The Phantom in 15 Minutes

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While she’s not posting much at the moment due to work on a book, Cleolinda Jones has graced us with another Movies in 15 Minutes parody: The Phantom of the Opera.

VOICE FROM THE DAAÉ TOMB: Christine! Come to me!

CHRISTINE: Daddy? Is that you?

VOICE FROM THE DAAÉ TOMB: …Sure, if that’s your kink.

[Raoul rides up, leaps off his white charger, and tosses his hair urgently.]

RAOUL: Christine! That’s not your dad! That’s just the Phantom!

VOICE FROM THE DAAÉ TOMB: NO IT’S NOT! I’M TOTALLY HER DAD! DADDY LOVES YOU, CHRISTINE!

RAOUL: Oh, COME ON, Christine! You hung out with this guy! You fell in love with his stupid voice! You ought to be able to recognize it!

CHRISTINE: Well, it does sound kind of familiar…

RAOUL: And you saw his face, right?

CHRISTINE: Well… yeah… I mean… he bears kind of a passing resemblance to my father… I mean, aside from the giant Sunburn of Doom… He really looked like my dad when we were singing about the Music of the Night and he was running his hands all over me.

RAOUL: YOU ARE WRONG IN THE HEAD.

THE PHANTOM: I KEEL YOU, FABIO!

Even without having seen the movie adaptation, I know the story well enough to get the jokes in here. Quite cute (and with that many mentions of breasts, I just might have a reason to see the movie after all…).

iTunes “Dragonflies (Überzone’s Strapped to Your Bed)” by Povi from the album Plastic Compilation Vol. III (1999, 4:09).

Hey…what’s all that white stuff?

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Well, it finally happened — after nearly a week of wild rumors and near-panic (I had no less than three of my customers at work plan ‘snow days’ last Thursday based on the weather reports), it’s finally actually snowing in Seattle this morning.

I just might need to wander out and see how well the downtown area is handling it. Camera in hand, of course.

Update: Hmpf. Okay, maybe some of the other areas of Seattle actually got a good amount of snow — I saw some cars that had a good inch or two on their roofs — but downtown? Heck, it’s already almost all melted off. Some slush on the streets, that’s about it.

Looks like it’s going to be a pretty day, though, the clouds are disappearing, blue sky is showing through, and bright sunshine is cutting through the downtown skyscrapers. Guess I can’t really complain. :)

iTunes “Rock This Town” by Brian Setzer Orchestra, The from the album Dirty Boogie, The (1998, 6:37).

Progress: Related Entries

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Progress is being made on the keyword index — in fact, I did a full install and added the code to my templates, and verified that it works just as it should. Unfortunately, I also discovered while testing that as it requires the keywords to have been entered into my entries in a specific way, I need to do a lot of work on fine-tuning the keywords before it will be a useable option. So, with somewhere over three thousand entries to tweak, it’ll be a while before I can actually get that up and running. Still, it was encouraging to see it working, even if it was a little borked.

In the meantime, as well as I had to go back to static rendering for my website, I implemented a feature that I had in the past, but had disappeared some time ago. Thanks to some MySQL wizardry from Adam Kalsey, I now have ‘related entries’ listed in the sidebar for each individual entry (this does mean that the linklog now longer appears on the individual entries, but I didn’t want to make the sidebar stretch on too far). The code already does a fairly good job of picking out similar entries to whichever one is currently being displayed, but the accuracy should improve as I go through and fix the keywords for all the entries on my site.

Just another fun way to go bouncing around and exploring through the years of babbling I’ve amassed here.

iTunes “Voodoo People (Edit)” by Prodigy, The from the album Voodoo People (1995, 4:07).

This is Ponderous

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This is ponderous, man. Really ponderous.

I had this dream the other night. I went to work one day, and nobody remembered who I was. So, I decided to take the day off. On my way out, I run into my boss, and he says, “Hey…you look familiar.”

I said, “Thanks — people say that a lot in these dreams.”

Then the horns kicked in.

And my shoes started to squeak.

Then all of a sudden, I’m standing on a beach in some tropical part of the world. And there’s this sign that says, “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” It sort of screamed out at me. Then I remembered — I’ve been here in other dreams. But usually there’s a water polo game, and a girl who could talk with her eyes. And she’d say, “Can you see what I’m saying?”

Then the horns kicked in.

And my shoes started to squeak.

Before I knew it, I was walking near a lake, when the phone rings. And the operator speaks to me in a language I don’t understand.

“Boom bappa-chugga makko-nahwo sing kow, ding kabba-lawa wally gumbo ching pow, heddy gabba-looah kabbah chennesing tee, oom mamma-chugga mannawon is now three.”

Then the horns kicked in.

And my shoes started to squeak.

Before long, I was coming up on this really weird part of my dream. You know — the part where I know how to tap dance, but I can only do it while wearing golf shoes?

Now I’m back on the beach, walking with this girl who talks with her eyes. This time she says, “I think you see what I’m saying.”

Then, just before I woke up, it started to rain, and I’m suddenly on the phone.

“Boom bappa-chugga makko-nahwo sing kow, ding kabba-lawa wally gumbo ching pow, heddy gabba-looah kabbah chennesing tee, oom mamma-chugga mannawon is now three.”

(The girl, who could talk with her eyes.)

(“Can you see, what I’m saying?”)

(“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”)

This is ponderous, man.

Really ponderous.

— 2Nu, ‘This is Ponderous‘

I love this song. Too bad it’s so hard to find these days. I was lucky enough to track down a copy on some filesharing network or another some time back. Since Amazon’s got the single (used, but hey), I think I need to go spend a few dollars…

iTunes “This is Ponderous” by 2Nu from the album Ponderous (1991, 3:39).

12 Sentences

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From ctakahara: Take the first sentence of the first post of each month for the past year and make a paragraph from it.

Seattle’s library system has been in something of a state of flux ever since I moved down here. Item 1: CBS refuses to run ‘issue advocacy’ ads from MoveOn and PETA during the SuperBowl. Congratulations Peter (and everyone else) on setting a new record for the Oscars by winning every single one of the 11 Oscars that you were nominated for. While I won’t be swapping my post order around, Monday’s discussion on weblog post order has resulted in one small change here on Eclecticism. My birthday weekend started off with this year’s Birth Day for Jason Webley, his annual “resurrection” show, this year combined with the CD release party for Only Just Beginning. If I were to move anywhere I often think it would be San Francisco. Completely on a whim tonight after getting home from work, I decided to head down to see if I could get into an opening-night showing of Spider Man 2. Just a reminder — today is the day of the Ballard Locks Photo Workshop organized in response to Ian Spiers’ experiences while photographing the Locks. My little brother and my one-month old nephew. You know, much as I’d like to get excited about the prospect of a Bloom County feature film, given Disney’s track record over the past few years (nearly anything without Pixar’s involvement is a waste of time — Pirates of the Caribbean and Lilo and Stitch are the only exceptions I can think of, and even Lilo, while enjoyable, isn’t quite up to the standards Disney used to have), the news that their first foray into 3-D animation without Pixar’s involvement will be a Bloom County film doesn’t thrill me. Sunday afternoon, Prairie and I went over to visit Prairie’s sister and her boyfriend to visit, celebrate Prairie’s birthday, and visit their new puppy, Loodie. On the off chance anyone noticed, my site (along with all other sites I host) had about two hours of downtime earlier today.

Okay, that was silly. And my lord I write some long sentences.

iTunes “Let Me Entertain You” by Shakespear’s Sister from the album Hormonally Yours (1991, 5:14).

Gallimaufry 3

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Third verse, same as the first…

Ten random tracks from my iTunes library:

  • Violent Femmes, ‘Fat‘, off of 3: The Femmes are a long-time favorite of mine, and ‘Fat’ is one of my favorite tracks off of this album. Very tongue-in-cheek, it’s a rather bouncy little lament about a man hoping a girl will gain a little weight. “‘Cause if you got really fat, fat, fat, / You just might want to see me come back, / I hope / you got / fat.”

  • Hole, ‘Drown Soda’, off of Tank Girl: I have to admit, I’ve never been much of a fan of Hole. They’re not really bad, but most of what I’ve heard from them just doesn’t grab my ear (though I will say that I do like ‘Malibu‘). This track pretty much follows the formula: droning guitars and Courtney Love screeching.

  • Romeo Void, ‘Never Say Never (Hot Tracks)’, off of The Edge Level 1: I’m such an 80’s child sometime. Not necessarily the best 80’s one hit wonder out there, but it’s definitely a fun one — “I might like you better if we slept together, / never say never!” This is a remix off of one of the DJ-only promo CDs I got through the Hot Tracks service.

  • Leftfield, ‘Storm 3000‘, off of Leftism: I first heard of Leftfield through the single ‘Open Up‘, with John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) guesting on vocals. That one track was enough to get me to pick up the full album, and I wasn’t disappointed. While this isn’t one of the strongest tracks on the album, it’s not bad filler, and works quite well as background music.

  • Concrete Blonde, ‘Darkening of the Light‘, off of Bloodletting: This is such, such, such a good album. Most people if they know it at all will only know of it through ‘Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)‘, but there’s not a single bad track on this disc. I’ve been lucky enough to see Concrete Blonde live a few times since I moved to Seattle, and they’re firmly cemented in their place as one of my favorite bands. Besides, Jhonette’s voice is just so good….

  • Sarah McLachlan, ‘I Will Not Forget You‘, off of Solace: Not one of Sarah’s more well-known tracks, and probably for good reason. Not bad, but nothing to make it stand out, either, very much standard Sarah McLachlan. Of course, she’s an artist whose standard pieces are still very worth listening to, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

  • Children of No Return, ‘White Horses’, off of German Mystic Sound Sampler Vol. IV: This song isn’t great, but I love the series it’s from. I’ve got four of the GMSS discs — I picked the first two up while I was in Germany in 1991, and got the second two off of a friend who found them online and then decided that he didn’t like them as much as I would. Great stuff, as far as I’m concerned, with a lot of German industrial and gothic music that’s nearly impossible to find in the states. Amusingly, some of the artists on these albums (like Das Ich, Girls Under Glass and Project Pitchfork) have since gained popularity in the goth/industrial scene here in the States…but I was listening to them first! :)

  • Tori Amos, ‘Professional Widow‘, off of Professional Widow: The original mix of ‘Professional Widow’, from the single of the same name. Here Tori’s somewhere in her middle stage, between songs with lyrics that make sense and songs that still sound incredibly good but are so obtuse as to be nearly nonsensical. Doesn’t mean I don’t like listening to her stuff at all, but there are times I really am clueless as to what she’s talking about.

  • Front 242, ‘Rhythm of Time (Messengers of Neptune)’, off of Mut\@age Mix\@age: A trancy remix of one of Front 242’s earlier tracks, very Orb-ish. In fact, now that I check, the mix was done by the Orb, imagine that. Front 242’s long been one of my favorite industrial groups, and this remix album is worth picking up — not all of it’s really danceable, but it’s a strong collection of mixes that can be pretty difficult to track down otherwise.

  • Jane’s Addiction, ‘So What!’, off of So What!: Jane’s Addiction’s later stuff never really got me as much as Nothing’s Shocking, Ritual de lo Habitual and their self-titled live album did, but ‘So What!’ isn’t too bad. The remixes on this single are rather forgettable, though. Not much else to say, really…not bad for Jane’s Addiction, but not their best, either.

All in all, not a bad set of songs this week. And now, the weekly bonus track:

iTunes “Dream On” by Chemical Brothers, The from the album Surrender (1999, 6:46).

Netflix and Best Buy?

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Interesting — Netflix‘ header navigation tab graphics have changed (less rounded and all gold tones now), and there’s a Best Buy logo next to the Netflix logo up top. There’s nothing in their Press Releases section about partnering with Best Buy…is this something that’s been announced at CES?

Also, the Your Account page seems to have been revamped (though it’s been a while since I’ve looked at it), and is being able to set up multiple profiles for different people in one houseold new, or have I just not noticed it before?

Aha — it’s a new feature. Nifty! Living alone, it’s not something I’ll use, but it looks like a nice feature for families on Netflix.

Weekend Project: Keyword Search

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Boy, have I got a project for the weekend!

While running ideas and vague concepts related to my tag-categorization wishlist of the other day, I figured it was worth poking around in the Movable Type Support Forums to see if I could find anything of use. A search for ‘keywords’ led me to one thread, which then led me to these posts by ishbadiddle — and that looks to be (nearly) exactly what I’ve been looking for!

Here’s his blog entry on his keyword subject indexing work:

My thinking about the Semantic Web was influenced by Paul Ford’s piece on the subject, which imagines the power of Google harnessing the Semantic Web to make even more money. There’s a good article on the Semantic Web on wikipedia. Basically, it’s adding metadata (data about the data) to web pages. In our case, it’s simply adding “subject” data to each blog post, and then harnessing that to create an index of posts that relate to that subject. Think of it this way: the Category system is like the Table of Contents of a book, listing chapter headings. The Keyword system is like the Index of a book, one that is constantly updated.

So, plan for the upcoming weekend:

Print out ishbadiddle’s instructions, download and install the required plugins (ifEmpty, Loop, Compare, Collate, and Regex), hack the search functions, and then start pounding away on my templates.

About the one downside I can see to this is that I may have to go back to static rendering of my pages rather than the dynamic rendering I’m using now, but I’m okay with that (it’s all a tradeoff anyway, there’s pros and cons to each approach).

It’ll be fun to get into geek mode for a little while as I work on this. I just hope I don’t break anything while I’m working on it…

iTunes “Steamroller (Steaming Pig)” by Pigface from the album In Dust We Trust (1997, 3:22).

13 Free Songs from iTunes

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Have an iPod? Want some free music from iTunes?

iPod, meet iTunes.

  1. Back up any data on your iPod you don’t want to lose.
  2. Use the iPod Updater application (usually in /Applications/Utilities/iPod Software Updater, or it can be downloaded from Apple) to do a ‘restore’ on the iPod, resetting it to factory defaults.
  3. Launch iTunes.

And that’s all there is to it — upon launch, iTunes will flip over to the iTMS and offer you thirteen free songs. Here’s what you get:

  1. Blow It Out – Features
  2. All At Sea – Jamie Cullum
  3. Sunshine to the Rain – Miri Ben-Ari
  4. Lonely – Akon
  5. Golden Touch – Razorlight
  6. Every Time You Go Away – Brian McKnight
  7. Bigtime – The Soundtrack of Our Lives
  8. Laura – Scissor Sisters
  9. She Said – Brie Larson
  10. Just Anotha Shorty – O’Ryan
  11. Sleeping With the Lights On – Teitur
  12. Reach Out, I’ll Be There – Michael McDonald
  13. TKO – Le Tigre

No idea on how long this offer is good for, whether the selections might change at some point, or whether you’ll like the selections enough to make it worth your time. I figured, hey, free music, why not?

(via Accelerate Your Macintosh!)

iTunes “Laura” by Scissor Sisters from the album iTunes New Music Sampler (Universal Motown Edition) (2004, 3:38).

It’s official: Six Apart acquires LiveJournal

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Looks like the rumors were true: Six Apart acquires LiveJournal.

Pertinent posts:

I’ve read none of these yet, as it’s after midnight and I need to get to bed. Should make for interesting reading when I wake up, though.

Update: Okay, I stayed up a bit later and read the posts. Good stuff there — there was a lot of FUD running around due to the rumors, and I think that the three posts above do a good job of dispelling that.

Congrats to both Six Apart and LiveJournal — I’m looking forward to seeing where you all go with this.

iTunes “Get Off My Land” by Operatica from the album O Vol. 1 (2000, 5:05).