She Said "YES" reads like the finale of a really bad Hollywood romantic comedy. Even so, you can't help but admire the guy for making his proposal so memorable.
(The downside is that the lovely Sean has just raised the bar that little bit higher for anyone reading his story who was thinking of proposing in the next few weeks or months.)
[Via web-goddess]
In the wake of a discussion on soc.history.what-if about the consequences of beavers being inadvertently released into the wild in South America and spreading across the continent, Raymond Speer came up with a wickedly funny excerpt from the script for an alternate timeline version of Charlton Heston's 1954 'classic' The Naked Jungle:
THE RIVERFRONT- DAY-OPTICAL
Charlton Heston's point of view. The innummerable beavers cover ground and land next to the choked off river, and their dam is roughly like the Hoover Dam, but made of wood.
REVERSE – HESTON- CLOSE
HESTON: "Stop nibbling on my property, you damn dirty beavers!"
[...]
It goes on from there, and gets much dafter – not to mention less filmable.
Go read…
The American Museum of Natural History has a fine online exhibit called Frogs: A Chorus of Colours.
The information about the various species, their habitats, mating habits and so on is nice, but it's the array of images of so many colourful species that really makes the site.
[Via Exclamation Mark]
Another week, another selection:
This glowing review of the DVD release of Bubba Ho-tep at PopMatters makes me keener than ever to see the damn film for myself some day.
Quite apart from the film itself's obvious merits, how can I possibly resist the lure of a commentary track by Elvis Presley Bruce Campbell?
Wendy M Grossman is looking forward to getting a look at the BBC's archive online, once a few minor legal and technical issues have been addressed:
Wednesday evening, the Oxford folks who are working on porting the Creative Commons licence to the UK convened a meeting to hear what's likely to happen with the BBC's plans now. The good news, according to the project's director, is that the BBC is still committed to the scheme and the plans are going ahead.
The bad news, so to speak, is that what's going to be released first is what someone has waggishly dubbed "shagging marmots". Or, to be more precise, wildlife documentaries. See, it's not just that the BBC owns those films and they don't have to worry about paying royalties to scriptwriters or producers. It's that there aren't any actors to demand residuals. At least, until the marmots get a good manager and form a union.
I think it's fair to say that the legal barriers are going to be a lot trickier to surmount than the technological ones.
Idly browsing the IMDB's cast list for Deep Impact I noticed that actor Charles Martin Smith (who only survives for about five minutes in Deep Impact, but has played a host of supporting roles in films like Starman and The Untouchables) directed Welcome to the Hellmouth, the debut episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I can't imagine how I missed that interesting factoid considering how often I've watched the episode.
As with any number of bad blockbusters before it, at least we can console ourselves that Van Helsing has inspired some nicely snarky humour:
[...]
One year later in Paris…
Van Hughsing: This wanted poster isn't even a good likeness of me!
Random Frenchwoman: *dies*
Van Hughsing: Hmmm. A cigar. That means the killer must be…
Mr. Hyde: Hi. Please ignore my resemblance to Shrek. Wanna see my buttcrack?
Van Hughsing: SNIKT! WHIRRR!
Mr. Hyde: *dies*
French People: Murderer!
Van Hughsing: I am tormented and misunderstood. Thus, I brood.
Van Hughsing's Horse: *gallops to Vatican*
~*~
At the Vatican…
Cardinal Exposition: Van Helsing, we found you on the steps of the Vatican, barely alive, and with no memory of your past.
Van Hughsing: I think I've played this guy before…
Cardinal Exposition: It's a common misconception that the Church is a compassionate and caring entity. In reality, it's a lot like the Weapon X progam, only with way more Latin and singing.
[...]
[Via Marcus L Rowland, posting to rec.arts.sf.fandom]
The trailer for Pixar's The Incredibles looks … well … incredible. This could be very good indeed.
Bruce Sterling has a problem: his annual Open House Party during the South by Southwest festival is growing in an alarmingly out-of-control manner, with dozens – hundreds, even – of total strangers turning up and showing no inclination to depart. A bit like the internet, come to think of it.
Sterling, speaking to a crowd at the Microsoft Campus, thought aloud about the problem:
[...]
So, I'm now going to read to you, some of the suggested technical solutions…<pulls paper from pocket and opens it>…for what is really a microcosm of the organizational problems with the global internet, ok? Because this is my personal incarnation of what is really a much larger problem, a problem that scales up. What is the problem here? The benefit is that I'm bringing in strangers. It's like I'm reaching out and touching someone but the downside is that I'm bringing in strangers and they can reach out and touch me. The benefit is that I'm breaking the boundaries of my narrow circle of acquaintances but the downside is that I'm breaking the boundaries of my narrow of acquaintances. The plus side is: this is a really popular party but the downside is that this is a really popular party! I'm now hovering at the edge of a potential dystopian development where I can get one guy that shows up in order to wreak mischief and can hurt a lot of people in some sort of cascading effect. I don't have any…Well, let's just talk about possible solutions.
[...]
Amazingly enough, some of the solutions sound familiar:
7. Another possibility, Total Party Awareness.
I think it would be possible to install video cameras and monitoring equipment throughout the home. I think it would be good to have people sign a disclaimer when they arrive at my party consenting to be video taped and to have their remarks at the party recorded. Now, I think that this would have a very calming effect on the party. In fact, I'm not sure that that gathering would even be classifiable as a party but I could probably pack a lot of people into an area like that.
Now that's how you kill a party stone dead…
Sterling has posted suggestions he received by email following his lecture-cum-rant at Beyond the Beyond.
[Via Anita's LOL]
If you're going to build a scale model aircraft, you might as well do it properly. Make it a B-52. Make it big – a 23' wingspan should do it. Give it 8 turbine engines. Make it fly.
Wow. Just wow…
[Amended to add a link to this image of the B-52 - borrowed from here - now that the original site has taken down the images and movies because of the number of sites linking to them. jr 30 March 2004]
[Via Boing Boing]
I can't quite make my mind up whether the PlusDeck audio cassette drive for the PC is a silly gadget or a deeply cool piece of retro techology.
I can see the utility of an all-in-one solution to the problems of copying your audio tapes to MP3, but I don't see many people with CDs to convert to tape needing to use their PC to do the job when most of us will have access to a CD player with a tape deck attached.
[Via #!/usr/bin/girl]
Charles Miller has been seduced:
I was asked for advice today from someone who was apprehensive about buying a new Mac, and wanted to know my opinion. This, of course, is sort of like going up to Dick Cheney and saying "You know, I'm not sure about that Iraq thing. What do you think?"
[...]
And what's more, Linux is your psychotic ex… (Alternatively, Linux is the operating system equivalent of Mil Millington's girlfriend Margret.)
[Via bump]
You know something, I have a sneaking feeling that the Trixie Tracker might just be the next big thing in web publishing.
Just watch: eighteen months from now every weblogger/parent will have a TrixieTelemetry box in their sidebar, right next to their blogroll, and Ben and Jenn, the couple who started the whole phenomenon when they created The Trixie Update, will be the new Ben 'n' Mena.
Cleolinda's Troy in Fifteen Minutes almost makes me want to go and see Troy. Almost.
Tidepool, Some Island
ACHILLES: Hey, Mom! Odysseus wants me to go out and fight, can I can I can I?
THETIS: Well, if you stay here, you'll have a wonderful life with a wonderful wife and tons of kids, and they'll all remember your fabulousness.
ACHILLES: Score!
THETIS: But then, after they're all dead, you'll be completely forgotten.
ACHILLES: Next option.
THETIS: If you go to Troy, you will never come home because your glory is tied to your doom, but you will be remembered forever and ever and ever. Is that what you want?
ACHILLES: Hmmm. We've established that I'm a complete famewhore, so the word I am looking for here is… YES.
[Much adventuring and slaughter skipped.]
Beach of Troy, The Next Day
PRIAM: Woot! The Greeks have left! And look! They left such a nice big horsie, too!
PROPHET: It's an offering to Poseidon for a safe journey home.
PARIS: I say we burn it.
PROPHET: Son, you've been an idiot and a coward this whole movie. We're not about to start listening to you now.
PRIAM: Besides, the Greeks couldn't possibly have an ulterior motive for leaving a giant horse big enough to hide a couple dozen soldiers! Let's bring it back to the city!
[...]
[Via Krisalis]
BBC News has an article about the myriad ways invigilators stave off boredom. I find the idea of "invigilators playing slowed-down games of 'chicken' in the aisles between desks and 'running' races around the room" particularly appealing.
Revealing this sort of information at this time of year might not be the best of ideas. If you were taking your GCSEs about now, wouldn't you be tempted to spend just a little too much time trying to figure out whether that invigilator who walked by was playing 'chicken' when you should be putting your time to good use trying to figure out what question 5(b) actually means?
[Via My 2p]
A little bit of nostalgia:
[...]
21. Publish Wired For the Blind, a braille version of everyone's favorite mouthpiece for the Digital Revolution. It may even become popular with those who like the articles but can't stand the design.
[...]
57. Put your money where your mouth is and move the production schedule way up and print the magazine in India. After all, if you were really so smart, your "Long Boom" predictions would be sure to work out, right? Hey, it'll take five years to get an issue off press, but you'll save a serious bundle on printing costs. And when your clairvoyant editorial content hits the nail on the head anyway, all those doubting Thomases will eat crow and your, uh, stock will go up in a big way.
I even clicked on the Netly News link, hopeful for just a moment that I'd get another blast of nostalgia. All I got was a couple of redirects, followed by a server error. At least Suck is still up…
Mark Pilgrim has posted further thoughts on the whole Open Source/Movable Type issue at his site. He doesn't take the whole data export-versus-open source issue which was the crux of our disagreement much further, though he does promise to regale us with tales of data import/export woes at some future point. (We've all been there. But even when they happen, it seems to me that having your exported data in a flat ASCII file makes it relatively painless to resolve them.)
There's one point he makes in his new post with which I disagree. Talking about how he feels that getting people to address the pros and cons of wider licensing issues, he notes that:
The point of my article was not to win the argument, but to frame it. Before I wrote that article, the dominant argument emerging from the fray was "if you don't want to pay whatever Six Apart is charging for their upgrade, then you're a fucking freeloader who doesn't deserve to use quality software." Don't hear a lot of that anymore, do you? Not from anyone who matters. Nothing like a good counterexample to shut up the armchair generals.
Let's put to one side for now the question of how far his original Freedom 0 article was. There's no denying that that notion that the "freeloader" argument was in the air, but from where I'm sitting it was swamped by the "Six Apart have royally screwed the pooch with those price points", the "I'm moving to an open source Content Management System" and the "Movable Type was always crap anyway" arguments.
If, like me, you thought the Jewel Eye was off-putting, I think it's safe to say that you'll find the notion of eyelid piercing pretty damn freaky too.
(NB: the linked site contains not just pictures of the final result, but pictures of the piercing procedure. Not for the squeamish.)
[Via die puny humans]
I'd have posted more this weekend, but I picked up the seventh and final trade paperback volume of Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men on my way from work on Friday.
Because I wait for trade paperbacks to get my comic book fix, I'm always a bit behind the curve; it's like watching Buffy on BBC2, with online discussions of an episode/issue taking place way before it's safe for me to read them. Having spent the first half of my Friday night reading the comic itself, I spent much of Friday night and Saturday catching up with discussion threads and weblog posts about Morrison's work on the title. I got a great deal from the Barbelith threads entitled New X-Men #154 and The Best Thing About New X-Men Was…, and a bit of googling turned up weblog posts summing up the series courtesy of Marc Singer, Gardner Linn and John's Commonplace Book. (For a dissenting view – or at any rate a review from someone who found Morrison's final story arc less than satisfying – try this review at The X Axis.)
I don't feel up to writing the review Morrison's work deserves, especially after reading all those erudite responses from people who did the job so much better a couple of months ago. Not right now, at any rate. Instead, I'll point out this interview with Morrison where he talks about his experience on the world's premiere superhero title and, as importantly, about what he's doing next. We3 sounds as if it could be a lot of fun, especially with art by Frank Quitely. I'm a little afraid that Morrison may have spoiled me for other X-Men writers, particularly if they piss away most of his good work by doggedly finding ways to return to the status quo and sidelining Morrison's characters. (I know I'd like to see more of Barnell "Beak" Bohusk, for one.)
[Morrison interview via linkmachinego]
