He never asked me to ‘pull his finger’ in bed…
I Love Cats
You must listen to this: “I ♥ Cats” (1Mb .mp3).
Very, very, very wrong.
And very, very, very funny.
Author and performer unknown, found on IRC a long time ago by D, originally posted on Just Like a Dream and cross-posted here with her permission.
I love cats.
I love to pet their fur.
I love to scratch their neck and chins
and listen to them purr.I love cats.
I love to stroke their thighs.
I love to bend them over a desk
and push their butts up high.I love cats.
I make them wear a bra.
I tie some panties ’round their neck
and then I shout “Hurrah!”I love cats.
My sexual housepets.
I love to have my way with them
and smoke some cigarettes.
Don’t blame me, I’m just passing it along…;)
New I, Robot trailer out
There’s a new trailer for the movie I, Robot, based on Isaac Asimov‘s writing. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, but, as with all movie properties based on works that I’m a fan of, there was some definite trepidation.
On the one hand, not only were they adapting the stories of one of my favorite authors, but they also tapped one of my favorite directors, Alex Proyas (The Crow, Dark City). On the other hand…Will Smith stars. Nothing against Will Smith personally, as I generally enjoy the films I see him in, but I’ve never seen him do much serious work — his strengths seem to have been in comedic and action vehicles. Asimov, on the other hand, while often extremely funny, has more of a cerebral, often punnish sense of humor to his writing, and his works are generally far stronger on dialog and concepts than they are on action.
Now that I’ve seen the new trailer, I have to say, I’m more than a little worried. I was hoping for more strong, “thinking-person’s” science fiction along the lines of A.I., Contact, Gattaca, or Dark City (four of the best sci-fi films in recent years, in my opinion). Instead, what I got was…well, a Will Smith action-comedy, from the looks of it.
Admittedly, I’m basing this solely on a two-minute trailer, but I don’t think I’m entirely unjustified in being worried. Opening with shots of Smith’s Detective Spooner riding his motorcycle through the city streets of Chicago, we follow him into the offices of “the richest man in the world” as a murder investigation starts. The businessman offers Spooner coffee, then asks if there’s anything he can to do help.
“Sugar.”
“Sugar?”
“For the coffee.”
“Oh…”
“Oh, you thought I was calling you ‘Sugar’? Hey, you’re not that rich.”
From there, we move to quick shots of the investigation, as Spooner interviews the robot suspected of killing a human. Interspersed with the clips are Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics — kind of.
Asimov himself often said that his Three Laws were probably the most famous lines he had ever written, out of his entire body of work, and have served as inspiration for many of today’s top robotics theorizers and designers as our technology progresses to the point where humanoid robotic creations are becoming more and more possible. The laws, as Asimov originally wrote them, are:
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
The laws as given to us in the I, Robot trailer, are now:
- They cannot hurt us.
- They must do what we say.
- They can protect themselves.
Okay, the essence is still there, and it’s entirely possible (and I’m hoping that) the original laws are quoted and expounded on in the film, and that these are merely the two-second screentime trailer versions. It was still enough to make me cringe.
From there, we move to quick action clips interspersed with dialog. In one, a robot jumps out of a window, flips over a couple times, and falls to the pavement, landing with a pavement-cracking jolt in a pose that could have been lifted straight from either of the trailers for the recent two Matrix movies or from the trailer for Underworld. Okay, it’s a cool shot and a good pose, but do we need to see it in every action movie trailer to hit the screen?
A few more clips later, we’re treated to an apparent robot mob in full attack mode, complete with smashing through doors, Aliens-style scuttling across walls and ceilings, robots backhanding and attacking people, and general mayhem, with all the robots suddenly sporting glowing red eyes and torsos (which gave them an amusingly ET-like look to me).
I will freely admit that the trailer looks good visually, and the effects look like they’ll be quite good. I just wish I wasn’t as worried about what had been done to the work of one of my favorite science-fiction authors.
I guess I’ll be able to form my final opinion July 16th, when the film opens. Until then, I’ll just be keeping my fingers crossed.
iTunes: “Darkness III” by In Absentia from the album Blood and Computers II (1994, 3:25).
Time for a little blatant self-promotion
A few times in the past, I’ve come up with ideas that amuse me, and I’ve put a couple of them onto t-shirts (and other gear) through CafePress. Unfortunately, they only got a few days of exposure after they went up, as their announcement posts scrolled off the main page of my site and into my archives.
I’ve finally rectified that, though, by adding links to all of my existing CafePress items on my ‘Elsewhere’ page. If I’m really lucky, a few more people will find them, get a laugh, and I’ll get a few more sales.
Worth trying, right?
iTunes: “I Give to You” by Nitzer Ebb from the album Earphoria (1991, 5:07).
The Need for Speed
My parents gave me my first car, in my family’s usual style. For my birthday that year, mom and dad handed me a wrapped present, about the size of a shoebox. I unwrapped it to discover the expected shoebox, took off the top — and found a stuffed bunny with its eyes X-ed out with yarn.
A little confused, I raised my eyebrows. “A dead bunny?”
“Close. A dead rabbit.” And dad handed me the keys to his 1981 VW Diesel Rabbit, currently parked out on the street awaiting brake repairs.
I loved that car. I’d learned to drive in my friend Rod’s VW Cabriolet — basically a convertible Rabbit — so I was quite comfortable behind the wheel of that little car. Bright yellow, five-speed manual transmission, a sunroof — and diesel powered, which at that point, was truly a beautiful thing. No emissions tests to worry about, no spark plugs to struggle with, and gasoline was under a dollar a gallon back then.
Now, being a diesel, speed was not high on the list of features on this car. I think the best I ever managed to coax it was around 85 mph, heading downhill (the big run down into Eagle River from Anchorage, just before you cross over the bridge, for all you Anchorage-area readers) with a tailwind. Realistically, this was probably a good thing, as I really enjoy driving, and if there’s a good song on the stereo…well, having a fairly low top speed probably saved me a few tickets over the years. ;)
However, as fun as high speed can be, it’s often no real contest against someone who knows how to drive and how to handle their car in various road conditions.
One winter day, I was sitting at a stoplight in Anchorage, heading down Northern Lights Boulevard towards the airport, when a guy and his girlfriend pulled up beside me in some fancy little go-faster. I looked over, and apparently he took my glance as a challenge, as he looked somewhat disdainfully at my little Rabbit, and lightly gunned his engine.
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.
So I gunned mine. He revved his engine up, and I did the same. After a moment, the light changed, he stomped on the gas — and went absolutely nowhere as his tires spun wildly on the icy street. Meanwhile, I lightly touched the gas and pulled forward, handily making it through the light before he had even managed to coax his little sports car into movement.
He caught up just in time for us to hit the next stoplight, and he started revving his engine again. I laughed — once wasn’t enough?
Apparently not. My little Rabbit beat him off the line three stoplights in a row. He was getting more aggravated with each attempt, and I was getting more and more amused.
Eventually, we made it to the intersection of Northern Lights and Minnesota. This being a more major intersection in Anchorage, the streets weren’t quite as icy, and by now he’d actually started to figure out what he was doing wrong. We sat at the intersection, watching traffic move by in front of us, each of us occasionally glancing over to the other car.
The crosswalk light switched from “WALK” and started blinking “DON’T WALK”. Engines revved up a bit.
“DON’T WALK” turned solid, and the traffic light on Minnesota went yellow.
Red light. Engines were gunned — this was it.
Green.
He pulled out, this time keeping control and starting slowly, letting his tires gain traction. I did the same, pacing him for the first half block, then starting to fall behind as his more powerful car started to gain speed. At the end of the first block, as he started to pull noticeably ahead of me, we hit the crest of a hill — and while he let his car leap forward, using the downhill slope to give him one last advantage, I tapped my breaks, let myself fall behind him, and watched his car go flying down the hill.
And a few minutes later, I gave him a jaunty wave as I passed by him one last time. I must say, those pretty little white sports cars do reflect the red-and-blue lights of the police cruisers quite nicely as they sit by the side of the road, waiting for the officer to write out their speeding ticket.
(This was inspired by The wrath of the Evil Elle\~Noir.)
Mac OS X turns three
Ars Technica has a nice rundown of the first three years of Mac OS X. I’ve been an OS X user for all three (plus the Public Beta period beforehand) — how time flies when you’re having fun!
Has it been three years already? A quick glance at the calendar tells us that the date is March 24, 2004, three years to the day after Mac OS X 10.0 began shipping. Join Mac.Ars in a trip down memory lane as we look at three years of Unix-y/NeXT-y/pinstripe-y goodness on the Macintosh.
iTunes: “Hurt Me…Hard (Armand Van Helden’s Gyro)” by Hard House Café from the album In to the Mix II: The 2nd Coming (1998, 5:52).
Presidential compassion
Y’know, if I were part of one of the hundreds of families who have lost a member to the war in Iraq, I wouldn’t be very amused at all about Bush turning it into a joke…
Bush put on a slide show, calling it the “White House Election-Year Album” at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association 60th annual dinner, showing himself and his staff in some decidedly unflattering poses.
There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating search. “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere,” he said.
In fact, I’d be pretty damn pissed about it. Actually, I don’t even have had to have lost a loved one to be pissed.
Shmuck.
Google AdSense
There’s a new addition to the site — I’ve been accepted into the Google AdSense program, so there will now be some small text advertisements on my pages.
I’d tried signing up for the AdSense program a while ago, but at that point was denied. Since then, I’d been debating the merits of trying again off and on — were the potential benefits of a little extra income (in theory, at least, if the ads generate enough clicks) worth putting a little more advertising on my site?
I’ve already had Amazon ads at the bottom of my pages for a good long while now, which (to be honest) haven’t netted me more than a few dollars — hardly enough to be noticeable. However, I’ve read of some people getting some surprisingly decent returns through the Google AdSense program, and while I doubt that I get enough traffic for it to make a major dent, I eventually decided that it was worth trying again — and surprisingly enough, this time they let me in.
I’ve tried to make the ads obvious without being terribly intrusive. You’ll see them in one of two places on the site.
As most new or returning visitors not coming in through a search engine or from an RSS reader will be hitting the main page, I didn’t want to bury the ads at the very bottom of the page as I have with the Amazon ad box, nor did I want them right at the top of the page as a standard banner — and while I briefly toyed with returning to a two-column layout that would allow me to place the ads on the edge of the page, I’m a bit too fond of the current single-column style to go quite that far.
So, for this main page, I’ve inserted the ads between the first and second posts on the page. Easily visible and likely to be seen, but not the first thing to greet a new visitor upon the initial load of the page.
For the individual archive pages I was a bit more concerned with not interrupting the flow between the post and the associated comment thread, so for those, I’ve placed the AdSense ads at the bottom of the page, just above the Amazon ad box.
Hopefully this strikes a good balance between visibility and keeping the ads as un-intrusive as possible.
And, of course, should an ad ever pop up that might be of interest, please feel free to click on it and pass a penny or two my way. It’s always appreciated!
iTunes: “Morning Will Come When I’m Not Ready” by Lionrock from the album An Instinct for Detection (1996, 3:49).
Always look on the bright side of life…
Have I ever mentioned how much I love Monty Python?
Spurred by the recent success of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”, the Python boys have decided to celebrate the 25th anniversary of one of their films by re-releasing it to the theaters.
Which film?
“The Life of Brian”, of course!
The Biblical satire will be re-released in Los Angeles, New York and other US cities to mark its 25th anniversary.
Adverts will challenge Mel Gibson’s blockbuster with the lines “Mel or Monty?”, “The Passion or the Python?”
Distributor Rainbow said it hoped the film would “serve as an antidote to all the hysteria about Mel’s movie”.
If it hits Seattle, I’m so there.
(via Kirsten)
iTunes: “Ich Bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Liebe Eingestellt (“Falling in Love Again”)” by Burroughs, William S. from the album Dead City Radio (1990, 2:28).
The Untitled Project
A few weeks ago, as I was standing in downtown Seattle waiting for my bus to work, I started looking around at all the logos, advertising, and slogans plastered all over the city. From the sides of delivery vans to shop windows, from faded paint on old brick buildings to garish posters hurriedly tacked onto construction barriers, advertising was everywhere.
Suddenly, I started wondering what the city would look like if all of those logos were removed.
And the word “PROJECT” flashed before my eyes…
My goal at that point was to wander through the city, taking random pictures, then come home, take them into Photoshop, and remove every logo, every piece of identifiable advertising, leaving only the “empty” buildings, automobiles, and walls. It seemed like a really interesting idea.
Then two things happened.
First, and most importantly, I lost my camera. Kind of makes it difficult to work on a photography project.
Secondly — someone else beat me to the idea.
The Untitled Project is a series of photographs of urban settings accompanied by a graphical text layout. The photographs have been digitally stripped of all traces of textual information. The text pieces show the removed text in the approximate location and font as it was found in the photograph.
Well, damn. Even if I didn’t get my chance to do it, and even if it’s a slightly different take on the idea, it’s a fascinating look at an ad-free (or at least text-free) world.
(via Kottke)
iTunes: “God is an Astronaut (Hot Tracks)” by Blunt Funkers from the album Roadkill! 2.13 (1995, 6:06).