Zaptra – “The Wise” Music Video from Danny Kim on Vimeo.

The face of a continent is changing this week. Stay tuned.

For further reading on Transactional Analysis, I recommend going to the source author, Eric Berne. In doing so, however, prepare to have your mind rent asunder. Fair warning.

Decided to pair up this image I came across recently, with the following video. If you don’t get goosebumps from either or both, you should probably go off your prescription meds for a little while.

Kudos to Berto, on the video catch.

Lecturing Prison Gangs, Michael Richards Riot Redux, Fantasy Theater of the Abhorrent, Know Your Audience, Don’t Celebrate Mediocrity; Celebrate the Jersey Shore, Malnourished Pet Superheroes, And the Legend of Ten Fists and the Lost Soul Fragments.

Download Mep Report #122

Cassini heat-graded imagery of Saturn’s moon Mimas revealed an unmistakable image of an old digital friend this week.

Why do I get the feeling that that Mario, Qbert, and Pac-Man sightings will replace Virgin Mary or Weeping Jesus Events as our generation ages?

The lack of music, dialogue, and slow pacing of the thing really contributes to score a galactically high score on the absurdity scale. In my opinion, this video peaks when Banana Man fails to properly light one of his fuses, and impotently waves the lighter in front of his face, blindly hoping for yet another fizz and pop, followed by the splash of banana guts.

On the weirdness scale, I think this may even have trumped ‘Dancing Man in a Horse Mask Cooking Mushrooms…”

To be perfectly honest, Exploding Banana Head Man does incrementally reduce my affinity for the internets. It just don’t sit right, I tells ya.

Don’t think the moral lines are being blurred by those asked to go to war for the ideals of torturing people born in a different place?

Think again.

The girl is 4 (four) years old. Four. And you thought spanking was bad.

Not noted in the article is whether or not the man was well versed in the ways of fabled Mep target the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, whose headquarters are across town in Yelm, Washington. Perhaps he’d moved the family to Yelm after being otherwise unable to live with the things he’d spent his life doing.

I wonder if everyone supports this troop?

Everyone’s favorite Emilio Estevez sibling was in the news today for allegedly “breaking several pairs of eyeglasses” in front of his wife during a Christmas tirade. The horror!

The BBC lead story also cataloged a series of “arm slaps” between Charlie Sheen and his estranged wife.

Oh, did I mention that Sheen also pinned his wife on the bed and threatened to have her killed? Perhaps I should have led with that tidbit.

Now, I realize that I’m not a Jesus disciple, and, as such, not privy to certain Christmas traditions, but in my limited experience, Christmas seems to be a totally appropriate time for eyeglass murder, arm slapping, and empty death threats.

Why, it was just last year’s festive season when I was in the company of a lovely and devout Christmas family going through their yearly tradition of accusations, hysteria, tantrums, ultimatums and eyeglass murder. Again, as an outsider I can’t point to the page in the New Testament where it mandates winter equinox crying fits and delusion, but I’m sure it’s at least symbolically presented in the text.

As a cat being chased around by a vacuum cleaner, I am both baffled and genuinely afraid of the havoc the holiday season is capable of wreaking. Every year, it seems to bring with it unnecessary emotional stakes and dire consequences for the people caught up in them.

And so, my choices seem to be to either bunker myself and wait out the dreaded period, or, reluctantly participate in someone else’s calendar induced-insanities. As such, this time of year trends anywhere from the mundane to the apocalyptic.

I find that the building up of expectations is one of the best ways to ruin whatever one is looking forward to. Rarely can any single event live up to the vivid imagination of the hopeful. Christmas, more so than any other happening I can think of (with the possible exception of a visit to DisneyLand), comes bundled with insane levels of expectations. A season of wonderment, visitations by mythical historical figures, spontaneous musical happenings, and unbridled avarice have been ingrained into the minds of Christmas goers from their earliest memories.

I question how anyone can have even a mildly pleasant time under these conditions. It would seem to parallel playing a game of catch in which the first person to drop the ball spontaneously combusts. What is initially a fun distraction immediately becomes a recipe for trauma.

And so, as I do in my more lucid years, I sit and try to wait this damned season out. I wait for the commercial mob rule and ramming-speed shoppers to pass, I wait for the families to reunite and unleash their pent up ingratitudes, I wait for the looped musical propaganda to quiet, and for the singing nitwits to cease. I wait for the psychedelic red and green landscape to pass over the horizon (and simultaneously wonder whether draping everything with red contributes to the aggravated and belligerent nature of the season), and I wait for the dead temporary pet trees to be returned to their waiting dumpsters outside.

And soon, soon there will be quiet. There will be no more unreasonable expectations (or at least no more than usual), no more pure fiction (back to the scaled-down lie of the everyday persona), and quiet — blissful quiet. In due time, the sun will stop hiding from the human collective insanity and begin to make the days tolerably long again. For, my Christmas is the return to normalcy. My anticipation is for the insanity to end and the singing to cease. My Christmas present is to return to a world that isn’t completely polarized (and paralyzed) by religious beliefs or familial traditions, and the best part is that my Christmas season lasts for 50 weeks a year.

If you’re one of those people who thought digital photography’s advent was going to kill the art of the picture, here’s a good counterargument.

I’m not as into photography as I used to be, but picture series like this always make me contemplate giving up the words for a while to go in search of these allegedly kiloword packages. I really had a knack for it as a kid, but I probably never would have been capable of stuff like the highlights in this National Geographic photo contest.

It’s in depictions of nature like this (if not actually being out in it directly) that I find some of the strongest proofs for the existence of God. You can believe all this beauty develops by random dice-rolls if you want, but it just doesn’t wash for me.

What, you didn’t think I could write a whole post that was just about “look at this link I found on the internet and how pretty it is,” did you? All speech is political.

This is a tough one to bear. Above, is a picture of nutbar Mel Gibson wielding a beaver puppet. Allegedly, this is all for an upcoming Jodie Foster directed film entitled, “The Beaver.”

One would think that Gibson, a religious nutcase in his own right, would have the wherewithal to treat The Giant Flying Beaver that Rules the Universe with some measure of reverence and respect. How would he like it if I made a Jesus Crucifix Dummy for my new short film entitled “Puppet Messiah?” Wouldn’t that make for a fun-filled family outing?

Anyway, if you’re going to create a beaver-centric comedy, clearly your star should be a cybernetic, taxidermied, beaver case mod. A la Compubeaver:

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