Today I received an intriguing looking parcel from Pennsylvania…

It was from Elizabeth Bunny Nuhfer, and inside was not only a friendly letter of support, but an array of delicious looking space bunny cup cakes!

Bunny’s artistry held up surprisingly well in the 104 °F we’ve been having here in West Australia. Bunny writes “I used a cupcake recipe that uses agave nectar as I find it keeps the cupcakes moist and they don’t turn out too sweet. For the ears, I used Natural Nectar Biscotti Cookies. I coated the ears in milk chocolate as I know it will travel better than the chocolate frosting.” She packed them ingeniously too, with ice packs and tooth picks for stability. I can’t wait to tuck into these after dinner tonight.

Here’s another batch from Elizabeth’s Facebook gallery…

Beautiful work. A thousand thanks to Miss Nuhfer for her kindness and support.

If there’s one lesson I’ve learnt from my arduous month in a county jail, it’s to acknowledge and thank God for the blessings in your life. Folks, I implore you – take a moment to look around at the things that fuel your health and happiness. Your family, your home, your access to food, your connection to the Internet, the safety of your neighbourhood. Consider just how fortunate you are to be free and in control of your life. Think about how special it is that you are able to communicate with your loved ones as often and for as long as you desire. Make a list of everything in your life that you are grateful for and summarise the reasons why. As you reflect upon it, consider that your fortunes and freedoms are gifts, not entitlements. Take nothing for granted, my friends. Worship your blessings and cherish every moment you have with them, for they are gifts that can slip from your hands like flecks of gold in a sudden breeze!

Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, it seems visiting (let alone touring) the states from now on is going to be difficult if not impossible. See the documents below that were issued to me prior to my admission at the Allegany County Jail.

The Department Of Homeland Security declares that I am prohibited from entering the United States for a period of ten years, and that bypassing this ban would require a very special exception made by the highest order.

I’m busy writing up a full report of what happened. Stay tuned, folks!

Boy it feels good to knock out new material. It’s a rare occasion for me indeed. New in the downloads section is a slow paced remix of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and a quirky mashup of the BBC series The Mighty Boosh. If you haven’t yet seen these masterpieces, you clearly don’t know what’s good for you!

A.I. is a haunting, deeply moving science-fiction about David, a robot-boy “adopted” by a couple whose real son Martin lies hospitalised in a coma. The plot thickens when Martin recovers and deviously instigates David’s abandonment, setting him on a vast adventure to find the fictitious Blue Fairy so he can wish for mortality and seek a new acceptance from his mother.

The film salutes the tale of Pinocchio without compromising originality, and unfolds with uncanny realism in a frighteningly plausible future. It challenges our distinction between man and machine, and hints carefully at the conflicts of interest people can have in raising children. The visual effects are mind bending as typical of a Spielberg picture, but serve the story commendably without turning the film into an ILM showreel. Combined with the elegant yet characterful scoring of John Williams, this is one film bound to put both your morals and your tear ducts to the test.

The Mighty Boosh is a crazy, colourful comedy TV series that follows zoo keepers Vince Noire and Howard Moon on their bizarre adventures that challenge all sense and logic. With their sexually perverse manager, and the spaced out zoo shaman with his gorilla familiar, the Boosh will never leave you in hysterics without bending your sense of humour at the same time. It’s like ‘Crash Bandicoot Warped’ and ‘Flight Of The Concords’ in a blender.

The performances of comedy duo Noel Fielding and Julian Baratt are charmingly underplayed, and despite the ludicrousy of their escapades, they are portrayed tactfully with an inviting undercurrent of modesty and childlike simplicity. If you love British comedy and might care for the effects of shrooms without eating them, “come with us on a journey through time and space to the world of The Mighty Boosh!”

Hello again, everyone!

For those of you less informed, I have just spent three weeks in US custody. Two in a county jail, and one in a federal detention centre. It was proper incarceration, courtesy of The Agency Group and their failure to provide me with the correct travel documents for my September tour in 2011. The moment they heard the news, they removed me from their list of clients and never communicated with me again. I’m not one to set fire to people’s reputations, but wow, I was unimpressed with these people to put it mildly.

I’m terribly sorry that we couldn’t finish the tour, folks. What a tragedy. I’m busy compiling a full write-up of what happened and a detailed account of my difficult experiences in the slammer. In the mean time, I want to express my sincerest gratitude to the many people who offered me their support. My mother took it upon herself to keep everyone up to date on Facebook, the forums have been writhing with outrage, Jessica Terry at the New Zealand Consulate in New York went to great lengths to expedite my deportation, and I received an innumerable amount of letters from everybody that brought me much joy in an emotionally arduous time of my life. Thank you so much, everybody. I hope to have everything back to normal within the next few days!

Bridging the gap between cartoon characters and live-action characters is an idea I don’t think we’ll ever see realized. Films that have attempted this with debatable success include The Polar Express, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Beowolf and Avatar.

There is a certain hollowness that occurs when computer generated imagery attempts to mimic the real world, especially with characters that we’re supposed to believe and invest in. As I watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, there’s a deadness in the eyes and a lack of expression in Benjamin’s computer generated face that leaves me unsatisfied, like trying to drink from an empty glass. The issue is not that the illusion is broken, but rather that the character’s entire performance and personality depends solely on intricacies and identifiable qualities of the face that simply aren’t there. What’s left is essentially nothing. Where a character like Bugs Bunny compensates for this through exaggeration, characters like Benjamin Button or Jake in Avatar don’t compensate at all, leaving them in a limbo between live action and CGI where there’s really nothing for our human brains to work with. They possess neither exaggerated qualities nor the intricacies required for the audience to interpret and emotionally invest in them.

I think visual effects technology has a long way to go before it can truly substitute live action characters if ever at all, and I fear we are seeing a surge of premature and failed attempts to realize otherwise in today’s movies. It seems quality story isn’t just taking a back seat these days, it’s rolling around somewhere in the trunk. Visual effects and CGI are nice to look at and all, but fall tremendously short of my satisfaction threshold, like a cheap mainstream track that has more sound effects in it than music or melody. No matter how superficial the industries try to make us to keep the economy ticking over with minimal effort, we are first and foremost emotional creatures at heart. Believable characters and gripping stories will always be the true diamonds in the rough.