tubes of terror...

T-Minus: 8 days...
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Location: University of Otago Aquarium

Objective: Job

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time is now definitely running out! i've got just over a week to meet these stupid government criteria... i need to get this job thing in the hat people of the web wide world or it's the end of the game as far as i'm concerned! (though why i need a job in a hat doesn't make much sense if you ask me)

as of such i've made my way all the way out of town to the aquarium to try and get the job listed in the news paper...

now the aquarium is pretty out of town. fortunately NOT as far as the albatrosses or pilot's beach so i could get out here by bus if i needed to.

off the bat have to say it is a kinda intense looking place. much more complexy and hardcore then the vancouver aquarium looked. if i was going to be a tour guide here i might just have to take up being a spy again to work in a place that looked this much like it was out of a peter bond movie. wonder if there's a correlation between spies and aquariums?

walking in the front door this place continued to baffle me. this time by defying what i understood an aquarium to be. i thought they were places with glass squares full of water and fish...

this place had glass cylinders instead!

very sci-fiy. i was getting kinda creeped out thinking about all the various scary movies that tended to start with things in big glass cylinders...

fortunately interrupting this tangent was a convenient snack hanging from the roof. i never say no to a free meal. so this hit the spot...

wait a second. in hindsight this probably wasn't the best move for me to make. considering i wanted a job... "uh yeah i kinda ate one of your displays" never goes over well at these sorts of places...

after this rather nice though unfortunate lunch i decided it was time to get crackalacking... that is case the joint for info, and then blow the staff away with my rather large knowledge of their displays and animals.

first up was a skeleton. kinda of my forte after all those years at the tyrrell! though i'd never seen this particular kind before. the skull looked kinda familiar though...

it was a dolphin... i'd seen a prehistoric ancestor of this poor little guy just yesterday in my job hunt at the university campus (the university should think about relocating it's aquarium closer to that location!). okay well i knew a bit about dolphins. so this job was looking promising...

then things went kinda unpredictably... approaching a particularly scary glass tube labelled "sea horses" i was a little wigged out. the contents of this tube definitely looked like it could be dangerous or conceal something dangerous.

when i got up close nothing moved for a while... i thought maybe i was imagining things, and making up things to be scared of...

then suddenly these little tendril things reached out from the sea weed looking stuff and touched the glass... it was just like a sci-fi movie!!! i didn't want sea weed to attach to my face and lay it's eggs in my brain (especially since it could lay even more in my relatively empty skull)

now that i've looked up what a sea horse is on the innerweb i have to say this may not have been the wisest course of action i could have taken. in fact i might venture to suggest this was actually kinda dumb. those "tendrils" weren't from the scary mass of kelp, but rather were just tiny sea horses...

though i kinda overracted to this none real threat what i saw next was actually a cause for concern!

i ran head long into a colossal squid!!!

i'm so not joking people of the inner web!!! just look at the photo!

these are things not to be trifled with... they have claws in their tentacles the size of my head! (granted i'm a tiny tyrannosaur. if i were full grown then maybe it'd have been a match worth watching... but if wishes were horses... uh i'd be scared of them in their glass tube?)

needless to say i cheesed it out of there!

only to get trapped by a different hazard!

now who ever thought putting a fish net in the middle of an aquarium as being friendly to visitors is beyond me! i mean just think of the hazard to children. or for that matter those trying to escape the colossal squid on display!

it was here trapped in the net that i met my undoing at the aquarium people of the web wide world...

it wasn't until they were closing the place for the evening that i was discovered by a staff member and rescued... but i was a little embarrassed. OKAY really embarrassed! and couldn't force myself to ask about the job...

i mean i did just get caught in a net ALL day! not exactly someone you want leading tours around your nice (and scary) aquarium...

this is NOT good people of the innerweb! very NOT good...

i have only ONE more chance at getting a job. if i fail it's no more new zealand for me...

My Life as a Garden...

okay i shouldn't even be thinking about writing up this post people of the innerweb. what with my deadline looming at the end of next week... but it was something i noticed on my way to a possible solution to the government's criteria...

so i was on my way to the dunedin aquarium (it's a story for my next post so stay tuned), but like most places i go in town i have to pass through the botanic gardens. it's the coolest thing about living at craig's actually. he lives RIGHT beside the garden, and man what a cool place.

i've been through here a gazillion times, but only really explored it once, but i had to cut that effort short when i got really lost in the forest. on my way to the aquarium i had to head a different route through the garden then usual. normally i just cut straight through the forest to get to town. however the aquarium is a totally different direction then downtown and the university.

i had to head through the more developed part of the gardens. man what a nice place!

not quite the forest, but hey not everything can be. unlike other none forest places though this one has a forest RIGHT beside it so who am i to complain? (the answer to that question is traumador in case you were wondering)

now as i was heading through this area, and my bus wasn't coming for a little while yet i figured i'd check out this part of the garden...

first up was the glass house... which i'd like to point out was a relief to see. or am i the only one who thinks calling these things green houses is stupid! their totally made of glass... nice to see that kiwi's are on the ball in structure title allocation (that was a fancy term i learned from listening to craig argue with the germ-man the other day...)

only thing was i couldn't check out the inside of the glasshouse... it wasn't open today!

though i'd naturally noticed that the weather was kinda blah i didn't think it would effect anything. turns out the blahness of the weather is due to winter coming on here in new zealand (news to me...), and as of such the gardens has changed to shortened hours. meaning i'd have to sick around past my bus to check this out.

i can't afford that kind of time waste just to check things out!

reluctantly i moved on...

next door to the glasshouse was a little visitor complex. it had not only a closed info booth, but a closed cafe too...

i was kinda saddened. was my luck from canada catching up with me here completely?

failuring was becoming far to common a thing here in new zealand lately. i was nearly down to a week, and i was only a fraction towards my requirements...

even the little things like the gardens were adding to my inability to get anything right...

the crazy castle stage was deserted as well. in fact the park itself compared to normal was empty.

man things were looking down. even the casual parts of new zealand were turning against. random people were avoiding me too.

what awaited me in the future. deportation. that was for sure. without the criteria met the government was certainly going to send me back to canada...

then what?

i couldn't go back to the tyrrell. my agent was off wandering the globe, and wouldn't be able to help me. i didn't even have any money left due too my adventures in BC (why did i try to build a whole new dinotown?)

with this as my destiny why should i even try to get the job at the aquarium? i was just not going to get it, like usual. i couldn't fight failure i started to fear...

life was looking grime in my tiny brain during this walk. that is till suddenly i came across the a great deal of commotion that snapped me out of my sulking...

it was a pond full of ducks, and when i say full i mean FULL!

as i sat gloomily starring off into depression space (get that pun?!? depression instead of deep... oh man i crack me up sometimes!) my little nephews and nieces many times removed (birds are the closely related descendants of we meat eating dinosaurs after all) all started to flock up to me.

at first i was enraged. of all the nerve! try and mouch food off at guy like me down on my luck...

then i realized they were just like me. everyone is just like me!

none of us have certainty in life, and we have to try and get bread crumbs anywhere we can... well okay not bread crumbs. unless your a duck of course... you get what i mean people of the web wide world...

fortunately for the ducks i happened to be covered in some crumbs from the mess i sleep in at craig's room (he still hasn't managed to clean up the mess i made a few weeks back)

my advanced little relative made me realize that life isn't about getting what you want. it's about going out there and taking it!

off i trekked to catch my bus and get that job at the aquarium!

as i walked though i noticed a patch of pretty flowers though.

for that moment i decided to just take a second and enjoy the flowers. though the majority of the gardens stuff was closed it turns one of it's best things was still open. i just hadn't realized it when i first got here...

magic museum...

T-Minus: 9 days...

Location: University Geology Museum
Objective: Job

alright i mean business here people of the inner web... how much more business can you get then a job?

the geology museum at the university is looking for a curator, and if there is one subject i can pretend to kind of know anything about it is rocks...

back at the tyrrell we had 6 curators, and they had the awesomest jobs in the whole museum. not only were they the bosses, but they got to work with all the dino girls up close and personal... oh yeah... uh i mean i only wish to get this job to "preserve, promote, and advance the scientific integrity of this institute" (how was that line. i learned it from brad back at the tyrrell for interpreter training!)

so all i had to do was get myself to the geo museum and apply. only thing was i didn't remember seeing a geo museum that alone a geology department while i explored the university a month ago? where could it be?

i really shouldn't have asked that question! inquiring around the university everyone i talked to told me it was located in the one and only place of dunedin that terrified me... the clocktower!

why would anyone put the best department of the museum in the most creepy and scary place possible?!?

science and magic don't even mix!

well i was going to have pluck up my courage, and face down my fear... though i was going to use my small brain to the max to avoid any run ins with wizards or dragons!

well right away, my coming this close to the tower complex paid off. this was indeed the home of the geology department, but there was no immediate sign of or for the museum on the outside side of the place...

i was going to have to enter the inner courtyard of hogwarts... oh man... magic is weird and scary. i don't want to get burnt by a dragon or meet a talking breakfast food again! so i was going to play this ubber safe, and sneak in without anyone or more importantly ANYTHING noticing me!

that was made a bit easier by a large growth of jungle along one of the walls... not only did it give me some cover to hide in should something appear, but it made me feel a little at home in this otherwise hostile environment...

finally i discovered the entrance to this fabled geology museum... well that and some lecture halls... now it was show time! i needed to impress these guys, and get this job!

entering the building i was greeted by some pretty sweet fossil displays! no dinosaurs sadly, but i already knew this from my trips to both the university of calgary library and the dunedin public library. they had a really impressive (and kinda formidable) dolphin skull...

kinda hard to imagine a dolphin this nasty though considering my pal i met at the vancouver aquarium...

okay now here is a dude that i know a lot more about. a mosasaur... these guys were the t-rexs of the cretaceous ocean (same time period i come from!)... they were komodo dragons (aka monitor lizards) whose feet had turned into flippers, and they cruised around eating anything and everything that moved around in the water.

okay look at that. i'm already off the races on this curator thing! with my pre-existing knowledge of palaeo from the tyrrell i was sure to be a shoe in!

hmmm i'm starting to notice a oceanish theme to the fossils here at the museum (well okay outside the museum, as these were all in cases just in the hallway...). here we had a slab full of giant shark teeth... oh man i know better then to mess with one of these guys... based on the sign i noticed this was the mosasaurs replacement millions of years into the future. apparently this fellow is related to the modern great white. even more so then megalodon (a ginormous shark from just 4 million years ago!!!)...

alright i'm going with this part of the museum is the sea themed area, and though it's displays aren't as nice as the tyrrell's bear paw sea exhibit, they've got some great bones. this guy is a giant prehistoric penguin.


i'm started to like this museum. it may have been more low key then the tyrrell, but it still had some nice art work and pictures to bring these poor dead guys back to life (well in a not moving, living, or 3D sense of the concept).

now that i had myself familiarized with the rough layout of their outer displays it was time to head into the actual museum, and not only check out the rest of their stuff, but also get the job!

heading through the door all confident and sure of myself i'd forgotten where this museum was located...

next thing i knew going through the door for the museum (which i could clearly see through the glass window on the door...) i found myself outside on top of a rather large stair case...

i point out that i was only half a floor up outside the museum, and more to the point i was INside!!!

i HATE MAGIC!!!

i'd like to claim that i remained calm. in fact i shall. yes i stayed calm (ignore the picture here though... that would indicate i ran away in a cowardly fashion... cause you just heard my claim, and i'm sticking with it!)

darn found it people of the innerweb! that sounded like the perfect job for me too!

i just can't handle magic! this hogwartsish place just isn't a safe work environment. i'd rather face the uncertainty of deportation then that...

wait deportation... that is almost just a week away! AHHHHHHHHH... okay people of the web wide world i need to go here. time is running out... for real this time!!!

George Washington - 2000 - DVD

Monday, March 19, 2007



I'm baffled. I'm hypnotized by George Washington's ponderous long takes of nature in a run-down town, but I'm do remain baffled by its overall intentions. It's a portrait of a southern town so torn up by poverty that its pubescent main characters, less than a handful of kids droning through their days on the cusp of something less than inspiring, say it looks like it was wrecked by "two tornadoes." As the film begins there is a relaxed sort of meditation to each shot, because every one is held longingly; little details like bits of graffiti on sign posts are cleverly framed with as much care as young George Washington (Donald Holden), the daydreamer with a birth defect (he has a soft scull) turned self-described superhero after he rescues a boy from drowning. Tim Orr, the cinematographer who has worked with director David Gordon Green on this, Green's first film, and on each subsequent release (All The Real Girls (2002), Undertow (2004), and Snow Angels (2007), and coming in 2008, The Pineapple Express), adds a particular glisten to the mundane. Though, Green's audience is a select type, and probably the kind who frequents the art house theater over the scraggly backwoods residents documented in his film; the depleted country industrial town (and townspeople) is intriguing by virtue of the disparity of setting and lifestyle between them and the film's viewers. Which is not to say Green's film looks upon his subject with condescension; to the contrary he lets the dilapidated town of rusty cars and train tracks simply be, and rather beautifully. The characters speak with a flat inflection, with an almost forced naturalism in their exchanges. The words they say seem contradictory to their characters, overly philosophical in observation, but somehow likable and true. They speak in essence of the whole movie: beautiful, philosophically sweet, but not of any defined order or form.

what next?

T-Minus: 10 days...

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Location: Dunedin Public Library

Objective: Information

oh man people of the innerweb... time is running out!!!

of my 3 criteria imposed by the new zealand government i've only got a small part of one of them done. now don't get me wrong that is progress, but that took my almost 40 days!!! at that rate i'll have been deported uh... wait don't tell me... carry the zero... uh... many times over, yeah that's right... deported many times before i meet all of them...

i literally can't afford for this to happen!

i need a fast solution to these criteria or i'm in BIG trouble!

now i may not know the most of stuff in the world, but i do know one guy who can hook me up with a good artificial brain... in the form of major information.

that would be through mike... the LIBRARIAN...

now of course he is still all the way across the ocean in canada, but through the wonder that is the tellyphone i was able to get a hold of him (well not really a hold of... that would mean my hands somehow fit through the phone device).

i thought mike would have been really happy to hear from me. what with it having been months since i last sought his help. turns out though the last time i was there to ask his assistance i got him into trouble...

see he's part of a secret organization of librarians that is really really old (well not compared to us dinosaurs, but hey not everyone can be as cool as us). they like to keep their existence well not known at all. problem for mike is not only did i mention this club of theirs on my blog, but i mentioned he was a member of it too.

mike said he'd help me again so long as i promised not to mention that he was a member of section 241... oh oh... uh you should probably ignore that last part people of the web wide world.

anyways telling him that i needed some ideas and information that might help get especially a job or home he told me the solution... what can i say mike is just a really sharp cookie (come to think of it why would a sharp cookie be all that good a thing???)... he said "simple solution truam. goto the library!"

man i never would of thought of that! seeking as quick a solution to my problems i followed mike's advice to the letter. the only thing was the library was in the middle of town...

so off i went for the pleasant, but LONG walk from salmond hall to the octagon (the fancy name for their city centre here in dunedin). i had to head down a kinda fun tunnel just like one i'd seen in BC all those months ago. right in the middle of the tunnel (weird as i thought you went down tunnels to the end to find stuff?) was the library entrance.

wow and what an entrance!... though i thought i was supposed to be the one to make an entrance?

see people of the innerweb i'm kinda confused today. all these questions, and no answers i NEEDED to get in here for that information!

such a colorful and blocky entrance... was i entering tetris as opposed to the library?

fortunately i found the door a moment or two later, and inside i was relieved to find it full of books, puters, and information looking things.

okay so i started to look up the dinosaurs of new zealand only to be shocked to discover that they were all up in the north island!?!

even more frustrating i realized that wasn't why i was here!!! (though worth keeping in mind...)

stupid brain the size of a peanut!

i needed to find info on jobs and homes...

now i know when dan and craig needed to look for such things in canada they looked in newsed-paper. now i've never really looked at one of these beyond the comics page... man calvin and hobbes is funny... oh man but i'm off topic again, and time is ticking!

after about an hour i got the hang of the newsed-paper enough to find a "job listing". now i have to say for a list of jobs this one was fairly incomplete... i can think of at least 5 jobs they didn't have written down...

oh well i'll have to write a letter to the editor about that later.

the nice thing about this list is that it appears that the jobs they did bother to mention all are open! so let's see what have they got...

• janitor. hmmm what's that like a mime version of a monitor?

• pizza delivery person. oh that'd be awesome. not only do you get free food, but you can meet lots of people!... oh wait you need a car... i left mine in canada...

• museum security guard. hmmm i don't know i'm not tough enough to muck with criminals... WAIT A SECOND museum guard!... that could be perfect... except... i don't know people of the web wide world... last few times i've been at museums terrible things happen to me... i'll keep this one in mind, but let's see what else they have

• aquarium tour guide. wow this could be fun. i had a pretty good (though intense) time at the vancouver aquarium, and i do LOVE fish!

• geology museum curator... oh man that sounds even better! i've always wanted to be a curator at a museum. that way i get to work with all the dinosaur chicks up close and personal... or uh i mean i'd be the one in charge. yeah that's the ONLY reason why.

okay well i think that settles that people of the web wide world. i'm going to pop by there first thing tomorrow, and check one more thing off my list!

oh and i'll have to remember to thank mike for his help... that and make sure i don't mention his working for section 241... oh no...

The Last King of Scotland - 2006 - Film

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Until the last 30 minutes of The Last King of Scotland, in which black African culture suddenly morphs into a dark creature that violates its European character, I adored this movie. As the film begins we're dropped into Uganda--a veritable tour through the countryside, where we see people, wildlife, social and political gatherings, and all from the perspective of a white male who has never seen anything like it. In this respect the film starts as a liberating culture shock--you want to drop your materialistic life, get involved, and see this place. Very quickly (so as not to romanticize the country's political and social realities) we meet political leader General Idi Amin Dada (Forest Whitaker) who basically terrorizes his country. Though before we know any of that we come to trust him, particularly when he employs a Scot by the name of Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) as his top advisor. Without spoiling the end of the story, it's sufficient to say Garrigan endures some pretty horrible physical punishment and mental torment that doesn't follow with much resolve, leaving us rather regretful that we visited this foreign place to begin with. I can't imagine this was the intent of the filmmakers, but the clumsy humor in the epilogue subtitles made that blemish even worse. The ending aside, the first two-thirds were beautiful, super-saturated shots of a place not see too often on film, and Forest Whitaker's performance blew my mind.

The Number 23 - 2007 - Film

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Notes on Joel Schumacher's latest half-baked thriller The Number 23 are over on Termite Art-- check it out.



Then read this hilarious nugget in The Onion!