Recent versions of iTunes have incorporated a facility for storing song lyrics, but at the moment iTunes doesn't actually provide a way to collect and store lyrics other than copy-and-pasting them in manually. Happily, there is a solution: pearLyrics, a freeware utility for OS X, will listen for the song iTunes is playing, search various online sources of lyrics, download and display them and even copy them to iTunes. It's available as a standalone application or a Dashboard Widget and works exactly as advertised.

The only drawbacks of pearLyrics that I can see are that a) sometimes the lyrics aren't quite correct – a drawback of any "unofficial" source of lyrics, and b) sometimes (not always) iTunes will briefly pause playing a track for which it's downloading the lyrics about four seconds in for a fraction of a second, presumably while it writes the lyrics to whichever corner of the iTunes library is used to store the lyrics. I see a similar effect when I tell Clutter to copy the cover art it downloads to iTunes, except that in that case there's a slightly longer pause and it happens every single time an image is written to the iTunes library; presumably iTunes just doesn't like it when other programs fiddle with the track currently playing.

Of course, it would be nice if the iPod provided a way to view the lyrics you've downloaded while you play the track. I gather that the iPod nano does this, so with any luck we'll see the feature added in the next update to the iPod software.

Further to my post the other day about Shining, the re-edited trailer for The Shining that turned it into a heartwarming family drama, this post at Making Light notes that the trailer was in fact just one entry in a competition for film editors.

The Shining trailer deservedly won first prize. The second placed trailer, a reworking of the Hayley Mills version of The Parent Trap, can be found at Moondog (click on the link for Paul LaCalandra – it's the second thumbnail from the right, the one about "Ordinary Girls"); I appreciate the professional job done, but as the film isn't a particular favourite of mine I don't feel the same reaction I did to the reworking of Kubrick's chilly masterpiece.

The third placed entry, a reworking of West Side Story as a horror movie, is marvelously Carpenteresque. (That's the early, scary John Carpenter of The Thing and Halloween and The Fog, not the guy who gave us Ghosts of Mars and Escape from LA.)

Science writer Simon Singh takes Katie Melua to task for demonstrating "a deep ignorance of cosmology and no understanding of the scientific method" in the lyrics to her new single.

The next day, Guardian readers respond.

Inspired by this comment thread at Michael Bérubé's site about disco songs that Do Not Suck, I spent a happy afternoon downloading various tracks by the Bee Gees, Diana Ross, Heatwave and Chic from the iTunes Music Store this afternoon.

It's a little scary to contemplate how long ago the disco era was.

Japanese company Erobun makes some very … distinctive … office supplies.

The frame-based site is mostly in Japanese with just a few items labelled in English, but the pictures tell you all you need to know. Somehow I don't think I'll be seeing the Sexy Pen Rack, the X-Rated Action Pen or the Nice Ballpen in the stationery cabinet at work any time soon.

[Do I really need to spell out that the images on the site are definitely Not Safe For Work?]

[Via Japundit]

Courtesy of pixeldiva, a quick review of Night Watch:

I won't spoil it for you too much, but if you liked the first part of the Matrix, went to see Underworld in the hope it'd not be as cheesy and shit as it was, and thought that Lord of the Rings was a bit tame then you really, seriously, need to go see this film when it comes out next weekend.

I'm glad to hear that it's much more than a spooky trailer.