One for the cat owners among you:

I Meant To Do That

My kitty chases shadows, as her instincts demand

And sometimes the excitement gets a bit out of hand

She’ll ramble and she’ll scramble and she’ll fly through the air

To pile on the tile at the foot of the stair.

(She says)

I meant to do that, I’ll have it be known

I did it on purpose, for plans of my own,

Since you’re just a human and I am a cat,

I thought I ought to mention that I meant to do that.

[…]

[Via rec.arts.sf.fandom]

Best. Halloween. Party. Invitation. Ever.

[Via Oliver Willis]

I see Channel 4 continuing their policy of scheduling good programmes at ridiculous times. On November 12th at 1.10am they’re showing the first episode of the six-part miniseries The Corner, an adaptation of David Simon’s book about inner-city life in Baltimore.

Simon’s previous book-to-TV adaptation resulted in a little series by the name of Homicide: Life on the Street (aka The Best Damn Show on Television) and his latest show, The Wire, has also been getting terrific reviews in the States, so naturally I’ve been keen to see The Corner show up on terrestrial TV. It’s just as well I was watching the listings carefully or I’d have completely missed the debut of The Corner. (Ironically, the only reason I spotted the show was that it took the slot previously allocated to an episode of the similarly mis-scheduled The Secret Life of Us.)

Yet another cute baby animal picture.

Jason Kottke has issued a stirring call to arms:

Attention, citizens of Earth! The time for talk has passed; we need to take action. Our nearest solar neighbor, who goes by the seemingly benign name of “the Sun”, is currently making what is the latest in a series of aggressive moves against our planet and its inhabitants.

[…]

Don’t Touch My Computer! No, I’m serious - DON’T TOUCH MY COMPUTER! (Not safe for work - nudity.)

[Via Bifurcated Rivets]

What self-respecting geek with access to a Mach 5 wind tunnel could resist the temptation to simulate how the USS Enterprise copes with travelling at warp factor 5?

I’m just a little surprised they didn’t try to settle the old Enterprise versus Death Star versus White Star controversy once and for all while they were at it.

[Via Slashdot]

The Onion AV Club reviews the DVD Commentary Tracks of the Damned:

SUSPECT: Glitter

CRIMES:

• Building a film around Mariah Carey
• Hiring Mariah Carey to play a Mariah Carey-like figure
• Allowing Mariah Carey to perform the soundtrack
• Choosing a script that feels like it’s been gathering dust since the early days of the Great Depression

DEFENDER: Director Vondie Curtis-Hall

[…]

COMMENTS ON THE CAST

He lavishes praise on the supporting cast. As for his star, Curtis-Hall says he was impressed by the talent she displayed during a screen test for John Singleton’s Shaft. It’s worth noting that Carey does not appear in John Singleton’s Shaft.

[…]

[Via Jejune.net]

I know The Six Million Dollar Man was one of those kitsch 70s classics that wasn’t actually very good, but even so Colonel Steve Austin doesn’t deserve this grisly fate:

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 22 /PRNewswire/ — “The Six Million Dollar Man” is up and running. The project, long in development, was put on the fast track after the studio met with superstar Jim Carrey, fresh off the over $470 million dollar worldwide gross of “Bruce Almighty,” and set the actor up with writer/director Todd Phillips. The combination of Carrey and Phillips led to a fresh, hilarious take on the potential franchise.

“The Six Million Dollar Man” will be written and directed by Phillips who has co-written and directed the blockbuster comedies “Road Trip,” “Old School” and the upcoming “Starsky and Hutch.”

[…]

Can’t you just picture Jim Carrey’s hilarious take on Colonel Austin’s slo-mo running style? Doesn’t it just make you want to book your tickets for the opening night right now?

[Via Oliver Willis]

Life imitates The Simpsons. (Link points to 2.5MB MPEG file.)

[Via GromBlog]

Kris is missing Halloween in Indiana.

* Title shamelessly ripped off from Alacrity.

Joey deVilla has posted some notes (Part 1, Part 2) from a Q&A session with Neal Stephenson in Toronto which he attended last week.

I loved the article you wrote for Wired [Mother Earth Mother Board, quite possibly the longest article ever written for Wired ] about laying undersea cable around the globe. Are you planning to do any more non-fiction writing?

He was surprised that he was he was asked to write that article. As for the question about non-fiction writing, he replied “That falls into category of things that I might do in the future”.

I’m still working my way through Cryptonomicon - who knows, I might even finish it before the paperback edition of Quicksilver is released - and I’m enjoying it quite a bit. Even so, I’d trade one of Stephenson’s 1,000-page doorstops for his spending a couple of years concentrating on tech journalism if he could come up with more work as informative and entertaining as Mother Earth, Mother Board.

Over at Cultivated Stupidity, Josh has posted the first two entries in his Which Is The Best Kate Bush Album Project. Even considering just her four most recent albums, that’s an awful lot of quality material to consider.

Off the top of my head I’d place The Sensual World some way ahead of The Red Shoes, which in turn is just clear of Hounds of Love, with The Dreaming coming well back. But that’s me shooting from the hip: I’m looking forward to following Josh’s track-by-track progress through the albums and changing my mind several times along the way.

Yoda Auditions:

Auditioned for many movie roles Yoda has. But only very few gotten he has. Screw up the lines he does. Below appear examples do. What roles try out for did he?

[…]

17. “The greatest trick did Darth Vader pull, the world he convinced that exist he did not.”

[…]

All good clean fun. See how many you can identify before looking up the answers.

[Via dust from a distant sun]