Haunted Mansion Trailer

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Hot on the heels of the theatrical release of Pirates of the Caribbean (which I really need to see), Disney has released the trailer to their next ride-turned-movie, The Haunted Mansion.

I was a lot more interested in this before I saw Eddie Murphy in the trailer. Has he made anything even remotely funny since The Golden Child?

(via Cory Doctorow)

So who was the speech to?

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Bush didn’t make any friends at his stop at the Senegalese island Goree yesterday. After touring the island site that was a launching ground for slave traders, Bush gave an anti-slavery speech. Unfortunately, all the residents of the island had been herded up and penned in a football stadium. So much for anti-slavery.

“We never want to see him come here again,” said N’diaye, hiking her loose gown onto her shoulders with a frown.

As the sun rose over Goree before Bush’s arrival, the only people to be seen on the main beach were U.S. officials and secret service agents. Frogmen swam through the shallows and hoisted themselves up to peer into brightly painted pirogues.

Normally, the island teems with tourists, Senegal’s ubiquitous traders, hawkers of cheap African art, photographers offering to take pictures and all the expected trappings of a tourist hot-spot in one of the world’s poorest countries.

On Tuesday, shutters on the yellow and red colonial-style houses remained shut. The cafes were closed and the narrow pier deserted, apart from security agents manning a metal detector, near the sandy beach. A gunship patrolled offshore.

“We understand that you have to have security measures, since September 11, but to dump us in another place…? We had to leave at 6 a.m. I didn’t have time to bathe, and the bread did not arrive,” the father-of-four said.

“We were shut up like sheep,” said 15-year-old Mamadou.

Absolutely disgusting.

(via Atrios)

Game on!

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Next some other idiot is going to try to play Quidditch with a Dirt Devil, two bowling balls, a basketball, and a badminton birdie. Sha!

— Kirsten

I’m in! Who else?

S-11 Redux

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I just stumbled across this video clip from the Guerrilla News Network — roughly 10 minutes of soundbites stitched together into a presentation that’s alternately frightening, funny, and poignant. Well worth the time to download and watch.

Culled from over 20 hours of television footage recorded over a one month period and across 13 networks, S-11 Redux is a sound-bite blitzkrieg that challenges the messages we have been fed from our mainstream media and the government it serves. Be warned — this video moves quickly and will require at least two viewings to digest its full impact.

(via grid)

Pre-Natal Massage

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On a boring day at work, the phrase “pre-natal massage” becomes way too funny. I know what it really means…but what it could mean had my co-worker and I alternating between really amused and really disgusted.

Oh, by the way…

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Reading Gabe’s musings on how to handle two blogs reminded me that I hadn’t ever answered my own question! At least, I hadn’t answered it over here — I did over on The Long Letter.

For the record, though, I’ve decided to put The Long Letter on hold for the duration of the TypePad beta, to give me the most possible opportunities to participate in the collective tire-kicking here. There are two projects that I’ve signed up for using The Long Letter’s address that I’ll post over there (26 Things and the Blogathon), but for now, everything else will show up here.

Are friends electric?

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Aaahh — the eternal debate of nearly everyone who’s found themselves with a dual life: how do you cope when the two start to intersect?

During my brief contract earlier this summer, a jarring moment occurred when I walked up to one of the people I worked with and saw that he was reading my weblog. I’ve never had such an obvious mix of the ‘real’ world and this virtual world before, and I found it uncomfortable. He’s a very likable person, friendly and personable and now a budding weblogger — but it was still a moment that stopped me dead in my tracks.

I’ve rarely ever stopped to worry about the two worlds intersecting for me. In fact, there are often times when I wish they intersected more. As my circle of friends has grown and started to go our seperate ways, it’s gotten far harder to keep in touch with each other over the miles. We’re not always able to afford long distance phone calls, not all of us are as good with keeping in touch via e-mail as we should be…all the usual reasons and excuses for not keeping in touch. I’ve thought many times that I wish more of the people I knew in the “real world” also had presences in the “virtual world.” So far, I’ve managed to get my dad and my friend Kirsten to start exploring the world of weblogging, but that’s been it. Still, it’s a start.

But admittedly, there are considerations to be taken when you know that it’s not just a random collection of cyber-strangers reading the words you toss into the void, but people that you’re going to need to see face-to-face. Suddenly posts get second-guessed, certain topics seem a little to dicey to bring up.

…I have a strong suspicion that those people who write weblogs read by spouses, kids, and employers tend to write differently then people like me who are, for all intents and purposes, obscured from view because we’ve kept the two worlds far apart.

I’ve got a very small regular readership of my site (at least, that I know of), and primary among those that I know read my ramblings are my parents. I feel lucky that we’ve managed over the years to build a good enough relationship that I generally don’t have to censor my ramblings. While I’m not one for great amounts of profanity, I know they’re not going to look down their noses at me if I choose to toss the occasional expletive in; they know that I’ve experimented with drugs in the past, so I don’t have to worry about mentioning that; and I’m fairly positive that they’re not laboring under the illusion that I’ve made it to the tender age of 30 a virgin.

Of course, if they were, I’ve just blown that right out of the water, haven’t I? ;)

In any case, the point is that, at least for me, it’s rare that I hesitate on posting something because of anyone who might read my site. Not unknown — no matter how good my relationship with my parents, or anyone else, may be, some things I’m just not quite willing to tie to my public website — but rare.