My New Favorite Soda

I was always a Fresca fan (washes down the Sloppy Joes like no other beverage). But, now, I’ve got a new favorite.  Thinking of suing for copyright infringement, unless they put my face on the can!

Zazzy Does Minecraft

Don’t go in the sky.

Venn? Now!

I got this thing for information graphics. It’s a Zazzy thing — can’t explain it. At any rate, Alan’s assignment was just what I was looking for to express my lifelong fascination with old movies, aging TV series, and the inscrutable weirdness of the bible. Dig it:

Just What IS this "CVI"

DID YOU SEE MARTHA’S SCREWUP? She distributed a memo about Jim Groom by mistake, and it’s sent to the corporate CVI offiices. Now, I am NO internet detective, and I’m no Jim Groom apologist, but this memo, along with Alan’s allusions to visiting a corporate office for CVI (the owners of Camp Magic MacGuffin) in Canada got me scared. So I got to thinking: Why not Google this “CVI + Canada” and see what comes up. Here’s an image of what I got, followed by a little in-depth analysis:

Click for full-size screenshot of search results

Canada Voluntarism Initiative: This site, a seemingly innocuous bit of Canadian pork, has as its tagline “Partnering for the Benefit of Canadians.” Now if this isn’t a wolf in sheep’s clothing, I don’t know what is. I don’t know about you, but I signed up for a summer of self-actualization, NOT to be the object of some kind of crazy Canuck body snatchers.

Canadian Value Investors: This looks like a ghost company if I ever saw one. They didn’t even get their own domain name — just some cheesy “blogspot” thing. No doubt covering their tracks. They supposedly focus on investing in undervalued assets. Mostly, the site is pretty vague. An interesting “front” for Canadian real estate investors wanting to invade the U.S.? Well you’ll have to get through China first. AND Jim Groom.

CVI Chilliwack: This one is so onnocuous it’s the perfect cover: Equine vault-jumpers from Canada. But read this: “Vaulters learn to have the agility and athleticism of gymnasts, the grace and expression of dancers and the balance and feel of equestrians.” Sounds like they are training an army, and getting us to comply with their rules may be just a way of weeding out the rebels. So Jim is on a private island. Who’s next?

Canadian Home Builders Association of Central Vancouver Island: This professional association supports rampant sprawling building projects. Is this why we are in Minecraft, Martha? Doing their bidding? Letting them not only invade our country with their landscape-destrying monstrosities, but our cyberspace, too? Answers, PLEASE!

Calvalley Patroluem: According to their website, “Calvalley has established a strong base of cash flow and earnings from its exploration success in Block 9.” What’s Block 9 you ask? Yemen, my friends. Is Camp Magic MacGuffin next? I’m wondering if the humming in the blue shed that Alan referred to is an exploratory drill. What better front to send the Sierra Club off its scent than to run a summer camp on a future oil field. Despicable.

CVI Automotive: Sure, it’s disguised as a car service place, but look again at this operation’s fiendishly simple and information-free website. Read this customer testimonial, obviously in code: “They will take the time to go through your van with you and want to keep it running well by educating you.” Is this the training that Alan had to undergo? Did he just pull in for a tune-up, and get brainwashed into smuggling something across the border? Is there an underground bunker beneath those hydraulic lifts? I want answers.

Canadian Value Investing: This is supposedly a blog from a chemical engineer who likes to tinker with his stock portfolio and windbag to others about investing. While it’s a terrible read, it could contain hidden messages that can only be read in code and that may be guiding what’s going on behind the scenes at Camp Magic MacGuffin. I’m no cryptographer, so this one’s just too much for me. Any takers?

Central Vancouver Island Tourism: This one has legs if we want to believe that CVI is merely scoping out the camp to build a new resort. But, I’m not that easy a mark. The people in their web site photos look brainwashed. It’s kind of like watching old episodes of The Prisoner: a supposedly happy, happy life, but no room for dissent of any kind. A sentence disguised as a vacation (much like Club Med — little known fact). Are we going to see a CVI photo of a lobotomized Jim Groom on waterskis soon?

The Chidren’s Vision Initiative: This is an initiative of the Canadian Optometrists Association ensuring that “all children in Canada access and receive appropriate, quality eye health and vision care throughout the developmental years.” Does that mean harvesting corneas from unsuspecting Americans? Is the blue shed an operating room?

That’s all I  got. I leave it to any and all of you to pick up these threads, and try to piece together what’s going on here that Martha and Alan seem loathe to come clean about. Something’s up — it’s up to us to find out. Just sayin’.

 

 

 

Letter Home: Week #1

Dear Barney and Bubbles,

Mommy is fine, and misses you so much. Make sure that you keep that nasty pet sitter in line, that the litter gets changed and that you get half a can of Star Kist Chunk Lite tuna on Tuesdays, like we always have. If this doesn’t happen, you know what to do. Mommy Zazzy taught you well, my babies.

Stay out of Mommy’s closet, now. Don’t want to see anything happen to you!

Love you, my sweet little muffins!

-Mommy Zazzy

Getting Weird Here

First, I see Alan’s video about being in Canada with “corporate.” Then, Martha is hard to find (is she ever HERE?? — I hear she has a “history” of sorts). Then, some person posts an image on The Daily Create that looks as though it was ripped from my nightmare last night:

Hatchet Jack is a little too “friendly,” if you ask me. Especially after dark. And a girl can’t be too careful.

Is it just me, or does it seem like there’s something going on under the surface here that just doesn’t feel right? I’m starting to sleep with my footlocker on the bed with me. I’ve taken to hoarding food in my bunk because I’m afraid to go to the mess hall – and Sloppy Joes do NOT make good bunkmates, let me tell you.

Something’s got to be done to make us all feel safer, but it feels like no one’s in charge. Maybe after I’ve got my bunk assignments settled, I’ll feel better.

Long day of recording ahead tomorrow — lots of tracks to lay down for the “Under Pressure” project. So I’m going try to sleep now…

…fancying a little Wild Irish Rose…

…Darn you Hatchet Jack!

 

 

Hanging Out Macguffin Style

I met the some counselors and campers around the campfire today. Some of them were a little shifty, and I was wondering if they were trying to trick me into giving them the combination to my footlocker, which I will never divulge. All in all, a nice bunch, albeit, a little quirky.

A few folks have submitted vocal tracks for the Under Pressure Glam Rock project, and I’m PSYCHED! @timmmmyboy (whoever he is) has such a set of pipes on him! That guy can wail! Also got some tracks from @rowan_peter and @cherylcolan that are TO DIE FOR!!

I’m planning on laying down some instrumental tracks this weekend. Thinking of uploading the arrangements to SoundCloud AND the midi data to DropBox if others want to impose alternate instrumentation on the tracks. But, I’m using Garage Band, and it doesn’t support midi. UGH! Can I export to Audacity, and export to midi from there? Any audio geeks out there, Andy Rush? I don’t want to buy Logic.

Thanks all! Going to fetch some chow and dust my footlocker for prints.

Glam Rock Me Baby!

I’m a child of the 70s, so glam rock is where it’s at for me! I saw Elton at the Garden in ’76 when he dressed up as the Statue of Liberty and rose up from a trap door in the stage floor. In an instant, my mind was opened to a new world of anything goes! It was that and all the smoke.

Topping the list of my favorites are David Bowie and Freddy Mercury of Queen. In the early 80s, they collaborated on an amazing song and video called “Under Pressure.” The video looks like a mashup you’d see on the web today, completely ahead of its time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWca8OGaR0U .
While I’m laying down some basic tracks, I initially need vocals. We can use them as reference tracks as we go along, or we may keep them, who knows? For now, vocals is what I need.”Under Pressure” resonates more today than during the Reagan era that it was born to.  This song begs for a revisit in the 21st century using the 21st century’s capability for crowdsourcing. So, what say you, campers and all those DS106 people out there? Help me with the first step.

Please do me the favor of uploading a track of your singing, shouting, talking, or overdramatically-reading the lyrics to the song Under Pressure. Please do it acapella (that means no instrumentation, just your voice). If you are off-key, that’s what autotune is for, if we need to. I kinda like offkey. I will be laying down the initial tracks in the original E flat major if you are musically inclined. Otherwise, on-key is optional 🙂

The lyrics are here:

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/queen/underpressure.html

How to upload and record? Get a SoundCloud account. You caneither record right there or upload right there. Then, put your track in the “Zazzy Under Pressure” group at http://soundcloud.com/groups/zazzy-under-pressure .

Looking forward to hearing you explore your vocal chops, as they say in the “BIZ.”

So Many People!

I’m still looking for the mess hall, but I’m groggy from last night’s long trip. Starving! Lots of new campers arriving, and I’m starting to get nervous. Hope they don’t run out of food. I’m trying to make sure no one messes with my stuff. That’s one of the most important things to me — that my stuff stays un-messed with.

I have a footlocker that I’ve always slid under my bed, and the beds here are too low, so I’ve got to have it NEXT to my bunk, which means everyone can see it. So, I have to padlock it (thank goodness I went to Dollar Tree and got the necessities!).

These campers look a little too “eager to learn,” if you catch my drift. I’ll have to keep my eyes open. For now, I want to find the nearest Sloppy Joe (yes, ladies, I’m talking about LUNCH!).

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