While I don’t hold with Creationists (or even proponents “Intelligent Design” as the term is currently employed) my world-view is generally in line with that of mainstream Roman Catholicism, a paradigm which is still lacking enough in empirical rigor to draw a fair amount of fire from skeptics. As time goes by I’ve found more and more that prolonged confrontation over these beliefs, even when tenable, frequently causes me enough anxiety to have minor biological repercussions.

An odd byproduct of this is that I occasionally feel sort of a sympathetic anxiousness when other folks views are attacked, sometimes even if I disagree with them or hold an opposing viewpoint. As a result I don’t argue as much in general as I did in earlier years, and (as you’d probably imagine) find some of the popular topics on blogs I frequent cause my stomach to churn a little extra. Curse of Greyface at work in me no doubt.

But in spite of these occasional misgivings about rocking boats when I recently came across the New York Dolls “Dance Like a Monkey” video it somehow amused me greatly:

Click here to watch “Dance Like a Monkey”.

I really gotta hand it to them: between the actual song lyrics and the video animation this thing has got more creationist, evolutionist, religious, skeptic, political, and scientific in-jokes than I’ve ever seen crammed into a 3 minute and 25 second package previously.

The FSM gets some action (always a crowd pleaser with skeptics). But I think my favorite parts were the obvious Dubya/monkey visual humor, and a passing reference to the Scopes Monkey Trial.

I’m actually surprised it hasn’t shown up on Boing Boing yet as it is totally their bag, and will be even more surprised if someone else doesn’t point it out to them before this gets posted.

Gary Gustin is an actor who works in the Pennsylvania area. In the following interview, Gustin talks about his experiences as an actor. His most recent film is Sean McKnight’s Disturbing Images (2006).

Interview follows.

I am familiar with your work from Sean McKnight’s film Disturbing Images where you played the character of Byron Lloyd. How did you come to be involved with the film?

I learned of Disturbing Images after Director Sean McKnight started casting notices. At that time he was being assisted by Dave Von Roehm of Ningun Films. I met Dave when I worked on a trailer for the film Two of One Heart. You know working on Independent films is a pretty small universe, seems like everyone knows everyone.

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Here’s another album loaded with crap. I present to you Random Encounters. Once again released in 1999. Once again it’s a mix of songs recorded long before they made it to this CD and others recorded minutes before the CD was burned.

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This year the RPG run at Protozoicon will be decided by concensus. So if you’re planning on attending and interested in playing please give a little feedback if you’ve got time.

The survey only contains 10 questions so hopefully it won’t take too long.

You can click here to take it.

Flying Numbers (2005) is a series of 49 poems written over a two-month period or so in 2004. Originally I published them on the web, but in 2005, I edited them into a PDF book-like format. Personally, I like their web presentation a little better than their PDF presentation. Some of the pictures for example were changed in making them into a book, along with the background colors. Additionally, some friends contributed their versions of flying number poems, which I had on the web also. The PDF-book version lacks these poems, and the colors, etc, but in the end it is probably a little easier to navigate.

Thematically, each poem centers on the flying numbers 1, 2 and 3. Rather convolutedly, the poems were also connected to a project (which is currently shelved) called PJ the Robot (and who in many regards still lives on). Even more convolutedly, PJ was an acronym, standing for “propaganda jox”, both a call to arms against the current state of world affairs and an allusion to a bygone time when the only enemies on the face of the Earth were Russia and the USA. The final thing that should be noted is that both”propaganda jox” and PJ owe a lot to Stuart Gordon’s film, Robot Jox (1990).

Crash and Burn and Flying Numbers.

Click here to download a PDF version of Flying Numbers.

I recorded Today Was Painted Thin on the 4-track in Essex sometime around April of 2003. As with most efforts that I myself “recorded and mastered” without Tim, the quality is pretty poor. I always liked the song though and wanted to record it again with people who could actually play instruments, rather than bang them (which is typically my approach to playing instruments). However, like the Lesternomicon, this might be as good as it ever gets.

Click here to listen to Today Was Painted Thin

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