits for my own reasons, and then from there I get on the mental topic of my grandparents again. Then I’m opening an Incognito tab, and I’m searching for my grandparents again.

    By then, I’d already spent a few hours browsing yearbooks after I’d forgotten what year they graduated, but my heart picked up a little after I did the math. I accessed the yearbooks on that awful Classmates site using a temporary email, because they had a high-quality scan of the yearbook from 1965, the year they would’ve been freshman. I was scanning the names of homeroom pictures and praying that they attended school that day. Everything was arranged alphabetically, so I remember thinking that, if I didn’t see my grandma’s name, then they’re just not there.

    But the moment my eyes landed on her name, they snapped to the exact spot she was in, and I immediately recognized her. All the women in my family have the tendency to look the exact same throughout the years.

    I got excited, and I found my grandpa after that soon after. I literally couldn’t believe my eyes, that we’d be so lucky as to find their class photos- and in such high quality, too- in a perfectly preserved PDF file online.

    I emailed them to my mom as a surprise, and once she managed to find it in her inbox, she got up from the dinner she’d just sat down to eat to show them immediately.

    I wanted to be apart of the fun, too! So I called my mom up, and got to hear the exact moment they exclaimed, “What!” and saw the photos. It was a task we thought impossible, but after all these years, one of us finally managed to find my grandparents when they were still young adults themselves.

    My grandpa was sort of hidden in the dark, unfortunately, so there’s still no clear photo of him, but my grandmother was so cute! And now we can comparatively say that their offspring looks exactly like them, too!

    My mom said they just stared and stared and stared in amazement. I wonder what they were thinking of on their trip down memory lane.

    – – –

    It’s not often I get to make groundbreaking discoveries like that, but when I do, they’re always worthwhile! Last time, I found a short video clip of my mom back during her time in school, another one who seems elusive to the camera. I think that’s the familial disposition, though. All of us seem to avoid photography, not always on purpose. It seems to be a privacy thing.

    At least my kids are going to (sort of) have a collection of pictures from when I was a child. I currently boast the most photographs out of anyone in my family, and that’s exactly why I became their photographer, now. When they’re all gone, what am I gonna have to stare at?! That’s why it’s important to take photos in the moment! Now!

    Next up is seeing if I can locate any pictures of my mom back from her high school and/or college slash pre-me days, because she only ever started taking pictures after I was born. And now we’re also undertaking the monumental task of sifting through Air Force photos to see if my grandpa can be located. And I want to make (digital) watercolor portraits for the both of them to replace the ones they’ve lost. We have a lot of preserving history to be done!

  • BROWSING THE OBITS

    Ever just pop in to check the obits? You know, just to make sure you don’t see anyone you know.