I’m no gamer – my only experience with the Final Fantasy brand is the 2001 computer-animated film – but I very much enjoyed this 8 minute abridged version of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

I’m going to take a wild guess that the creator of this little piece might have tinkered with the plot and the dialogue just a tad. Unless, that is, the game actually features the lines, “You don’t need to fight flying rococo furniture to impress me, Cloud.” and “Does this have something to do with your todger?”

(If, on the other hand, those lines do show up in the game proper then I just might have to invest in a games console to see what I’ve been missing.)

[Via Chocolate and Vodka]

The New York Times reports on a vital research project: The Perfect Bacon Sandwich Decoded.

Researchers at Leeds University spent more than 1,000 hours testing 700 variants on the traditional bacon sandwich, which many Britons refer to as a bacon butty (eschewing the term sandwich, said to have been coined to honor the fourth Earl of Sandwich’s habit of eating meat between slices of bread around 1762).

For Britons, butties come in a variety of guises — chip butties (French fries between slices of bread), crisp butties (ditto with potato chips) or even sugar butties, which are self-explanatory. None are viewed as especially healthful.

Since when does “healthful” have anything to do with it?

“We often think that it’s the taste and smell of bacon that consumers find most attractive,” Dr. Clayton said in a news release. “But our research proves that texture and sound is just, if not more, important.”

[...]

In the experiment, some of the tasters sampled between four and six bacon sandwiches a day for three or four days.

And so the formula evolved to establish the amount of force in the bite, expressed in newtons, and the level of noise, expressed in decibels, to make the perfect crunch.

<homer>Mmmmmm, bacon…</homer>

[Via Amygdala]

A young Stephen Fry relates the chilling story of The Letter:

[...] The letter read as follows:

“If Mr John Lawson-Particle will travel immediately to Transylvania as the honoured guest of Count Dracula, to personally advise His Excellency on a matter of great legal delicacy, Mr Lawson-Particle will be handsomely remunerated.

“He is to bring on his journey: no garlic, no crucifixes, no wooden stakes. Neither is he to look up in a dictionary the word ‘vampire’.”

It seemed innocent enough. [...]

Cracking stuff.

[Via Needcoffee.com]

I haven’t done one of these posts in quite some time:

• Untitled #0052 by David J Nightingale.
• Blue White Divide and Bark by Andy Bell.
• Project Cookbook: Week Two by Rachel James.
• Three from Cute Overload: Yogurt Kitty, I don’t care, just keep my muzzlepouche dry and And now, a tiny turtle.
• Julien Roumagnac brings us Montreal – Palais des Congrès and Quicksilver #1.
• Three from Kathleen Connally: Guinevere Hesitates, The First Green Grass of Spring and Spring Fields.
• Lorissa Shepstone likes her coooooffee.
• Trey Ratcliff found this handsome beast.

['Handsome beast' image via Betsy Devine]

Nice graffiti. Lacking a bit in scientific accuracy, mind – what was with the jump from dinosaurs to elephants? – but far better than an expanse of unadorned concrete.

[Via Pharyngula]

An Update on the Problem of Maria, by Matthew Belinkie.

FROM: The Reverend Mother
TO: The Nuns

My Sisters,

As you know, our little convent has been plagued in recent months by “the Maria problem.” I must say, in all my years serving the Lord, this is the greatest challenge I have ever faced. It is like trying to hold a moonbeam in your hand.

Nuns have described Maria as “a headache,” “a demon,” and “capable of outpestering any pest.” Yet, when I put out a box to collect anonymous Maria-related complaints, many of them seemed relatively minor:

“She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee.” We are not Franciscans, but surely we can agree that a youthful heart often expresses its love of the Almighty through delight in nature. Besides, it’s spring; it’s like the hills are alive! [...]

Worth reading to the very end.

FlickrBlockrs: for people who really, really don’t want to be photographed.

[Via Fimoculous]

This list of parallels between Futurama and Doctor Who is freaking me out:

Zap Brannigan vs. Captain Jack Harkness. Both suffer from a very sexy learning disability: Sexlexia. “Kiff, I’ve made it with a woman. Inform the men.” vs. “Woke up in bed with both my executioners”. Who wins.

[...]

Zoidberg vs. the Ood, or: “I took the liberty of fertilizing your caviar.” vs. “Would you like sauce with that?” Futurama wins. Woopwoopwoop!

[Via GromBlog]

There’s a not-so-small part of me that cringes at the thought of doing this to a poor, innocent book; a (slightly) larger part of me that thinks that’s some really beautiful work.

[Via 3quarksdaily]

25 Great Calvin and Hobbes Strips does exactly what it says: showcasing some of the finest comic strips ever committed to paper.

See, for example, “Scientific progress goes ‘boink’?”, “AIEEE!! THEY GOT FRANK!!”, “KaZAM!” and “…But don’t YOU go anywhere” for all the evidence anyone could require that Bill Watterson was some sort of genius. If you want to read more, go here.

[Via Scrubbles.net]

McSweeney’s Pros and Cons of the Top 20 Democratic Presidential Candidates:

2. BARACK OBAMA

Pro: Articulate; resembles foxy actor Blair Underwood.

Con: L.A. Law was kind of overrated now that you think about it.

[...]

6. DICK CHENEY IN AN ELABORATE LATEX DISGUISE THAT TAKES FIVE HOURS TO APPLY

Pro: Trojan horse, my friend. Trojan fucking horse.

Con: Ruse would be so exciting that he would surely drop dead of a massive stroke about a month before Iowa.

[...]

15. WALTER MONDALE

Pro: Has spent last 22 years going over tape, reviewing mistakes, plotting, scheming, waiting, watching, preparing to pounce like a 79-year-old Minnesotan panther.

Con: None.

A mystery resolved:

I think almost everybody has wondered what would have happened if they had made a different choice in life, taken a different path. If you didn’t think of it by yourself, seeing “It’s a Wonderful Life” a few hundred times has probably driven the point home by now.

Many authors have applied this idea to big turning points, writing about alternative histories in which Hitler won World War II (Fatherland) or the South won the Civil War (Bring the Jubilee). The notion may not be pure fantasy: the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests that these Worlds-of-If may really exist, although forever unreachable.

Or maybe not so unreachable. A very odd pattern of statements by prominent supporters and members of the Bush administration suggests that we may have some truly unusual visitors—literally out-of-this-world.

You see, the president and his associates keep referring to historical events that never happened, at least not as they did in the fields we know. And they keep referring to the same ahistorical events. Over and over, the secretary of state and the (now former) secretary of defense have referred to guerrilla warfare in Germany after the Nazi surrender. But there just wasn’t any. You can’t find it in the history books or in the memories of people who were there at the time. My uncle was in Bavaria in the summer of 1945: no trouble. Secretary Rumsfeld repeatedly talked about the similarities between today’s Iraq and America after the Revolutionary War, but again, I’m pretty sure that there aren’t any. I don’t believe we found tortured corpses in the streets of Philadelphia every morning back in 1784. And why does President Bush keep saying that Saddam refused to admit those UN arms inspectors back in 2002 and early 2003? Why did Condoleezza Rice, in 2000, say that Iran was probably backing the Taliban, when in fact the two had almost gone to war in 1998?

[...]

We’re talking about the rulers of the most powerful nation on earth. It can’t be that they’re just pig-ignorant—of their own history, yet. There has to be a deeper, more subtle explanation. [...]

[Via Making Light (Particles)]

British Airways, the world’s pettiest airline:

British Airways has removed a shot of Virgin Atlantic boss Sir Richard Branson from the in-flight version of the James Bond movie Casino Royale.

Sir Richard was seen briefly in the original film, passing through an airport security scanner, but can only be seen from behind in the new edit.

“Many films are edited in some way on board,” said a BA spokesman. [...]

[Via GromBlog]

A new word for us all to learn: Decursivication is…

[di-kur-siv-fi-key-shuhn] noun. The process of losing one’s penmanship, thanks to automatic billing and an increasingly electronic world. Bob attributed his chicken scratch-like note writing to the process of decursivication.