Isn't the poster for Tim Burton's Corpse Bride just adorable?
I see the UK release falls in the same week as Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle. I predict I'll be paying two trips to the cinema that weekend. Unless, that is, the distributors restrict one of the two films' releases to London initially. I wouldn't be surprised to see Howl's Moving Castle hang around the capital for a fortnight or so before we provincial types get a look-in.
From rec.humor.funny:
A Doctor was addressing a large audience in Tampa. "The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of us sitting here, years ago."
"Red meat is awful. Soft drinks corrode your stomach lining. Chinese food is loaded with MSG. High fat diets can be disastrous, and none of us realizes the long-term harm caused by the germs in our drinking water. But there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all and we all have, or will, eat it. Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?"
After several seconds of quiet, a 75-year-old man in the front row raised his hand, and softly said, "Wedding Cake."
Glenn "The War Against Silence" McDonald has a message for the music industry:
Dearest Industry,
I write today in what began, at least, as a conflicted mixture of resignation and alarm. Probably you do not recognize my name, but it's both embossed and encoded on my credit card, so possibly you should. I have been one of the staunchest defenders of your copyrights ever since the virtualization of music distribution began to challenge them, and I've been one of your most dedicated personal patrons since I was old enough to spend my own money. Originally I was a customer of necessity, of course, but I'm a computer and internet professional for a living, and have been fully aware of every iteration of the technical possibilities for acquiring music without paying for it. And yet, I have continued to pay. In a single year, not too long ago, I bought 1000 CDs, and most of them were yours. I continue to pay still. I bought two CDs this week, and will almost certainly buy more than 100 over the course of this calendar year. I have paid for legal downloads, as well. I have stubbornly forgiven you your trespasses against everyone you nominally serve, and kept supporting the idea of music as a Big Business. I have never condoned your numeric monopolies and tasteless denominator-lowering, but I support the dream of musicians being able to simply make music for their living, rather than operating themselves as a business, and somewhere far back in history that was what Industry allowed.
But I have also now started stealing your music. I haven't stolen much, but I'm sure you will agree that the moral issue is not merely one of quantity. I have been one of the last independent apologists for a moral kernel, elusive now to perhaps the point of imagination, in your corrupt and desperate retreat, but now even I have given up. I still buy, but now I also steal. You have forfeited your right to my loyalty. And maybe you're too lost and beaten to care, and even more likely it's too late to matter, but for a few minutes I'm going to pretend that neither of those things are so. I'm going to pretend that you're still capable of awareness and reason, and in a spirit of truth that you long ago stopped deserving, while I've still taken little enough to list, I'm going to tell you exactly what I have stolen from you, and why.
[...]
Well worth reading in full.
[Via Geek Ramblings]
I think I'm required to post my thoughts on this weekend's Doctor Who finale if I want to retain my geek credentials. So, here goes…
If I were so inclined I could find elements of the finale to criticise: Rose's Phoenix-y contribution to the Dalek invasion, perhaps even the way the Tardis console proved relatively easy to break into. But those are really pretty minor details and would only irk me if I was feeling let down by the episode as a whole. And nothing could be further from the truth. The Parting of the Ways delivered everything last week's first half promised, with the Doctor going up against horrendous odds, tens of thousands of Daleks doing what Daleks do best, supporting characters being offed right, left and centre and, finally, the Doctor facing a choice reminiscent of the one I suspect he faced at the end of the Time War and making the only choice he could.
I watched plenty of Doctor Who when I was a teenager, but I pretty much dropped the show after Tom Baker left; fairly or not, I could never separate Peter Davison from the character of Tristan Farnon. I really didn't know what to expect from the new show: Russell T Davies and Christopher Eccleston had the track record, and I knew that some of the writers were known for their work on the various written and spoken word versions of the show since it left BBC1, but Billie Piper looked to be a heck of a gamble and, more to the point, it was hard to see the BBC striking the requisite balance of kiddie entertainment and grown-up drama and humour that a Saturday evening timeslot would demand. There was so much that could go wrong, which makes it doubly pleasing that it turned out to be such a triumph.
Even the weakest episodes – the Slitheen two-parter, and The Long Game – were perfectly decent, especially when seen in the context of the wider story, and the very best episodes were as good as any episode of Doctor Who I can remember. I honestly can't pick a favourite episode right now, because I really need to see the entire series in sequence and see how much I missed first time round. It's going to be an awfully long wait for the Xmas special and the DVD box set…
I've been stockpiling these over the last couple of weeks, so there's quite a list:
[Night Shots via Tin Ear, Early Morning via The Sideshow]
Yahoo! are beta testing an extension to their web search service by the name of Yahoo! Search Subscriptions which allows you to tell it which of a series of subscription-only sites you'd like to include in your search. You'll still have to enter your login to the subscription site to see the article when you click on the link in your results list, but if you use Yahoo! to do your web searches anyway then it's a much neater for them to include the sites you subscribe to in the same search service you use for the rest of the web.
I don't subscribe to any of the sites Yahoo! list as working with their subscriptions service, but it's clearly a very useful concept if you spend much of your time digging out content using the search engines on half a dozen different subscription-only sites, and if they ramp up the service to add a wide range of subscription-based content it might just become indispensable to a certain segment of the web search marketplace.
If there's one element of the service I'd change, it's that I'd prefer that they integrate subscription and web searches (perhaps using different formatting to make the different results stand out) rather than invite me to choose between searching the two different sources.
[Via Davenetics]
Over at meish dot org, Meg muses on alternatives to the usual boring Myers-Briggs personality types:
SPQR
Thinks in straight lines. Tendency to invade and occupy projects. Looks good in sandals.[...]
ASDA
Values value above else. Wide selection of insight. Nice bum.[...]
mc.clintock.com takes the concept of a "home page" to a whole new level. Very neatly done.
[Via A Whole Lotta Nothing]
Creative Metal do a nice line in sculptures of creatures from various fantasy and SF films. Plus Elvis, for some reason – and no, he doesn't appear to be Bruce Campbell's elderly Elvis from Bubba Ho-tep.
I'm pretty confident that there's no way in hell I could afford it, but I'd really, really like an Alien coffee table.
[Via Rafe Culpin, posting to uk.people.sf-fans]
What do you get when you combine Van Gogh, a pair of matching prom outfits and lots of duct tape?
Mark Morford has some fun contemplating the wonders of Gillette's latest product range:
It's long, it's smooth, it's gently, undulatingly curvy. It's hot pink, with a large, rounded tip, perfect for gripping and perfect for sending soft sensual signals up your leg and down your vertebrae as you stroke, up and down, down and up, slowly, carefully, lovingly.
You can use it in the shower. You can use it in the bathtub. You can use it on your armpits, though they don't talk much about that in the marketing copy because it's not very sexy and most people don't masturbate anywhere near their armpits, so far as you know.
It fits deliciously, caressingly into the palm of your hand. And yes, it vibrates.
Is it a spatula? Is it a power drill? Is it Orlando Bloom?
Why, no. It is, of course, the new Gillette Venus Vibranceâ„¢ undulating soothing vibrating battery-powered waterproof hot pink triple-blade semidisposable razor for women. Say it with me: woo.
[...]
Oh yes, men have a vibrating Gillette razor too. It's called the Mach3 Power Nitro (because men are just that stupid) and it's black and neon green and full of ridges and cheesy ultramodern design cues, and it's clearly designed to look like some futuristic race-car gearshift or something, and of course it's the exact same goddamn razor as the Venus, except the men don't talk up the gentle sensual Soothing Vibrationsâ„¢ factor one bit. Oh my no.
Rather, for the men, it's all aggro studly David Beckham-approved talk about how you can, with the push of a button, feel the "boost in performance" of your silly $20 plastic razor, which is a bit like saying you can feel the "boost in performance" when you swap your plain dental floss for mint. Say it with me: woo.
But on the men's Gillette Web site, we get this intricate diagram, an actual Flash-animated cutaway of the M3 so men can see how the thing actually works (because men are just that gullible), and one look at the animation and you can see the little off-center metal spinning head inside the tip and if you've ever seen the very basic mechanism that makes vibrators do their delicious vibrator thing — and if you haven't you are missing a very important part of life's education — you know: This is the exact same thing.
And do note, won't you, how the vibrating portion on the men's M3 razor is actually where you'd expect it to be — in the tip, nearest the blades. Not so in the Vibrance. For the women, Gillette kindly put the vibrator in the opposite end, in the smooth, engorged, rounded handle base. Gosh, you could even leave the blades off entirely and still use the vibrating handle! Isn't that thoughtful of them? Isn't that moist and juicy? Do you want them to smack you over the head with the obviousness of it all?
[...]
Katie Jejune posted a photo (scroll down a bit) of a terrifying specimen of the topiarist's art.
(While you're there, scroll down a bit further for a picture of one seriously relaxed pussycat.)
Subject: [cam.misc] Re: Where do atheists go…?
From: Chris Brown
The Natural Philosopher <a …@b.c> wrote:
>A Plagued Lighthouse Keeper wrote:
>> And what does Christianity have to do with anything
>> said in the New Testament?>Now that IS a point worth discussing.
>The Gospels? Almost nothingh. St Paul and beyond?
>Almost everything.I really think they should reinstate the shortest book
in the NT, namely 'The Corinthians Reply to St Paul'.
It goes like this:1 Dear Saul of Tarsus
2 Please remove us from your mailing list.
Love
3 The Corinthians
During a discussion on rec.arts.sf.written on whether it was obvious as of The Phantom Menace which character was destined to be the mother of Anakin Skywalker's children, James Nicoll asked one innocent-sounding question and suddenly I sensed a million geeks crying out in horror:
Was Jar Jar's sex ever established?
4. God,
I read the bible.
What does beget mean?
Nobody will tell me.
Love Alison[...]
11. Dear God,
did you mean for giraffes
to look like that or was it an accident?
Norma[...]
15. Dear God,
maybe Cain and Abel
would not kill each other so much
if they each had their own rooms.
It works out OK with me and my brother.
Larry[...]
The last one on the full list is a corker.
The Joy of Tech reveals How Apple may deal with the dreaded "Intel Inside" sticker.
Would it be utterly wrong-headed for me to own up to quite liking that hood ornament?
Is it just me, or is this diagram of a procedure for ridding your cat of fleas missing a few panels? Specifically, the ones where the owner pauses to staunch the bleeding after the cat exacts his revenge for the indignity of being pinned to the floor by his tail and rolled into a towel.
(As it happens, the same day I saw that diagram I also came across an account by Francis Strand of a not dissimilar encounter with a kitten. Except that his story most certainly did include blood being shed.)
[Cat vacuuming diagram via Making Light (Particles)]
The Onion AV Club has an interview with voice actor Billy West, who is probably best known for his work on Ren & Stimpy and as the voice of Philip J Fry (and Dr Zoidberg, and Zapp Brannigan, and several others) on Futurama.
The trend for using A-list stars as voice actors isn't news to anyone who's paying the slightest attention to the cast lists of recent animated films, but I wasn't aware of this nasty little habit of modern producers:
The Onion: So are you totally out of the loop on big-budget films?
Billy West: Well, we still audition for them if they call us, but we know it's a joke. What's really insidious is, they love to have the A-team come in and read for them and create characters for them and read their copy, and then you never hear from them again. Then you see the person who has the job saying things that came direct from your own ideology, like if I'm ad-libbing, and I use a word from the Midwest because I grew up in Detroit. You know, it's like "What the fuck? What am I, a copywriter now? How come I don't get residual checks?" They take your riffs, they take your little noises that you do, and they go tell this schlub celebrity, "This is what we want; this is what we're looking for. Hear what he's doing?" And then that guy's gotta sweat bullets trying to sparkle some life into his bland-o voice… I hope I'm not coming off cocky or bitter about the swing in the business. I'll hang in, but I'm going to change my hat. I have to be a producer now.
I wonder if this sort of thing happened on The Incredibles. With all due respect to the likes of Craig T Nelson, Jason Lee and Wallace Shawn, I think the only marquee names in the cast were Holly Hunter and Samuel L Jackson. I'd like to think that they – like all concerned – were so good because of a quality script and their own talents, rather than because Billy West and his fellow voice actors were called in to audition then ripped off. Although in the course of the interview Billy West acknowledges that some big names actually understand how to do voice acting well – he mentions Robin Williams – West also names some actors who he reckons can't pull their weight as a voice alone. Without going into detail here, let's just say that he probably shouldn't hold his breath waiting for a phone call from the producers of Shrek 3.
In fairness, there's much more to the interview than West's opinion of Hollywood blockbusters. He's clearly very happy with his work on Futurama and proud of the show's appeal to the discerning viewer. Here's hoping that rumours of a Futurama movie are true, so he can remain gainfully employed doing quality work for an audience that actually appreciates his talents.
[Edited to amend URL of linked article. jr 20 Mar 2006]
There's a new trailer up at Yahoo! Movies for Dave McKean's MirrorMask. Very nice indeed.
Neil Gaiman says the Yahoo trailer may not be up for long: no doubt in due course it'll show up at the film's official site.
[Via Neil Gaiman]
Charlie Stross takes aim at Alistair Darling's road pricing scheme:
Now, imagine you want to spoof your black box so that (a) you don't pay any road usage tax (or pay less), or because (b) you're a paranoid who thinks the government is keeping an eye on where you're going.
[Lots of interesting discussion spelling out just how easy it'll be to spoof the black box in your car.]
The real fun happens, of course, when smartphones converge with CR technology. Right now, my Treo has two radios: a GSM stage working at four frequency bands, and Bluetooth at 2.4GHz. My PDA also has two radios – Bluetooth and 802.11b. Next-gen phones have all of the above and maybe more besides; FireWireless, Wireless USB, Bluetooth 1.1/2.0, 802.11a/g, WiMAX, and so on. The cost savings to be made by replacing the whole shooting match with a decent DSP and DAC and doing the protocol conversion entirely in software is creeping up and the power consumption of phone-grade RISC processors is creeping down and when the two meet in the middle, your mobile smartphone/PDA will be a desert topping and a floorwax, and (for the cost of a dodgy software download) a road pricing Black Box spoofer/jammer to boot.
At which point the government will probably seek to introduce a roadside smartphone scanning system which will try to connect to your smartphone as you drive past so it can identify whether you're running any suspicious software. I'm sure there are lots of IT consultants who could quote them a very reasonable sum for such a system – no doubt the same people who are telling ministers what they want to hear about the cost of the National ID Card system and the road pricing system.
